Publisher's defend free eBooks on Amazon

‘‘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. Her company offered free downloads of ‘‘Suite Scarlett,’’ a youngadult novel by Maureen Johnson, for three weeks in the hopes of building buzz for the next book in the series, ‘‘Scarlett Fever,’’ which will be out in hardcover on Feb. 1. The book went as high as No. 3 on the Kindle best-seller list at Amazon.

The digital giveaway comes at a time when many publishers are worried about the price structure of eBooks. Some publishers have tried to protect their revenues by holding back the release of eBooks until the hardcover sales have been exhausted. This, to my mind, is the same mistake the music industry made when MP3's changed the world and will only encourage piracy.



‘‘You have to show people things, because there’s a lot of competition,’’ said Ms. Johnson, the author of ‘‘Suite Scarlett’’ and seven other books. ‘‘If they go into a store, they are going to see 4,000 books with Robert Pattinson’s face on it,’’ she added, referring to movie-tie-in versions of Ms. Meyer’s ‘‘Twilight’’ series. ‘‘Then my book will be buried under them.’’ Most of the giveaways are of older titles by an author, with the idea that reading them will convert new fans who will go on to buy more recently released books. Even if only a small percentage of those who download a free book end up buying another one, ‘‘that’s all found money,’’ said Steve Oates, vice president for marketing at Bethany House Publishers, a unit of Baker Publishing Group, whose authors Beverly Lewis and Tracie Peterson had free titles on the Kindle best-seller list this week.