Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
But that would be for books that you had heard of, or been told you might like, not books you hadn't heard of before. If you saw a book you had never heard of that said click here for free download would you really go looking for reviews of it or just download it and flick through it yourself?
If it was a DVD or something that would take a few hours to download maybe you would, but something that takes a few seconds? You could always go back and look for reviews if you decided you actually wanted to read it. Then once you read it you could decide whether it was good enough to make you want to read something else by that writer, maybe even send them some Paypal money like Xenophon suggests if they are easy to find.
But none of that would happen if you didn't download it first. They would just stay yet another writer that you had never heard of before. You would never buy any of their books, they would never make it onto your must read list, you would never tell any of your friends about them.
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My personal choice is to download only those things I expect that I will be interested in.* This means that I don't just download every freebie I encounter. My reasoning for this is that I'd rather have my to-read queue filled with books (mostly eBooks) that I have reason to expect that I will like. That torrent of "everything from Project Gutenberg" (for example) is of no interest to me. I can download PG books any time I want; why bother downloading the ones that have not yet caught my interest.
As for other books, well... None of those stages I suggest would happen if I didn't get the book
somehow-or-other. It certainly seems to me that obscurity is the single biggest problem for a mid-list author; doubly so for beginners. But my time to read is limited. I'd rather spend that time on books I'll enjoy. So I look for reviews (or whatever) only if something about the book catches my fancy somehow.
I guess this means that the big cost for me isn't the
download time, or even the cost of the eBook (assuming semi-sane pricing!), but rather the reading time (and the risk-reduction "what can I find out about this book/author/series/whatever" time). So I use word-of-mouth, reviews, and other sources to find books that are worth spending my reading time on.
As with all such opinions, your mileage may vary. Your circumstances may vary. Your value function and choices may vary. Void where prohibited. Dolphin safe and cholesterol free. No trees were killed in production of this message...
Xenophon
*I also choose to download only legitimate eBooks. Um... eBooks that are either freely available (PD, or free from the author, or free from the publisher, or...) or that I pay for. Again, YMMV, etc. But I encourage you to send money in the direction of authors and publishers who produce books that you like. Money talks — make it give YOUR message when it does.