Who doesn’t love free books? First, let me clarify: I’m not talking about when your favorite author runs a limited freebie on a series starter. Snap those deals up! You know the kind I mean… when 30 or so authors band together to offer ebook deals if you sign up for their newsletter, or follow them on social media, or whatever. These freebies are often short reader magnets meant to introduce you to the series character or tease you into trying the series by offering a short prequel. There’s nothing wrong with this type of promotional story as a concept, or using a free story to garner followers.
The problem comes when the story, instead of making you interested in more from the author, has you adding their name to a ‘do not bother’ list. When 27 of the 30 downloads are so unreadable, you regret filling up your e-reader with them.
I’d argue that your reader magnet should be some of your best work, not something thrown together without the benefit of a single read-through, let alone an editor.
Maybe this is me being a Miss Crankypants after struggling to find anything worth reading this morning, but here is my list of things I would NOT do in your reader magnet:
- Do not start your reader magnet with a flashback, only to jump to “12 hours earlier” on the next page. I get that you want to start off your (usually very short) story with a bang. But we have to care about Betty Bluebonnet as a person before we can care about why she almost got run over by a car.
- Can we PLEASE stop describing every scent as some weird combination of x plus y? “The room smelled of regret and old gym socks.” “He awoke on a couch that was stuffed with stress and nutmeg.” Honestly, the phrasing reeks of AI and lavender. (Did you see what I did there?)
- I KNOW this is a really short reader magnet. No, you will not have time for great detail or backstory. But it is imperative that you don’t, I don’t know, SKIP INTRODUCTIONS. How can your protagonist go from being unconscious to discussing missing ledgers with someone she’s never met before? How does she know the other guy’s name? How does she know about the ledgers (or account books, or lost keys, or whatever)? Did she absorb that information via osmosis while she was out like a light on the stress-filled couch?
- Please for the love of God, don’t create a dramatic exit for a minor character in order to facilitate leaving the protagonist with a cat (or a dog) and then never explain why they don’t return for their furry friend. Telling us they are happy in their new petless life without explaining why they had to emergency relocate in the first place makes us wonder if they are in Witness Protection. Yes, I know this is a SHORT READER MAGNET and you don’t have time/space/energy for those pesky little details. Then don’t have the minor character leave under dramatic circumstances. If you need to save the word count for storytelling, eliminate the minor character altogether and skip straight to, “my cat, Murdermittens, whom I inherited when my friend Cindy Lu had to return to Whoville…” and move on.
- Yes, I KNOW IT IS A SHORT STORY but perhaps having the protagonist uncovering the identity of the killer by annoying the heck out of all the other characters with blunt, none-of-your-business questioning until the killer feels obligated to take a crack at her isn’t sustainable sleuthing. And why do these suspects spill their guts to her instead of telling her to take a hike? “Why, yes, the dead guy DID force me to sell the family home when I couldn’t come up with the back taxes, not that it’s any of your business and why am I telling you this in the first place?”
I know I’m being super picky here. Hey, you don’t see me writing short stories! Even my novellas are almost novel length. There’s an art to writing short stories that I don’t possess. But seriously, take a hard look at your reader magnet and see if it is helping or hurting you.
I, for one, am no longer willing to waste time on these freebies.
I barely look at all the contests, stuff your kindle, hey get my newsletter anymore. I don’t have time to read all the books I’ve already purchased let alone take up more time with more books. I have also been amazed how many authors think that giving you a crap freebie will bring them more readers. You know–the one they wrote five or more years ago which is short, terrible, or totally unlike their current books. And if you see them on multiple lists, it’s always the same bad story!
I know these authors would like to get paid for their work, but all I can think is they are cheap, showing the SAME one or two free stories over and over again. Put your best and/or latest novel out there for a week! If your work is what people are currently into and it’s well-written, you will get repeat customers.
I feel sorry for new authors coming out these days. With the plethora of AI crap flooding the market, I won’t even try most new authors these days. So it’s going to take more than a poorly written short story for me to bother with them. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way the market is these days. At least the market for me at least.
You bring up a good point. We’re told over and over again how important our newsletters are, but I can tell you, I don’t open 99.9% of what lands in my inbox. Since I feel this way about the dozens of newsletters I receive each month, I can only assume readers feel the same way about the one I sent out (about once a year…) I’m with you on the need to update your reader magnets as well. And sadly, you’re bang on about the issues with AI. In the last stack of freebies I downloaded, I’m pretty sure several of the stories were written with AI–mostly because the story didn’t make a lot of sense and the weird focus on making rooms smell like cedar and self-loathing, or some variation of the same.
Fewer people read as it is (a topic for another blog post). If what their being offered sucks, then I fear even dedicated readers will find some other way to spend their precious free time.
Whenever I see those bulk freebie giveaways, I ONLY take the ones by authors whose names I recognize. Which usually only nets me 1, maybe 2 books, but that’s more than I had before. I agree that the should be books that present the author’s best work, and it rarely seems to work that way….
Same. And yet the purpose of these freebie bundles is to introduce you to different authors. Sadly, if the introduction isn’t great, I end up crossing that author off any TBR lists.
I do want to give a better view of free books. I had written one author off years ago after reading a couple of her books. They were written fine, just subjects not my cuppa (some D/s, kink, etc.). She was in a “series starter” promo a few months ago and most of the books were RECENT series, so I picked up a few that were free or 99 cents. Well, the first book in her series was GREAT, second one looked good, so I bought it and IT was great! The third one didn’t get quite as good reviews, but darn it I love all these guys now, so I plan to read the entire series. I looked at some of the author’s recent books and she seems to have developed a lighter touch, conveying more feelings and “romance” rather than just sex. But this just proves what we’ve been discussing. The freebie was a novel, it was published in 2023, and the entire series was finished so I could tell that the same general tone would probably extend throughout. GOOD freebies really can help sell an author’s books, if they can just bear to let one go now and then.
Yes, exactly! A good freebie pulls new readers in and introduces them to another whole set of characters and worlds. It’s why I maintain that first taste has to be a really good one. The one you mentioned here did precisely what it was intended to do–and made you a follow-through reader. If I were to do a freebie again, I might chose to do the first book in the Ginny Reese Mysteries. A whole book, not a short story, and the entry-point into the series. It would be hard to write a prequel without all the main characters being involved, as the first book sets up those meetings. Yes, I’d be taking a loss on An Embarrassment of Itches, but would hopefully gain readers who would buy (or check out from the library) the rest of the series. 🙂