Likening a free e-book to those supermarket samples of a new cheese, as a way of building customer trust that they'll like the new cheese, Mike argues that you shouldn't just give a taste of your e-book, you should give the entire e-book away for free. And, that the longer the book is, the better chance you have (if it's brilliant) of building trust with the new reader who has taken a chance on reading your work.
He goes on to say that free e-books are not only ideal as series starters, but they have a lot of value for authors with multiple titles, and even for authors with just one book out (suggesting free for a promotional time period.)
But even when you've giving it away for free, there's still that challenge of being discovered. As Mark puts it,
"Free is no guarantee of bestsellerdom. There’s a glut of high-quality free books. At Smashwords alone, we‘ve published more than 60,000 free books. The competition for reader eyeballs is fierce."What do you think of "free?"
