I see a discussion on Linked In about "does giving books for free work" I sometimes wonder if the writers asking these questions have given some thought to the subject before they put pen to paper. I can see from the answers that those replying are serious but nothing annoys me more than the lack of understanding about something so important as building an audience. Maybe I am coming across arrogant but sometimes it pays to be a little rude in order for me to get my point across.

Okay - I am a new writer with a new book. The book is well written with a great cover and well edited etc. I have published it on Amazon and priced it at $2.99. So now I sit back and nothing happens. I hear other writers saying that they give their books away for free and wonder why. Here's why.

In order to sell your book you have to do two things. You must sell yourself and you have to have an audience. Selling yourself is a slog. Get busy and have pages on FB (an author page as well as a social page), Linked In - join a discussion group and link to other people as fast as you can. Google + (Google pulls all your info from all the other social pages including web sites and sets out SEO's on pages and pages of Google search. Web site. Try to set up your own web site and start talking about yourself and other authors. Interact with others and promote their work and soon they will start talking about you. Blog site. Take a look at this one. Keep putting up other authors work and start talking and screaming about things you like and don't like. Get known all over the world. Don't forget to have the Google language box so foreign visitors to the site can read your views and articles in their own language. Twitter - oh boy thank the Lord for Twitter. What a great place to keep your name in front of the world 24/7. I have automated 22 messages that go out promoting my work all around the clock. I retweet as many other authors as I can and favourite them too. I also Klout as many as possible and add them to lists.

Does all of this sound like hard work? It is but if properly managed it can mean an hours work a day, leaving you plenty of time to write as well. But wait, that's only half the answer. Now we have to get an audience to read your work as well as getting to know you and follow you.

So we are getting known but who has read the book? No one, so we need to appeal to the reader's greedy streak. Who likes FREE? We all do. This is when we have to ask the question - What are we writing for and what do we want?

We normally want the best of both worlds. Something drives us to be creative and write for the sheer pleasure of it. At the same time we would like to be rewarded financially for all the hours we have spent banging away at the keyboard. The key word here is ‘recognition.’ We love people to love us and we love people to pay us. Well I guess it’s time for a lot of writers to realise they have to give and take.

I have put both my books up for FREE on Amazon and Smashwords (the trick is to have Smashwords as well as Amazon and then Amazon have to price match with Smashwords. I ended up with over 3000 downloaders. I say downloaders because I don’t know how many will actually read the books. The point is if just half read the books I will have people interested in the next book. Yes, the next book. If you want to sell, eventually you have to show Joe public that you are a serious writer.

I don’t want to sit back and watch my books gather dust; I did that with the first one when I thought I was God’s gift to the literary world. I’m getting aggressive and writing like mad to produce. My books will shortly go on audio. I just had them published in print too. Give the readers a varied choice and you give yourself a chance to earn pocket money. That’s another thing – don’t think you are going to get rich. We write to be recognised as artists…don’t we?

Now answer the question for yourself  -  “Does giving your book away for free really work.”