Quote:
Originally Posted by astra
Freebies hold virtually zero value for me.
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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