There’s always been a lot of talk about book pricing and the “race to the bottom” both in terms of money authors receive as well as the price readers pay for the books. And though I haven’t participated in givewaways for years (due to life stuff), I know my Bookfunnel app and my Kindle are full of free books that even now I pick up because they sound interesting. I do hope to get around to reading them; it’s just that life happened–a lot.
But there’s been a bigger discussion this Pride month about people discounting books for Pride and how in a month that’s designed to showcase, uplift, and support LGBTQIA+ authors, we shouldn’t be giving discounts to readers. In fact, they should probably be tipping us more. I get it. I really do. But it also got me to thinking about kindness.
Be kind and rewind.
If you’re of a certain generation then that phrase, plastered on stickers stuck to black VHS tapes, means something to do. It means that in the era before DVDs, streaming, and CDs, we could borrow VHS tapes of the movies we wanted, but when we were done with them we had to rewind. Kindness is important to me and something that I try to live by. Being kind in a world that rewards otherwise is a radical, transgressive action. Caring for your fellow human beings in our society is subversive.
And while I am certainly not saying that those who don’t offer free books aren’t kind. We each have to choose our own pricing and our own distribution options. But in all the discourse about pricing, I got to thinking about how free books are kindness.
Free Books Offer Kindness
To say things are tough right now for a lot of people, myself included, would be the vast understatement of the year. I have a book that I suspect would be essential to my thesis sitting in an ebay cart. Academic books are expensive, and this one is out of print, and at $45 I suspect is a steal. But it’s also not in the budget. (I’ll toss a link to my “tip the author” page here just in case someone wants to help a grad student out.)
I believe that as an author, if I want readers to read my books, I should meet them where they are. That means providing a variety of price points. I have free books and my serials that are free as well as a monthly membership group, (You can see the free follower tier either through the popup on this blog page or on the follower link above.) And in between the monthly support and the free enjoyment I have books for sale ranging from $0.99/$1.00 on up. But most of them are $2.99, which still is in the reasonable price range.
I can’t tell other authors what to do, and I certainly wouldn’t want to. But while it is vital that authors receive support, they also can’t do that if no one knows about their books. And in this way, calculated, selected free books are a kindness both to the author and to readers.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Feel free to drop me a comment below.
