What is the Value in Giving Away Free Kindle ebooks?

 

#1 and #2 Amazon ebook downloads

I’ve not changed the price of my first book on Amazon in a year and a half. My guess is that frequent price change or even free days will not do much for your sales and won’t result in many new reviews. Nonetheless, I thought I’d make my book free for a day and see what happens.

The day is about half over, and per the KDP report Amazon offers, I’ve had about 70 downloads. Given that I barely advertised it — a few tweets only — that is not too surprising. But there are a few surprising things.

First, my book is #1 in the Kindle store for free downloads for “History>Military>Vietnam War”. That did surprise me at first, but when I thought about it…it probably shouldn’t have. The reason is that it is not a very big genre; there are not a lot of free downloads in that category today. In fact, there are only 5 at the moment.

My book was #2 and #6 in two more categories, as you can see above. Those categories have over a hundred books listed, so being #4 and #8 and being #2,261 overall is a more respectable accomplishment.

What has not happened, is that I have not gotten any more reviews. Of course, it is too early to expect any new reviews, so that is no shock.

But getting more reviews is what I am most interested in over the next few weeks. I’ll report back later and provide an update on this count.

If giving away lots of books does not result in any more reviews, I probably won’t do it again. Time will tell…

Other thoughts and experiences?

Summary
What is the value in giving away free Kindle ebooks?
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What is the value in giving away free Kindle ebooks?
Description
My book is #1, #2 and #6 in three free categories. But getting more reviews is what I am most interested in over the next few weeks.
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Tiffany Writing
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