Should Art Be Free?

I think the modern world has a problem. We’re addicted to streaming and subscription services which offer a wealth of entertainment on our screens. Disney+, Netflix, Now TV, Sky, BBC iPlayer and so, so many more besides each offer you the opportunity to watch more than you could ever view in your lifetime, probably many times over. You pay for the subscription or the TV Licence Fee (welcome to the UK!), sure, but how often do you think about that? To all intents and purposes you have as many TV shows and movies as you could ever possibly want, whenever you want.

The same thing applies to books if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited. I’ve often seen people say their books are free on KU. What they mean, of course, is the book is free if you’re paying the monthly subscription. The same applies for those audiobook credits you get with an Audible subscription. Spotify and YouTube have changed the way we listen to music in much the same way.

You get the point.

I can still vividly remember Channel 4’s free to watch national TV channel being launched in the UK back in 1982. It took another fifteen years for Channel 5 to go on air in 1997. The rapid change in how we consume entertainment and use our leisure time has transformed beyond all recognition in the following three decades. The rise of social media platforms like YouTube have levelled the playing field as well. Terrestrial TV no longer exclusively controls what we see on our screens. People can now make their own content for relatively little money and instantly share that with the world.

All this is great and the amount of choice on offer to people is amazing, but is it good for us? Is it good for the arts and creatives? In a world where we can consume entertainment almost without thinking about the cost, have we lost the habit of paying for creative works?

Whilst it’s true the world has changed I don’t think this is a new phenomenon. Whilst I strongly believe that all art has an intrinsic value we should recognise and treasure, the concept of patronage in the arts has been around for centuries for a reason. In the modern age you can support your favourite artists directly through platforms like Patreon and KoFi (I really must get on with looking at those). It’s never been easy to make money purely as a creative and that’s not going to change any time soon.

All the writers I’m close with and know well don’t write purely to make money. For all of us there’s an intrinsic need to write and create art, which comes first. The very act of creation is where the joy is found and the reason why we do this. Making money is simply a by-product of having a readership who enjoy what you have written and are willing to buy your books.

It's finding that readership which is the challenge. More platforms, outlets and choice for the consumer is a good thing but, by the same token, it’s so much harder to get noticed in an increasingly noisy and distracted world. As an author I sometimes find myself wondering whether people still read books any more. Fortunately, they do! However, with the rise of independent publishing there are more titles available than ever before, with thousands more books being released every week. At times it can feel like you’re swimming against the tide, if not drowning.

All this leads to the question – how do you stand out from the crowd? There are lots of possible answers, ranging from advertising, appearing on podcasts, creating your own YouTube channel or writing blogs like this. Another option is to make your eBooks available for free.

I struggled with this concept for a long time, holding back from using free books as a marketing tool for a number of years. I simply couldn't get past the thought that I had spent many years working on my stories, slowly learning and perfecting my craft. Was all that for nothing? The idea of giving my books away for free made me feel like they didn’t have any value – that I was cheapening them by doing this. If I didn’t think my books were worth paying money for then surely they couldn’t be any good?

It took me a long time to realise that a free book is not about the value you attach to your own work. It’s about the value you attach to finding readers. In a crowded market book lovers are faced with a bewildering choice. Who should they pick? The author they’ve read and enjoyed before or some random person they’ve never heard of, with their book at full price? Now I think the eBook of Hall of Bones, the opening book in my fantasy series, is very good value at £2.99. That’s much less than you’ll pay for an eBook from a traditional publisher and the reviews and ratings for Hall of Bones are pretty good.

Even so, the fact that the reader has to pay for a book by an unknown author is a psychological barrier, and that barrier still exists whether the book is priced at £9.99 or 99p. The reader’s mindset is completely different when they see that title is free. At that point they’ve nothing to lose by giving the book a punt. They might read it or they might not but the key point here is they’ve downloaded it. That’s a sale, which helps push your book up the rankings and that’s important because rankings give your book visibility which, in turn, drives more sales. It’s important to remember that free books get viewed up to one hundred times more often in stores like Amazon compared with paid titles. That’s a lot of visibility and you’d have to have some incredibly well-targeted adverts to achieve the same results.

When I finally took the plunge and talked myself into running my first free sale I was amazed at the impact. Hall of Bones found itself in numerous Top 10 charts in the various Amazon categories and, not to put too fine a point on it, my free sales over a five-day period exceeded my paid sales for that entire year. That was in September 2022. November 2022 ended up being my best month ever for royalties. Now that did coincide with the release of the third book in the series, proving another old adage that if you want to sell books you need to keep writing them. However, I’m also sure that boost in visibility encouraged people to pick up the rest of the series or give Hall of Bones a try on Kindle Unlimited (and thus even though it was free to buy, I still got paid for that title if people read it on KU instead).

I have plenty of titles I’ve picked up in sales, either at a discount or for free, that are now sitting there stacked on my eReader. To be perfectly honest I might not read some of them. It may take me years to get round to reading some of the others. The point is having hundreds or even thousands of people sitting there with a copy of your book is far more important longer term than a handful of paid sales every month. Every time one of those readers opens that free book there’s a chance you’ll convert them into one of your lifelong fans and they’ll go on to pick up the rest of your series. And if they don’t like it? Well, you’ve lost nothing, because the chances are they weren’t part of your core readership to begin with.

The other key benefit of widening your readership is you’ll start to attract more ratings and reviews. Though not as decisive as price, they do help new readers have confidence they should give your work a try. Even more valuable is word of mouth. I’m most likely to try a new author if someone I know has recommended their work to me. Using free books to generate that kind of interest is now a key part of my marketing strategy.

Going back to where I started, I absolutely believe authors and artists should receive fair payment for their creative work. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn’t use every legitimate marketing tool at our disposal to find our audience. With that in mind, I’m currently offering a free short story series called The Wolf Throne, which goes out with my bi-monthly newsletter. If you’re not sure whether my writing is for you, why not head over to my contact page and sign up so you can find out?

After all, it's absolutely free, so you have nothing to lose!