There's been some hooplah lately in the blogs I read about giving your work away for free. Arguments for, against and sideways abound, and it's getting so that use emerging authors feel totally lost when it comes to advice about promotion and free stuff.

As I see it, there are two basic arguments, and a whole host of nonsense:

• Giving stuff away for free can raise your profile, help build a following, get people interested in your work. It lowers the cost of entry for people to try your stories and writing, which will (assuming you've given them the good stuff) lead to more readers, and hopefully paying readers.
• Giving stuff away for free snarfs your first publiaction rights, so your chances of a traditional publishing deal with that material are pretty much lottery-level.

There's been a lot of carping that the idea of 'first publication rights' is antiquated, and doesn't fit with today's online era. That we authors need to show publishers the error of their ways in adhering to this outmoded idea. Excuse me while I snort into my coffee. There are a lot of things in the publishing industry that are obsolete. Regional publishing deals, for one thing. But the idea of 'first publication' certainly isn't. It still holds just as much ground, makes just as much sense as it did twenty years ago.

The ability to offer something that no one else has gives value to your product. People have to come to you, they can't get it anywhere else. You can charge a premium for exclusivity - that's still rife in the journalism industry today. That's what first publication rights are - the publisher can offer something that no one else has or can. The ease of distribution that e-books offer doesn't diminish or have anything to do with that in the slightest. First publication rights are still important.

(As an aside - the idea that us authors can 'force' publishers to completely rewrite their contract and business models is ludicrous. Don't make the mistake of thinking because you produce the work that you have the power - you don't. There are thousands of other authors out there who'll be willing to take the opportunity to publish in your place if you want to make yourself difficult.)

So, if you give something away for free, do you scupper your first publication rights? Most certainly. Let's be real, here - the chances of a publisher picking up something you've offered for free are laughably small. Unless you're already so well-known that you don't actually need the publicity and promotion, the extent that your freebie will reach is unlikely to impress a publishing house - and even if it does, they're likely to see that as a whole lot of readers who likely won't be buying the republished version. Will freebies help build a reader base? Probably. There's no accounting for taste, and it depends how you go about it. But this doesn't have to be a crippling dichotomy.

In most industries, there's this thing called 'marketing'. Now, marketing isn't expected to return money directly into the company. Marketing doesn't sell anything or make anything that brings and income stream in. Instead, marketing is there to support the rest of the company. To increase public awareness of products or services, to make the general public feel all warm and fuzzy towards said company, and more likely to part with their dollars.

Giving your work away for free is part of your marketing campaign as an author. It won't earn you money directly, but it will help raise your profile, bring you readers, get people interested in trying the work that does earn you money. If you can accept that little caveat - that work given away for free will not somehow earn magic money - the major contention dissipates. It's no longer a question of "am I wasting this story", but of "should I use this story to further my profile, or my bank balance?"

Should you give your work away free?

It's a simple set of questions:

• Can I afford, emotionally and financially, to never see this work make money?
  • One of the biggest problems is people fearing they're 'wasting' a work. By accepting straight-up that the purpose of this work is not to make money, you lay that one to rest from the start. You can't pay lip-service to this idea, though - if you're still holding on to the dream that a publisher will come along and republish this work, forget it - just query and submit the normal way. You can't make this work if you're still trying to hold onto it in order to make money.
• Do I have another work in production (that is, you're at least querying if not in the publication process) that a free piece of work would promote?
  • The best marketing in the world is useless if you don't have a product to sell - if this is your only story, and there's not another waiting in the wings, or already in production, chances are you're better off trying to sell it than give it away. People will have forgotten about you by the time your published book comes out, unless you're going to continue giving things away.
• Are the two aforementioned works in any way related?
  • Be careful here. On the one hand, giving a thriller away for free to promote a literary romance isn't going to help you much. On the other, however, a work that's too closely related may get you into trouble with non-compete clauses, or first publication rights. Similar genre is good, same characters is dangerous - check with your publisher, first.
• What's my marketing plan for this freebie?
  • Just plopping something on the internet really isn't good enough these days. You need a structured plan for how you'll steer this to promote your own work. If your idea is "give stuff away and they'll like it", you need some more thinking. How will you tie this together to give it momentum?

So it's really not the terrible dichotomy it seems - yes, you will not be able to publish something you've given away for free, but that really is wanting to have your cake and eat it too. The rest of the world does not expect to make money off its marketing plans. The freebie will not make you money, but it will probably build a readership. If that's what you want, then that's your answer, isn't it?

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