The Risks of Offering a Freebie

Last time we talked about our options for handling reviews and criticism. Some authors avoid reviews, some intend to avoid them but peek anyway, and some don’t mind reading reviews. As with many things writing, we have to find the option that works best for our situation.

I’ve alluded several times to the fact that I knew my freebie short story would suffer from worse reviews than my other books. I was prepared for that possibility and accepted the risk, but I wanted to talk about the psychology behind the situation. The better we understand, the more we’ll know what risks we’re signing up for before making our decisions.

Especially as “offer a freebie” is a common suggestion for how to attract readers, I think it’s important to be fully aware of the pros and cons of that strategy. Only then can we make the best decision for us. *smile*

Why Might We Offer a Freebie?

As we’ve discussed before, freebies are good in certain situations. Freebies do expose our work to more readers. And if those readers like our work, they might buy our other stories.

In other words, freebies create a sales funnel, which funnels potential readers toward sales of our other books. We can offer something free to the widest possible audience, and then we can use the back of our book (where readers who enjoyed our story will be most likely to want more from us) to direct readers to our other stories.

That brings up the biggest reason for and against offering a freebie. They’re useful if we have other books available that we can promote to freebie readers, but freebies don’t do us much good if we don’t have other books in our list to use for turning those freebie-loving readers into paid readers.

But if we do have other books for sale, freebies correlate to higher incomes. The Copyblogger site has gone so far as to say that 100% of authors with a sales funnel will make more money.

Like Beverly Kendall found in her survey a year ago, for authors with an income:

• Under $10K: 32.53% offered a series freebie
• Over $50K: 68% offered a series freebie
• Over $500K: 88.24% offered a series freebie

What Are the Risks of Offering a Freebie?

Attracting more readers and achieving a higher income both sound great. So why wouldn’t we want to offer a freebie?

The common risks come down to two main issues:

• the psychology of free
• the content of free

Let’s take a look at each of those…

Risk #1: The Psychology of Free

Psychologically, we appreciate things more when we have to work for them. Wealthy parents who are smart often won’t pay for their kids’ college education (at least not all of it) because they know their kids will take the opportunity more seriously if they have some “skin in the game.”

The survey I ran last year showed that—not surprisingly—people are more likely to read a book if they’ve paid more for it. If we’re spending $5.99 or more for an ebook, we’re going to make sure it’s not buried in our ereader. For the same reason, we’re not necessarily going to be in a hurry to read a free book. We’re simply not likely to appreciate it as much.

This psychology isn’t limited to ebooks. Free can make people feel entitled, like they don’t have to do anything to deserve even more.

When Facebook goes down, people gripe about how much they suck for not being available when wanted. (*raises hand* Guilty. I want my Twitter up all the time, and I complain when I hear rumors about potential changes.) Free services like Gmail or Hotmail or Yahoo often cause people to demand more. (“Why doesn’t it do XYZ? Why can’t I ABC?”) People complain about free apps all the time.

My free blog advice leads to emails or messages every day from people expecting me to be their personal mentor for career advice. My free worksheets and beat sheets trigger messages every week from people expecting me to troubleshoot why they’re having problems downloading or installing the files. (Even though 100% of the time, their downloading or installing issues are user errors due to their computers or lack of reading the directions.) They expect me to provide more. More free service, more free help, more free advice, etc.

I’ve said before that I’m pathologically helpful, so I’m happy to help—if that help is appreciated. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. We all want to be appreciated, to have our time and effort respected, etc.

And most people are appreciative (so this shouldn’t be taken as a “stop bothering me” plea *smile*). But those few that aren’t… Those who expect and get grumpy when I don’t have time… Those who think they deserve more… We’ll find those types everywhere, including grabbing our free books.

Those people who complain about free might go out of their way to leave a negative review because they don’t respect the book. Many won’t appreciate it because it’s free.

Before we spend money on a book, we’re going to make sure it’s something we want. We might not do that for a free book. So we’re more likely to get reviews on a free story complaining that it wasn’t what they expected or wanted.

That’s all a given for the psychology of free. We simply need to be prepared for lower star reviews on free books.

Risk #2: The Content of Free

Especially when we’re first starting out, we might not want to make a full-length novel free. We want to make money, and a novel takes a long time to write and edit (and likely costs more to pay for editors, as the word or page count increases). Understandably, many authors will offer a short story or novella for free instead.

However, the novel-favoring readers who would enjoy our usual writing aren’t necessarily going to appreciate a shorter work. I don’t blame them. Personally, I wish many short stories were longer. If I’m enjoying the story and characters, I want more of the same.

Also, to promote the rest of our work within our freebie, we might include excerpts of another story or several pages of covers and book description blurbs for our other books. That can make readers upset when they reach the end of our free story sooner than they expected—even if our freebie is a full-length novel.

As authors, all we can do to counteract those reactions is to make our description as clear as possible. We can make sure our title or subtitle states “short story” or “novella” if appropriate. We can point out “includes an excerpt for XYZ at the end” in our book description blurb.

However, even with that heads up to readers, reviews of our freebie will often complain about the length (no matter if it’s a short story or a full-length novel or anything in-between). Many three-star-and-below reviews will state issues like:

• Too short.
• I wanted it to be longer.
• It ended just as it got interesting.
• I thought there would be more to the story, but the last quarter was all an excerpt for another story.
• Not what I expected.

None of those are about the quality of the writing craft, story, characters, or plot. In other words, they’re not about an aspect we can control—short of writing a different story.

Are These Negative Reviews a Bad Thing?

These risks might make us question whether it’s worth it to offer a freebie. However, remember what we said was the main purpose of offering a freebie?

They’re to expose our work to more people. Some of those people will like our work and some won’t.

If all our reviews are positive, we’re likely just reaching our bubble of friends and contacts. It’s the negative reviews that prove we’re reaching a wider reading audience. Sure, some won’t care for our story, writing, etc., but some will.

We each have to make our own choices for what risks we’re willing to accept. But if we’re prepared for these risks and know not to take these negative reviews personally, we’ll also have the chance to reach more potential readers than we could otherwise. And reaching readers we don’t have a connection with is the only way we’ll succeed at selling lots of books. *smile*

Have you seen people act entitled or unappreciative when they receive something for free? Do you think that attitude can be avoided, or should we just accept it and be prepared for it? Have you ever been disappointed by the length of a free book? Do you agree that free books can attract more readers who aren’t our audience? Can you think of other reasons people complain about free (yet good quality) books? If you offer a freebie, what’s been your experience?

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