Nine out of Ten of Current Kindle Bestsellers are Free

Amazon sent out the latest edition of the Kindle newsletter (which you can subscribe to by clicking here), which always has the current list of bestsellers on Kindle. Generally there are a lot of free books in there. Unknown authors or lesser known authors are realizing that posting one book for free is a great way to bring attention to your writing style or book series. That’s how I discovered Joe Finder and his fantastic books (you can read my review of his book Vanished by clicking here) – he had one of his books, Paranoia, available for free and it was so popular it landed in the top ten list.

Right now, nine out of the ten bestsellers are free. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many free books in the list before.

In case you were wondering, the only non-free book is $9.99 and is Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.

It’s clear that this is a powerful promotional tool for new authors or self-publishers. If you’re willing to part with the potential income of the book you price as free, you might gain a fan for life. I know I rushed to the Kindle store after reading the free copy of Paranoia and bought three other books by Joe Finder. I also recommended him to my mother and my mother-in-law. (And, of course, my readers here.)

Any authors out there care to comment on their success or experiments with pricing their books for free?