"There are so many sites out there right now hosting free fiction that it’s hard for many to find readers, even if the work is released for free. Many authors I know spend more time on self promotion than in writing due to this: otherwise, nobody will ever read their work in the first place" - first hand experience very true. I saw with kindle self publishing that, when the book is published, in the first week you do see some uptick, probably because it gets shown in some 'latest books' list. After that it dwindles. Mine went to zero after a week. Sold 24 copies. Its hard to make a book visible in millions of others.