at deal of the book trade, who worry about their business model. However I'm not sure what the situation over in the US is, but here in the UK best-selling authors are available in supermarkets for as little as £1. This is done in the hope that the cheap price will encourage readers to try other regular priced books by the author. Is this any different to electronic freebies trying to do the same thing?It's an interesting debate and one that will run, but I can't help feeling that the book industry can't afford to make the same mistake the music business made with MP3'S. Trying to suppress eBooks and keep them off the market until the hardcover and paperback have exhausted their sales with only encourage piracy. In many ways the music industry deserve the battering they have taken - only a few years ago (IE before MP3's) music was sold for a silly high price, and I remember reading a breakdown somewhere of where the revenue went for each album sold and there was a massive slice going to the music industry. Now post MP3 CD's are much better priced.
BELOW IS THE ARTICLE WITH A LINK TO THE FULL FEATURE:
That’s right. More than half of the “best-selling” e-books on the Kindle, Amazon.com’s e-reader, are available at no charge.
Although some of the titles are digital versions of books in the public domain — like Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” — many are by authors still trying to make a living from their work.
Earlier this week, for example, the No. 1 and 2 spots on Kindle’s best-seller list were taken by “Cape Refuge” and “Southern Storm,” both novels by Terri Blackstock, a writer of Christian thrillers. The Kindle price: $0. Until the end of the month, Ms. Blackstock’s publisher, Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, is offering readers the opportunity to download the books free to the Kindle or to the Kindle apps on their iPhone or in Windows.
Publishers including Harlequin, Random House and Scholastic are offering free versions of digital books to Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other e-retailers, as well as on author Web sites, as a way of allowing readers to try out the work of unfamiliar writers. The hope is that customers who like what they read will go on to obtain another title for money.
“Giving people a sample is a great way to hook people and encourage them to buy more,” said Suzanne Murphy, group publisher of Scholastic Trade Publishing, which offered free downloads of “Suite Scarlett,” a young-adult novel by Maureen Johnson, for three weeks in the hopes of building buzz for the next book in the series, “Scarlett Fever,” out in hardcover on Feb. 1. The book went as high as No. 3 on Amazon’s Kindle best-seller list. FULL STORY
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Of course, the Tainted Archive, being ahead of the pack, was on this scene ages ago with its free offering of the complete Black Horse Western The Sheriff and the Widow. Whether it has helped the publisher sell other books by the same author or in the same series, who will ever know?
An argument I've seen voiced against the practice of freebies is that it merely educates the reader into expecting to obtain his fiction free. In fact, he chooses e-book stuff on this basis alone, moving from author to author, publisher to publisher, never having to buy anything as more providers leap on to the band wagon hoping futilely that he might stay with them.
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