Over the past 6 weeks, I’ve been conducting an experiment, both here with Rowan of the Wood & a little more secretly with Publishing & Marketing Realities for the Emerging Author and over on O. M. Grey’s blog with Avalon Revisited. And as promised, today I’m posting the results of that experiment. The results are interesting and pretty much what I anticipated.
Avalon Revisited, by far the most popular of my books, doubled in sales from before the experiment to during. That’s 100% increase in eBook sales. It was downloaded for free 57 times, and I even received some donation from a few people who downloaded it for free. So, as expected, giving the book away did not hurt the sales. In fact, it increased the sales.
Similarly with Rowan of the Wood, sales increased a whopping 300%! That book was downloaded 50 times for free, but again, that didn’t hurt the sales. It only helped the sales.
As for Publishing & Marketing Realities for the Emerging Author, I added this eBook on the Free eBooks site without a grand announcement, just to see if anyone would find it. And a few did. When telling people about the book, I also told them that if they didn’t want to pay for it, they could get it off my blog for free. Only 13 people downloaded it for free, but on Amazon it has reached #14 in Authorship books and #3 in Computers & Technology Education books!
So…yes. No need to fear piracy.
Carry on.
Christine Rose 
Hi Christine! I came over your blog on my research about artists’ experience with self-distribution and piracy. I agree with you (and O’Reilly) that obscurity beats piracy, and that a “name your price” selling model may actually pay off for artists and consumers.
I have read your original post and this follow-up, and I wonder if your experience with this experiment continued on these lines. How would you evaluate the results after 15 months of runtime? Did the trend continue? Best regards!
For me it didn’t continue because I stopped marketing and nearly everything else due for personal reasons.