Are You Evaluating A Tactic Based On The Right Perimeter?

A writing buddy was telling me
that pricing her first story
in her long series
for free
wasn’t a success for her.

I’m in the same niche
with one of my pen names
and it is a HUGE success for me.

So I asked more questions.

It turns out…
she didn’t think it was a success
because her buy through
(the number of readers
who buy the next book)
from book 1 to book 2
had dropped.

That is to be expected.
There are some readers
who only read free books.

I asked her to calculate
her revenue
under the free vs non-free scenarios.

She came back a couple days later
and shared
that she was making
A LOT more in sales
under the free first book scenario.

She almost made a bad decision
because she had used
the wrong perimeter
to evaluate a tactic.

What are you truly trying to do?
Does the tactic
bring you closer
or farther from that goal?