What’s a book worth?

When I first heard about the marketing strategy known in the independent publishing community as ‘permafree’, I was astonished.

Often writers who publish independently will make the first book in a series free. The wisdom behind this strategy is to draw readers into a series and, hopefully, hook them. The money lost on Book 1 will be earned when readers go on to purchase the subsequent books in the series.

The strategy makes complete sense, yet the idea of giving a book to readers for free just didn’t sit well with me, for two reasons.

• The first book in The Dawnland Chronicles series, The Hummingbird and the Sea, took me five years to produce. This time includes the writing and the drafting, the editing and cover design. It was a long and costly process, but an extremely satisfying one. Coming in at over 100,000 carefully chosen and manicured words, giving the novel away for free was unthinkable.

• In my mind, there is also a stigma attached to any free item. If something is free, then it must be of inferior quality. In fact, it must be so bad that it has to be given away. Of course, the food, beauty and beverage industries have given away free samples of products for years. I’ve been hooked this way plenty of times. But, to my way of thinking, a five-gram tube of moisturiser is of far less value than a 100,000-word novel.

Yet as I read the publishing press, blogs and listened to podcasts on the subject, permafree seemed to be a strategy that could not fail.

Despite my feelings of unease, I tried it out.

At the beginning of August I organised a promotion. I changed the price of The Hummingbird and the Sea to FREE. The promotion was intended to last just one month.

To my amazement, most readers are not like me. During August, The Hummingbird and the Sea had thousands of downloads across all the major storefronts - Amazon, Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Google. Furthering my surprise, several people purchased Book 2, The Falconer and preordered Book 3, The Lark’s Call. Also, many people left ratings for the book. However, written reviews still remain elusive.

Even though they were FREE downloads, I was excited each day to check the reports and discover how many books were downloaded overnight. When I recognised a daily record of downloads, a new sale of Book 2 or a preorder of Book 3, I whooped for joy. And that’s gotta be worth something, right?

I am officially eating humble pie. The Hummingbird and the Sea is now permafree on all major storefronts, including jennybondbooks.com.