31 Day Writing Challenge 2014,  Goodnight

Why I Made My Book Free

A lot of people ask me this question: “Why did you make your book free?”

Andy was the first person to suggest that I make my ebook free, only accepting tips from the people who wanted to donate. My first reaction was to tell him, “Yeah, I’ll consider that…” But in my head I was thinking, No way. I can’t afford to do that. I need to earn some money!

About 6 months went by, and I thought about it more and more. I downloaded a few free ebooks and became more and more familiar with the culture of giving things away online. People were giving away free advice, tutorials, prints, pdfs, and photos online, usually with the intention to draw the customer in to the real product they wanted to sell. For example, I found a free ebook about the 5 most effective blogging techniques, and at the end was a link to buy a certain blog theme (a theme is the template for how a blog looks. Some are free, some cost money, and some are custom made.)

So on a business level, the idea started to make sense to me: give the book away for free for exposure and to collect a list of emails of people who download the book and might become fans of my writing. But that still didn’t satiate my desire to earn some money for the endless hours I had put into my project, not to mention to cover the costs of hiring an editor and cover designer.

We took our kids up to Hume Lake with the college group from our church last year. It was the year my Bible study friends and I committed to reading through the whole Bible (which I highly recommend!) I had been reading about first-fruit offerings, love offerings, and offerings that were pleasing to the Lord. As I was singing to the Lord one night during the evening meeting, I prayed in my heart: Lord, if you want me to, I will give my ebook away for free. I’ll give away 100. No, I’ll give away 1,000!

The answer I received from the Lord that night was this: Ten thousand.

It almost knocked me backwards. I knew it was the Holy Spirit. Because that number never would have come from my own imagination.

My response was Yes. I didn’t understand why, but I knew it was from the Lord and I had to say yes. For some reason, God’s command to give away 10,000 free copies of my ebook seemed so right.

Then the leader at Hume asked us to write down with our left hand, or our weak hand, whatever we heard from the Lord during a time of listening prayer. What I wrote down, so slowly and messily with my left hand, were these words from the Lord: Love Andy. Give Freely. Pray.

Publishing, promoting, and receiving praise for my first novel–the motivation for all of it had to grow from those three actions.

Love Andy

Give Freely

Pray

Since April, I have already given away about 3,000 downloads of my book. I am almost a third of the way to my goal! But it doesn’t matter anymore, you know, how quickly I make it to 10,000. Because the emails and reviews I have received from girls who have read my book are so beautiful. Their enthusiasm and appreciation fill my heart, and that is the greatest reward I could ask for.

Do you have your free copy yet? Have you recommended it to the young women in your life who like a good clean love story? Please Share!

Click here to get the ebook in the nook format from Barnes & Noble. Or you can click the links below and get it in the Kindle (mobi) format or just a PDF. It’s also available anywhere ebooks are sold.

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Chelsea Rotunno is the author of Goodnight to My Thoughts of You, a novel about life as a Christian teen searching for true love.

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