Do you think free & unlimited books are better?

Published on by Jean M. Cogdell

Well, let’s admit it. Everyone loves to get a good free book. 

But how about the writer?

Does giving away a freebie help or hurt?

Are we becoming the McDonalds of writing?

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God! I love their fries!

I’m a member of Kindle Unlimited and I love downloading and reading books for FREE through that service. When I first became a member there were a lot of good books to choose from, however, now it seems there are less and less. Not everyone seems to want to get into the program. I’m not sure why. Maybe it has to do with the pages read payment system. 

“You’re eligible for royalty payment from Kindle Unlimited (KU, or Abonnement Kindle in France) and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL) for pages an individual customer reads in your book for the first time. A customer can read your book as many times as they like, but we will only pay you for the number of pages read the first time the customer reads them.”

This is not necessarily a bad thing. At $.57 cents a page, when a book is read cover to cover that can add up to serious money. 

But, and this is a big but, the serious money only comes when enough people read your book cover to cover. However, I guess that could be said about the number of people who buy a book too.

I’ve read a lot of wonderful books for Free, and I’ve started and not finished a lot of mediocre books for Free. At first I felt guilty about not finishing a book, but then I remembered my time is valuable too. 

On the whole I think it’s a good system if you’re going to make your book available for FREE. 

Will publishing ebooks lead to longer books in general?

What If Authors Were Paid Every Time Someone Turned a Page? by  PETER WAYNER

Kindle Unlimited Paid Authors $0.0058 Per Page Read by Nate Hoffelder

Into Kindle Publishing? Under New Payment Rules, You Should Write Longer Books By

Writers what do you think?

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16 thoughts on “Do you think free & unlimited books are better?”

  1. Pingback: Reading Writing Books – A Writer's Convenient Truth

  2. I am in the Kendle Unlimited too! I have one book published called A Little Enlightenment from A Friend but I haven’t really seen much come from it. I feel that the service is good for new writers like myself to get your reader following started. I really appreciate this past Jean it did raise my eyebrows and I will see about other avenues to sale my current book and future ones too. Thank You!

    Liked by 2 people

    2. Welcome Tiffany! Glad to hear from another author, who’s been there and done that. LOL Keep us posted on how things are going with KU. From what others have said the more books the more KU helps. 🙂

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  4. I put my first self-published book into Kindle Select but as soon as the 90 days were up, I removed it. I didn’t receive that many KOLL or KU sales and I didn’t like the book being exclusively sold at Amazon. I prefer to have my books available wherever the public goes. Most buyers go to Amazon and I do myself for books. Sometimes I sale more books at B&N iTunes, and Kobo combined than I do Amazon. I didn’t like being told when and how often I could offer a sale or free book. Of course I could’ve just changed the price which I didn’t think of at the time. That said, I plan to try Kindle Select again soon with a re-release of a book and see how it goes.

    I don’t mind giving away a FREE book and I do that from time to time. I think FREE books work better for sales of other books if you have a series or at least another book that ties in with the FREE book.

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  5. I’m a member of Kindle Unlimited and all of my books are in Kindle Select – so may be downloaded for free by Kindle Unlimited subscribers. I continue to believe that for unknown writers trying to build a reader following, this is the best route. I enjoy the program from both sides of the question – as a writer and as a reader. I only wish I had been in the program with my books when they paid out 57 cents a page. As of Feb. 2016 the writer’s share per page was 41 cents. No doubt the result of less books in the program and thus less overall downloads.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thanks so much for the update. I didn’t see on their website the price reduction. Good to know. I, like you, think it’s the way to go other than giving away the books. Thanks again.

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  7. I am so torn by all of this. When I first self-published all the literature I read said – OFFER FREE PROMOTIONS, and Kindle had a way to do that, so I did it. But then I start blogging and I start reading all the helpful posts about how it is bad to offer free promotions, and how it diminishes what we offer as authors and why on earth would an author give away for free something that took forever to write. And by offering my book for free, I was not only hurting myself but every other author in the world. EEEK!!! What had I done? So now I do absolutely no promotion, nobody knows my book exists. And then I discover, when I Googled my book, it is being offered as a free download on sites I had never even heard of, Russian sites ad those kind of things. What’s an author to do?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I don’t see an upside to a total FREE promotion. I could be wrong but your experience tells me I’m not. But Kindle Unlimited works a bit different. I’ll consider KU should I ever finish this dang novel.

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