The freebie bottom line: Better for established authors and series writers?
The debate over e-freebies goes on—in the no-charge blogosphere. Victoria Strauss, a well-regarded fantasy author and Web mistress of the super-informative Writers Beware site, has written a nice summary of some freebie experiments.
Mostly the results are positive—not just from Baen, an old hand at this, but also from larger houses such as St. Martin’s and Tor.
HarperCollins, in fact, says the free online edition of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods boosted weekly sales of the p-edition at meatspace stores by 250 percent (not that Harper itself would say "meatspace").
"As difficult as it is to prognosticate about anything pertaining to the future of publishing," Strauss writes, "I’m betting that in the next few years the free download will become a standard promotional tool for publishers."
The caveats
Important caveats, however, come through. First, well-known writers seem to benefit more. How much good can a freebie do if people don’t know about it? A good book can help, but even that just might not be enough to overcome obscurity and boost p-sales noticeably.
Another caveat is the Tragedy of the Commons factor. If e-freebies promoting paper editions become as common as Victoria Strauss expects, then will they cancel each other out? A little overgrazing of mind share?
If nothing else, might too many freebies devalue e-books, especially when the technology improves and they’re easier to read. And once again, would free E work for all books?
In The Solomon Scandals, my forthcoming Washington newspaper novel from Twilight Times Books, the main action takes place decades ago and in the late 21st century. Will Scandals live on for eons in E and maybe even P? Damned if I know. But because I’ve written the book so it might, a freebie of the full text just wouldn’t make sense—as much as I’d love to post one. You’re already reading my freebie for the Net, the TeleBlog, which I hope that reasonably priced editions of Scandals can help subsidize.
Might work best with series
Finally I’d remind people that freebies just might work best with series—first one free, others not. If you’re an unknown writer and are writing From Life and not cranking out a continuing saga about dragons on Pluto or sex rings on Venus, you might want to resist pressure to go free. Yes, obscurity is the biggest enemy. But there are other ways of overcoming it, such as writing the best book you can, Web-posting some partial samples and relying on paying readers to spread the word.
Well, enough. Later today I’ll be publishing a wonderful how-to on e-book software for the Nintendo DS Lite—written by April Hamilton, whose favorite publishing model is different from mine, but whose posts here are much appreciated.
Cow-image credit: CC-licensed photo from Ted and Jen.
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