Quote:
Originally Posted by ereadingdotcom
You're overlooking the fact that this "strategy" is meant to create a dominate position in the marketplace, not to create a consumer-friendly, sustainable model.
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Umm, no. Amazon has a loss leader strategy (why the scare quotes?) which is traditionally both consumer friendly and sustainable. Giving away the first book in a 15 volume series in the hopes that consumers will like the book and buy the rest of the series is both consumer-friendly (a free book! No risk!) and sustainable.
Baen's plan (buy the latest hardback in the series and get the 14 preceding volumes in e-book format for free...or you can get them at 5th Imperium for free without buying the hardback) was *extremely* consumer friendly...but turned out to be non-sustainable once e-books became popular enough to actually cut into paper book sales.