If I could, I would love to give away all my work for free. However, I also want to make a living as a writer, so that isn’t really practical. Granted, I don’t expect to make much selling these stories at $.99, but from a business side of things, I need to get at least some kind of recompense for my work.
What I really want to do is have the readers set the price for these stories, so that you can pay what you feel is fair. If finances are tight or you just want to try me out, you can download them for free and that’s great. If you’ve enjoyed my other work and want to support me, that’s great too.
Right now, Smashwords is the only place I know of that has that option. If there aren’t any strident objections, I’m going to do that and make these stories $.99 at every other outlet. I’ll keep them available for free at least until November, though, so if you haven’t already picked them up, feel free to do so now.
I also want to do this for the experiment: how does raising the price from free to $.99 affect sales? I think the “free train” has more or less run its course, so it will be interesting and useful to see where the new equilibrium ends up.
I have no advice to give on this. You are more the expert in what sells and doesn’t sell. I wish you luck.
Using the reader-sets-price option on Smashwords might not let you distribute to BN and Apple and the rest i don’t think.
According to Smashwords, Barnes and Noble doesn’t accept the “reader sets the price” ebooks, but the other ones do provided you specify a price above $.99 for them to set it at. In any case, it’s an opportunity to experiment, so we’ll see how it goes.