Scalzi sales rocket up, at least short term—with help from TOR’s freebie program
SF novelist John Scalzi, author of such delights as Agent to the Stars and Old Man’s War, enjoyed many thousands of dollars in free publicity from Boing Boing, TeleRead and other fellow bloggers when TOR gave away War. And Agent is already a freebie via sites such as Manybooks.net.
Does generosity pay off? After a friend checked with BookScan, in the wake of last week’s release of Old Man’s War, Scalzi passed on these stats:
"The Ghost Brigades sales are up 33% from the week prior;
"Old Man’s War sales are up 20% from the week prior;
"The Android’s Dream sales are up 9% from the week prior.
"Now, percentages are not impressive if you’re not selling huge numbers (if you sold three books last week and this week you sold four, that’s a 33% jump, after all), but each of these books is still selling hundreds of copies weekly, so the increase this week is not insignificant in terms of sales numbers.
"The real question is whether these sales bumps are due to the eBook release or to some other factor(s). And, well, I have no idea. I asked my friend if science fiction sales in general were up last week; he said that BookScan noted a 6% bump from the week before in the entire category. TAD might be part of the general movement, but OMW and TGB are significantly outside that."
(Via TechDirt,)
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