I have seen several other authors recently comment that they were pleasantly surprised with the results of their free ebook promotions (through Amazon’s KDP Select).

For more ideas on promoting books by giving books away, your readers may be interested in this article by Vikram Narayan, founder of BookBuzzr Book Marketing Technologies — 7 Ways to Market Your Book by Giving Away Free Stuff http://bit.ly/hyzylr

Music is further down the road than publishing, but it’s the same road, and musicians in this digital age have found that offering listeners free access to their music often creates fans who later go on to buy the music. Subscription services like Spotify that offer streaming access to music incentivize me to purchase albums from artists I particularly like.

In the same way, offering free access to e-books gives readers the ability to sample an artists work. For example, I got a free e-book from a YA author (who sells books traditionally too BTW) and I liked it so much that I went on to purchase her other books.

The argument that offering free e-books leads to rampant piracy is simply not true. Piracy exists. It always will. And the people who are going to steal the book are going to steal it no matter what. If they can’t get their hands on it, they won’t suddenly turn into buying customers. They’ll simply steal a different book. You might think that’s a boon but I’d rather someone steal my book and know who I am than fade into obscurity.

And you should look to author Cory Doctorow to see the concept done properly. He publishes his books traditionally, but also gives them away via the Creative Commons License. He is another author I discovered by reading a free book. People don’t pirate his books because he gives them away for free. That creates a feeling of goodwill between author and reader that might convert them into a buyer later on.

Imagine a poor college kid. Can’t afford to buy the book. So he downloads it for free from the author’s website. He loves the book. The next year, when the same author’s next book comes out, the college student has a little extra cash and buys a copy of the book. In the example you set forth, that college student would have NEVER found the author and a future sale would have been lost.

Many musicians have used the “pay what you can” model to great success. If someone can’t afford the album or simply wants to sample it, they can pay nothing for it. If they like it, they’ll pay more for the next album.

Authors and publishers and agents are using the specter of piracy to frighten naive people into signing away their rights and chaining content to unnecessary DRM schemes that do little to protect the author and a lot to harm the reader.

I appreciate a creator’s right to protect their content, but putting bars on all the doors and windows to keep burglars out of your house is stupid if it also keeps out your friends.

I have used free ebooks to promote my other books with pretty clear success. I don’t mean I’m rolling in dough, but I started a couple of years ago by giving away tens of thousands copies of books, to promote sales of a new title (which was a continuation of an out-of-print series). When I started selling those backlist titles instead of giving them away, sales did not seem harmed by the freebies–in fact, the series was better known because of them. After a while, when I saw sales lagging a bit, I made the first book in the series free again (it is free as I write this). My sales of the following books immediately started rising, and have stayed at the higher level.

As a book reader, I download lots of free books. I have read and enjoyed many of them; others gather virtual dust on the virtual “to read” pile. I consider it a great way to try out new writers.

What threatens to overwhelm the market, I think, is not the free books per se, but the flood of substandard books (free or otherwise) that have come in through the open gates. I think it’s mostly good that the publishing gates have opened wider, but there’s no doubt the signal-to-noise ratio has become a challenge we’ve yet to find a good answer to.

d

I think we all have to keep our eyes open in this market, as things are changing quickly. It’s quite exciting, isn’t it?

d

d

d

Interesting that this is the second time I’ve seen a reference to “friction” in a week with regard to consumers buying digital books – or not – the other mention was in Penguin’s decision to stop distributing books through Overdrive.

Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful reply.

d