Derek Haines says he finds they no longer move paid copies:

I read this week of an author who was extremely pleased to have had over 25,000 downloads during a few ‘free’ days. The net result in sales two weeks after this? None, zero, zip, nil, none. When I did the same thing late last year, I gained over 100 sales during the first week after just over 1,000 free copies were downloaded. When I last did it in September, I had 25 sales in the first week after 15,000 free downloads.

If readers of this post are finding free ebooks to be an effective marketing tool, I’d love to hear about it in the comments section.