The Best Things

As they say, the best things in life are free, like butterflies or dandelions, or... I know, Echo Valley and Deadlines!

Kindle Select is a Kindle program that lets the author give away books as a promotion. I listed Echo Valley and Deadlines. I haven't yet figured out what the actual benefit of it is for the writers to give away their work, though I can see the appeal for readers. Free books? Okay.

I suppose the point for writers is to generate interest and, one hopes, reviews, which, the the benevolent circle of commerce, lead to sales, more reviews, ad infinitum.

I am so far at Step One: Give Away Books. I was delighted to see that both books posted some pretty healthy numbers, meaning that they now reside collectively on some 650 - 700 Kindles from the U.S. to Germany.  That's cool. I hope the people enjoy them.

But what does does it mean that people have downloaded my books for free? That's hard to say. For one, it says that the covers were eye-catching. So, for that, I thank Barbara Morgenroth for Deadlines, and my son, Drew, for Echo Valley.

That people downloaded the titles must also mean that the descriptions made them sound interesting. I'll take almost all the credit for that, except Barbara again gave me good advice as to the blurb for Deadlines.

So, we have answered a couple of crucial questions in the marketplace of ideas: namely, that based on the cover and the descriptions, people are willing to take a few seconds to download the books. But the question remains as to how they value them, or whether they value them. That's a trickier calculus.

I suppose that a Free Food day at the supermarket would draw enormous response. The shelves would be cleaned out in an hour. Does that mean people are hungrier? Maybe they just like free stuff. If that's so, are they more appreciative of the box of mac & cheese they paid $1.69 for, or the one that cost them nothing? Probably the one they paid for. However, maybe they'd never even try mac & cheese if it weren't free, and I guess that's what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping that people who downloaded my books, a) read them  and, b) review them and/ or tell their friends about them.

I mean, really, is that too much to ask? If you got a box of mac & cheese at the Free Food Giveaway, wouldn't it be a nice demonstration of gratitude to tell your friends, "Hey, I got some free mac & cheese, and it was really tasty. Go get some!"

Not to get moralistic about it, but I think it would be wasteful, to just just stash that mac & cheese in the cupboard and not appreciate that, any other time of the day, it had measurable value.

If I've lost you in this dense metaphor, let me return to the concrete and say that I hope that all of the people who downloaded Echo Valley and Deadlines read it and enjoy it, and that if they do they will take just a few minutes to write a review and tell their friends.

Now, for some reason I'm hungry. I wonder if there's anyplace giving away food for free?