Microsoft’s killing Live Search Books. But could its book search have been hurting publishers? And what about online freebies of books—complete or excepts? The help-or-hurt question was among the topics of a panel at BookExpo America, where, by the way, Jeff Bezos will be speaking (ugh, about those K-numbers, Jeff?).
PW mentions cases from Harlequin and HarperCollins. At HC Barbara Lilly warns not to extrapolate too much, but says 1,177 people out of 83,000 visitors decided to buy a Neil Gaiman book after seeing it online. What do you think of that ratio, gang? The book—not offered as a downloadable file—drew four million page views.
83K visitors, just 1,177 buyers
So this is what HarperCollins needed to move just 1,177 copies of a well-established writer’s work? Even considering the promo’s E-Book Museum approach—look but don’t download—that’s pretty pathetic compared to what the optimists would want. But then again, mail-order response rates aren’t so awesome either,
Here’s my take. Unless a book give-away can be a hit on P2P sites, and not every title can, writers need to consider whether the Cory Doctorow model of free-E/paid-P will work for them as the main promo tool. As one tool? Maybe.
Update, 11:44 a.m.: Tor and Baen have the right idea in using freebies to promote series. That’s when the model can work since there’s less need to make the money upfront.
Related: Our posts on Richard Herley’s shareware experiment.
I’ve been saying for a long time that the ‘give away e to sell p’ model is severely limited in time and in number of authors. Cory Doctorow and Eric Flint have successfully used this model because they were early entrants, and because they’ve pushed hard on the idea that you reward the author for making e available by buying the p book. But at least Doctorow seems to believe that e remains a defective product (see his comments in Little Brother). Guess what–with readers or even nice PDAs, eReading is not defective and it’s not the same as reading on your computer. eBooks are less a complement and more a substitute for paper. You give away razors to sell blades, you don’t give away blades to sell blades.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
I’ve never read or bought a book written by Neil Gaiman. Admittedly, his name never rang a bell with me until the recent (past several months) mentions of his name in conjunction with e-books. When I discovered that the only way to read any of his work at the HC site was online, I passed.
On the other hand, I have made extensive use of Baen’s free offerings. The result has been that I have bought 1 e-book from Baen, and I have purchased 9 hardcover books from my local B&N and have ordered a couple more of authors I first read by downloading from Baen (i.e., in the past 3 months I have bought 10 Baen books already and have ordered several more — all because of my introduction to the authors via Baen’s free e-books).
At least in my case, offering free ebooks is a way to introduce me to authors I would never have looked at otherwise. I do not use my Reader as a substitute for buying p-books; rather, I view it as a supplement, a way to explore and consider authors with whom I have no familiarity.
In the olden days, when books were not so costly, I was willing to buy a book by an unfamiliar author. If I didn’t finish it, it wasn’t a big loss financially. That just isn’t true these days, especially if one reads more than 2 or 3 books a year.
The other problem with an experiment such as HC’s is that it makes too many assumptions about the gross number of visitors. How many were like me, for example, and are people who refuse to read on their computers? How many were people who only will buy e-books, not p-books? How many were people who will only buy DRM-free e-books? How many were people who have decided to buy Gaiman’s book but are waiting until they have finished reading the other books they have already bought (this was a problem with Richard Herley’s shareware experiment)?
Sometime I think the publishers set up experiements intending them to fail, and I think the HC experiment was such an incident.
“So this is what HarperCollins needed to move just 1,177 copies of a well-established writer’s work? Even considering the promo’s E-Book Museum approach—look but don’t download”
So when I go into a book store and walk in front of thousands of books – does that count as thousands of lost sales?
When I pick up a book, look at it, decide it is not for me (no matter how famous the writer) does that count as a lost sale?
They need to look at it as 1,177 extra sales…
When HC put up that site, I went to it once, and never went back.
There are a lot of problems with the e-museum model – I don’t got to a museum to buy books. And many new ebook readers may think that is how they will actually have to read the book they purchase. They might not realize they can download the book.
And reading books on a website sucks – waiting for each page to flip – pathetic.
Let me download the first chapter or two – make sure it works on my device – let me get the reading experience on my device.
Learn to trust your buyers, and they will trust and buy from you.
FICBOT COMMENTS: BJ, I 100% agree with you. When I download a free book or even a free first chapter (providing it will work on my device) there are one of four possible outcomes:
1) I decide this book/author is not for me and I don’t decide to buy a pay version
2) I enjoy the book, but not enough to buy a pay version, yet this author has made my radar and I will look out for their future titles
3) I either enjoy or don’t enjoy the book, but know someone else who will and consider buying them a print version as a gift (example: Corey’s Little Brother, which I enjoyed but not enough to shell out for a hardback. My own little brother may be getting this for his birthday, however)
4) I love the book and want to buy a print version so I can have it in a durable form
Any of the above scenarios are just as likely in a print bookstore where I can go in, touch the book and look at it.
(this is a cached copy from Google Cache)
Good to see the site back up! I emailed you privately about an ebook experiment my publisher agreed to, putting my entire first novel on the web as a download, but here I’ll comment in general. (I’ve got some stats and info on the ebook thingo which you might be interested in. E.g the percentage of people who viewed the order page as well as the download page.)
There’s a good chance some of those visitors read a portion of the book online and then decided to pick up a copy next time they visited a store. There’s no immediate rush when buying books – it’s not like you’re being offered cheap gas or a 50% discount on your groceries.
Others might have hit ebay or amazon looking for cheap second hand copies. And some might have hit the web looking for a ‘proper’ downloadable ebook.
The other thing is, it’s all but impossible to measure the publicity impact of something like his. Counting direct sales isn’t the way – maybe an upswell in sales across the writer’s books over time?