Are free books good quality?

[mpd123]

hi

i regularly download the free books from smashwords.com. some of the short stories are excellent and the novels are also very good.
there is a lot of christian/vampire/romance which i dont like personally but a 20 min scroll thru will uncover a few gems.

cheers,mick.

[DarkRoast]

I did download a free book once. Even though it was recommended in the thread I was reading, I couldn't get beyond the first page. I just wanted to red pen it all the way through and I am no editor, although I do have a natural propensity for the red pen.
I am not sure how you find good writing that's free and maybe that's the way it should be. I can't find good art to hang on my wall for free either. Writers have to make a living, don't they. How can they do that if and why should they do it without some financial benefit? I guess there are pros and cons for the readers and wannabe writers with so much being available.

[wvcherrybomb]

One of my first stops online everyday is a blog that lists the Amazon freebies for the day. Many of these are free only a matter of hours or days. These promos tend to be higher quality reads than the full time freebies on Smashwords.

Knowing that these are limited time, I download all that I may be even slightly interested in. I can always delete them later if I find I don't like them.

[DavidKitson]

I think some of the attitudes presented here are rather sad. Free shouldn't mean poor quality but having recently made the work of several years available for free, it may not be appropriate for me to comment.

Just so you know what goes into a typical "Free" story, I'll detail the process. It started with an idea that got embedded into my head around 4 years ago and wouldn't leave me alone. Around 2 years ago, after writing for around a year, I finished the story. Then I put it down for around 3 months.

After another three months, I edited it as well as I could and put it down for another few weeks, then rewrote the ending (minor) in the new version and fixed a few additional problems.

I then sent the story out for criticism and got everything from praise and encouragement to long lists of problems that needed serious attention. Some of both from professional published authors. This included full-story criticisms with other writers who tore each chapter apart piece by piece. It's not a pleasant process, but it's part of making a story work.

I sat on it for a while and began writing another. For me, it's necessary to get some distance between creating a work and the editing process. I'm simply not able to see my own mistakes for some time after I write something. I guess I'm just human. So I joined writing groups, read workshops, traded criticisms with other writers and began to learn how to address the many issues I knew were present.

Then I began the entire editing process once again about 12 months ago after many small chapter-edits and removing a lot of extraneous material. Then I found another writer who was willing to trade full-story crits. I then took the story through a final editing pass until I was happy with it. By this time, the story has had ten complete end-to-end revisions and a final size of around 145,000 words.

Finally, not really sure how to proceed towards finding a publisher ( which honestly terrifies me, despite the support and suggestions otherwise of many writers whose opinions I both respect and value ) after hearing a seminar by Mark Coker on Smashwords, I decided to self publish.

Cover art material cost me approximately $27 in licensing and domains for a website another $15. A final clean-up and so far 8 revisions of "Smashwords Manuscripts" to try and address formatting issues and I have published it myself. I lost my job three months ago and money's tight so that's about all I can afford to spend on it. I know professional editors. Good ones. I just can't afford their time, so it's basically the best I can do with something I've written.

The response, so far, from this forum has been great and welcoming. Really it has. Had this thread not shown up, I would have thought that all E-publications were treated equally. Free, Paid, I assumed no difference.

I chose not to place a price on it, because I'm not confident and because trying to find a publisher only stops me from getting on with other stories. Instead I only asked for donations of whatever the read feels happy to offer on completion. With no obligations. Shareware style. I honestly don't know if I'll ever see a cent for my work. I'm pretty sure I'd probably make at least a little if I set a low price. Perhaps that was a mistake - I don't know. I'm finding my way through the process without a guide.

It's not like I've just thrown the story together despite it being free. There's four years of work behind it, multiple edits, criticisms, rewrites and cleanups. It won't be perfect, but I like to think there's some quality to it. There's certainly an effort. I'm sure some would still rip my mistakes to pieces. I'd probably do it myself given another year and another cleanup.

But the effort is there and most writers I've met feel the same about their own works, even if many are pursuing paid publishing. Sure it would probably be a little better if it went through a publisher who employed a good editor, someone to add that final layer of polish and buff it. But I chose to publish and distribute without cost to the reader.

Please don't go assuming that this means I feel my work is inferior just because it's free. Because I don't feel that way about it. Nor I imagine do any other authors who released their works similarly without charge.

Regardless, you're welcome to judge me either way. I guess in the end it's only fitting that the subjective quality of anyone's work should be determined by others.

As always, this is just my opinion.

Regards
David.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

I think some of the attitudes presented here are rather sad. Free shouldn't mean poor quality but having recently made the work of several years available for free, it may not be appropriate for me to comment.

The fundamental problem, David, is that as you say yourself in your very thoughtful post (for which many thanks), very few self-published works are professionally edited, and that's the killer. Editing is the one truly invaluable service that a publisher provides. Almost nobody is capable of objectively editing their own work (and that certainly includes me, too!). It's that lack of proper editing that is unfortunately the key differentiating quality factor between most self-published authors, and books from publishing houses. I was astonished what a difference my editor made to my (non-fiction) books. I thought that I'd done a reasonable job of writing, but it was my editor who made my books into something that was marketable.

[K-Thom]

Editing is the one truly invaluable service that a publisher provides.

I'd like to rephrase that. "Editing is the one truly invaluable service that any manuscript needs".

You don't necessarily need a publisher, you could also hire a freelance editor. There are self-published authors who invest in editing, but since this a cost factor usually only already-established authors with a certain income may take that into consideration.

The very least an author could try is to ask a befriended (language) teacher/lecturer, if he/she would estimate the work and provide some feedback. This already will do any written text a favor.

[allen.gotwald]

What matters most is access. The posts at mobileread are excellent quality. Gutenberg has a larger library but the content is hasty, but when it was all we had it was awesome. The market drives improved quality. Now we can access public domain books at an array of good sites, we can download library books and we can actually shop before buying a book. I own a Sony 505 and just bought a Nook Color. I bought two new shelf books at the Sony site for $9 each. At the Barnes and Noble site the same books sell for $14 and $20. Guess where I'll keep shopping and buying books? Competition will drive quality, price and access. I can load my Sony secure epub book on my Nook Color reader or on my 505. What I cannot tolerate are outfits that try to control the device and access to the material you read. Then they can charge whatever they want. Whatever device you buy, ensure it maximizes access to material and doesn't restrict where you get.

[astra]

Originally Posted by MrsPartridge

Are you happy with the free books offered?

Freebies hold virtually zero value for me.

I won't let freebies or ebook formats or ebook readers to govern my reading habits. The new technology is supposed to add to my experience, not to detract from it. Thus I read what I want. 99.99...% it is never free. I think since 2006 only 4 books that were (at some point of time) on my TBR list were offered for free.

Assassin's Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1) by Robin Hobb
The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia

However, by the time they were offered for free I have already purchased and read them.

A Shadow in Summer (Long Price Quartet #1) by Daniel Abraham
was offered by Tor but cannot get the rest of the series in the proper format, then again by the time I get to read the series I am sure all of the books will be available

Avempartha (The Riyria Revelations #2) by Michael J. Sullivan
was offered by his publisher for free. ePub was an abomination. Book 2??? why not to start with book 1, you cannot start reading 6 books series from book 2. The series is unfinished anyway, so I would not read it now.

I have two books from mobilereader's library for future reading. Sherlock Holmes and Jerome, Jerome K.: Three Men in a Boat.

That's it.
Amazon tactics of throwing tons of freebies so they maintain a high profile of a provider of huge number of freebies to attract people who don't bother to check the quality of freebies that are offered, doesn't work with me (reminds me of sheep discussed in another topic). Most of the Amazon's freebies are rubbish in my opinion.
If I want to read a book, I am prepared to pay for it but I won't waste my time on reading something only because it is free.

[James_Wilde]

Originally Posted by MrsPartridge

Aside from the classics that are available for free, do you find the freebies offered on Kindle/Kobo/Sony etc. sites worth reading?

...
Are you happy with the free books offered?

Hi Mrs Partridge and welcome to MR.

Do you enjoy them? Do they help you pass time pleasantly? Do they stimulate you to think of alternative plots and alternative endings?

If so the answer is yes. If not, how much time have you wasted? Let's face it, you can't complain about the price.

[DavidKitson]

Originally Posted by astra

Freebies hold virtually zero value for me.

Then at what price do the books you read achieve value? $0.99? $1.99?, $10.99? $42.50? Even $0.01?

The rest of your post would suggest that it's not the price you value, but the content.

There's no magical formula that ties the price of a story to it's quality. I've paid nearly $20 for a book that was so bad, I put it down and walked away with less than 50 pages to go. But some of the most memorable stories I can recall cost me nothing ( though, admittedly, I was critting them... Quite a worthwhile exercise if you want to read some leading-edge commercial stuff for free and help the authors out )

If a story engages me, then the quality of the writing matters less. While a turd, even when polished, remains a turd. I find that when critting, I can read through a story and thoroughly enjoy it, then I pick up a page by itself without being into the tale and find it full of issues.

Only when I have read the last line, will I know whether I liked it or not. What I could overlook, what I could not. Did the characters endear themselves to me? Did the tale makes sense? Did it leave me wanting to share the experience or warn someone else from repeating it? That's the true measure of a book regardless of the price.

And in a day and age when publishing it placing more of the burden of editing on the author, even p-books do not guarantee that you won't read rubbish.

YMMV, but I would suggest that there may be a better yardstick than price by which to measure your selections. Unfortunately, I do not know what to suggest in it's place.

Regards
David

[Maggie Leung]

Free books bear a cost. The time I waste looking for a good book and reading dreck (even briefly) is time I'd rather spend doing other things. Given that, I'm willing to pay professionals to do filtering and editing. Of course there's no guarantee that professionally screened and edited books will all be good reads; I prefer the odds.

[DavidKitson]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

Free books bear a cost. The time I waste looking for a good book and reading dreck (even briefly) is time I'd rather spend doing other things. Given that, I'm willing to pay professionals to do filtering and editing. Of course there's no guarantee that professionally edited books will all be good reads; I prefer the odds.

Yes, but as per my last comment, this is nothing to do with price. You could go with a publisher you trust perhaps but parting with your money is no guarantee that the book has been edited by someone other than the author.

I would hate to think that the difference between my own book being "Professional" and being "Dreck" is whether or not I make you pay for it.

If I were to upload my story as a paid item, with a different name I wonder a) How much money it would make and b) whether the opinion and reviews of it vary.

I'm guessing that many people would feel a need to justify the quality of the story just to match their expenditure.

Hmmm I feel a Deluxe Edition coming on at $9.99... I will have to find a typo and fix it or something.

Regards
David

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by MrsPartridge

Aside from the classics that are available for free, do you find the freebies offered on Kindle/Kobo/Sony etc. sites worth reading?

I was sure that most would be sort of below average - like reading a high schooler's attempt at fiction writing and no decent editing that you can get from a publishing house. However I'm really enjoying the freebie I got on the Sony site called "Romeo Romeo" by Robin Kaye.

Are you happy with the free books offered?

From a writing quality standpoint, I think it's mixed. I've read some good stuff, and a fair quantity of bad stuff. A lot of free stuff is by writers just getting their feet wet, so to speak, and their their assessments of how publishable their work is can sometimes be off.

I think a bigger problem (from where I sit) is the quality of the formatting. Like the Gutenberg texts that show up on Amazon, the other freebie content can be generated by someone who clearly doesn't know what he/she is doing. This makes it more difficult to read what would otherwise be a good story.

But I'll say this: I often find myself downloading a Kindle freebie. The price is certainly right, and if it sucks for whatever reason, I can just stop reading it (or purge it from my Kindle altogether, if I deem it unworthy to be there).

For that matter, I'll do the same with the $1 books. A dollar's not going to break me either way, so they're worth taking a chance on.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

Yes, but as per my last comment, this is nothing to do with price. You could go with a publisher you trust perhaps but parting with your money is no guarantee that the book has been edited by someone other than the author.

I would hate to think that the difference between my own book being "Professional" and being "Dreck" is whether or not I make you pay for it.

If I were to upload my story as a paid item, with a different name I wonder a) How much money it would make and b) whether the opinion and reviews of it vary.

I'm guessing that many people would feel a need to justify the quality of the story just to match their expenditure.

Hmmm I feel a Deluxe Edition coming on at $9.99... I will have to find a typo and fix it or something.

Regards
David

Please reread my post. I trust publishers to do initial screening and editing, more than I trust nonprofessionals. Then I do my own screening, based on reviews, recommendations and my judgment. I find I waste significantly more time screening dreck when I look through self-published books.

Your writing might be great; it might not be. I won't waste my time hunting through piles of dreck for a few gems. That's the beauty of the marketplace: choice.

[DavidKitson]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

Please reread my post. I trust publishers to do initial screening and editing, more than I trust nonprofessionals. Then I do my own screening, based on reviews, recommendations and my judgment. I find I waste significantly more time screening dreck when I look through self-published books.

Your writing might be great; it might not be. I won't waste my time hunting through piles of dreck for a few gems. That's the beauty of the marketplace: choice.

Hi Maggie,

I'm sorry if my post came across as having missed that point. Indeed I did not. And please don't take this as an attack on your opinion because I can see a logic to your reasoning exactly as you do and I can't fault it.

It is why all the more, I am thinking that perhaps I should have a fully charged version of my story(ies) to cater for the market that simply does not look at free versions.

My writing might be great, it might indeed be dreck ( and if curiosity takes you, you are welcome to read the first pages and tell me directly - I will take no offense, I promise. Turing Evolved is linked from my blog and still free to download. )

But if the simple act of not adding a price is enough to cut me out of a more discerning market, then I'm questioning my original strategy of making it free.

Regards
David