Nick Stephenson, among others, has taught us the power of book funnels (where you price the first book in a series at either free or .99 in order to drive sales to the next books in the series), but what about just giving away your work? Not a book in a series, but a stand-alone novel. What does that do to your sales? Does it do anything? Does it make any difference at all?

That’s the question I hope to answer with a little experiment I started today.

With the sales of my new book, Falling, not exactly inspiring, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to just give it away—but not in the ordinary way of making it free on all the e-retailers where it would normally be sold. Instead, I’m giving away the book chapter by chapter—two a week–on Wattpad.

Wattpad is a really interesting website wherenew authors post their work hopes that others will read and give them constructive comments. Published authors sometimes post the first few chapters of a book and then tell readers that if they want the rest they need to buy it from an established e-retailer. Others post the first in their series—a whole novel or novella—there for free.

In the past, I’ve published a few chapters of my writing text book and the entirety of Storm on the Horizon, which I give away everywhere (it’s the book funnel for my Storm Series).

This time, however, I’m going to give away a whole book with no strings attached.

Falling is not the first in a series, although Iwill certainly be writing more books using the characters in that story, so it will eventually become a series. But at the moment, it’s not officially tied to any of my other books (except that it is a Vallen World book like many others of mine).

No, I’m just giving it away. Why? Because so fewpeople are buying it.

I write because I want people to read my work. As I’ve mentioned before, Cathy Maxwell said it best when she said that if you want to earn money, there are much easier ways to do so than by being an author. So, clearly, I’m not writing to earn money. So, why not give away my work? Not all of it, naturally, but a story here and there.

Maybe this will generate sales, maybe it won’t. That’s not the point. The point is to be read. That’s what makes me happy—and it’s even better when I get comments back afterward. To that end, I have asked readers to leave mecomments on whether they liked the book or not.

So, this is my experiment. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

What do you think? Is this a terrible idea? A terrific one? Have you posted work to Wattpad? How’d it go?

Oh, and if you want to spread the word that Falling is free, here’s the link to the first chapter on Wattpad.