Do People Pick Up Free Books?

Human behavior is a fascinating subject to explore. There is, I'm convinced, a psychological aspect to picking up objects for free. I'm personally not a good case study, because I'll basically take anything that's free, but I don't think I'm the norm. It could be income related, but even when I had a good amount of disposable income, I rarely passed up a free offering. Admittedly, I ended up with a lot of useless items, but acquiring them was fun at the time.

However, I don't go searching for free things. (Where would I start?) And that brings me to Kindle's free book promotions. I've never had success with them. Take What We Conceal, for example (anyone!) I'm now beginning my third day of a three-day Free Kindle Promotion and I've yet to have even one taker. And this is my pattern. Because I've only ever sold three copies of my novella, Bad Blood, a while ago I tried giving it a boost by offering it for free. I wouldn't have cared about my lack of sales if I didn't think the story was good, but it is good; it's just that only three people ever gave it a chance. I chose a three-day free promotion because I dislike using up my allotment of five days in one chunk, but after the second day I canceled it. Honestly, I was embarrassed that no one grabbed it, even though there was no one to point at me and laugh, since I was the only person who knew it.

And people wonder why writers are so insecure.

I think, somewhere out there, there's a link to free Kindle books ~ I swear I ran across it once ~ but Google tells me that the only way to find them on Amazon is to type "free" into the Kindle store search bar. Well, that's wholly inefficient! Some books are perma-free and some are part of a KDP free promotion. While I'm all on board with free, if an author sets their book to perma-free, my opinion is that they don't think it's worth anything, so why should I? (And frankly, why do they even bother to publish?)

The trouble with the whole scenario is that Amazon's free choices are too overwhelming. Nobody has the patience to scroll and scroll and read book descriptions 'til they might find something that sounds interesting. The only way I could find What We Conceal was to exactly type in, "What We Conceal Kindle Edition". It's hopeless.

On the other hand, FreeBooksy is wildly successful. When I ran a FreeBooksy ad for Running From Herself, 1,290 people downloaded it. I think the difference is that FreeBooksy's newsletter is manageable. On my free day, only 21 free books were promoted. Amazon's free book listings are like anything else with unlimited choices ~ too overwhelming.  

"What flavor of ice cream would you like?" 

The clerk goes on to name all 1,000 offerings.  

"Umm, chocolate?" the customer responds a half hour later.

It's hard enough to compete with the million or so free books offered on Amazon (no, I didn't count them up), but if they're not sorted into specific families ~ chocolate, mint chocolate chip, fudge brownie, rocky road, chocolate peanut butter ~ it's impossible to choose, so I'm just gonna walk out of the store. Well, not really. I love ice cream, but books aren't ice cream.

So, no, I shouldn't feel bad that What We Conceal is stranded alone on its island. But I still kinda do. 

The bigger issue is, why do I keep trying this?