Why I Give Away Free Books

Since I started offering Wild Child and Lust, Money & Murder (Book 1) as free downloads, I frequently receive questions from people asking me why I'm doing it.  "Don't you lose money?"  "Doesn't it bother you to give whole books away free?"  I thought I would take out a moment to explain why.

First, all of us love to get free stuff.  I know I do!  The offer of a free product has universal appeal.   A more common method writers use to promote their books is to offer sample chapters.  But somehow, offering free sample chapters doesn't sound nearly as enticing as offering entire books for free.  To me, "sample chapters" conjures up images of a ragged sheaf of papers held together with a paper clip, not a nice, neat finished polished product wrapped in a pretty package.

But there's a second and more important reason I give books away free.  If you are a reader who does not yet know me, asking you to fork over your hard-earned money on the blind faith that I will provide you with an awesome reading experience...well, that’s asking too much.  Your time is just as valuable as mine, and that’s what I’m asking you to invest—your time.  I’m taking the gamble that if you like my free book, you will reach into your pocketbook (or, more realistically, "click" on a Buy This Book button on Amazon or your preferred online retailer) and purchase one of my other novels. 

In reality, the amount of time that I ask you to invest is relatively small.  My philosophy is simple:  if you’re not immediately drawn into my story and reading forward because you want to, then put the book aside and read something else.  There’s no reason to push yourself through a novel, not in today’s world, where there are so many other pleasurable distractions available.  Reading fiction should be a fun, entertaining experience.  The last thing it should be is work!  Work, and the pressures of our daily lives, are precisely what most of us are trying to escape from when we sit down to read a good novel.

So, in summary, what I ask new readers to do is invest a little of their time—usually not more than five minutes—to download and start reading one of my free books.  In return, they (hopefully) discover a new author who can give them many, many hours of reading pleasure.

Is that a good deal, or what?