Quote:
Originally Posted by snookums
Yep. That's how Dickens sold his novels. It's also how Stephen King sold The Green Mile. I actually have all of the chapter books for The Green Mile. I bought them as they came out. The problem is that only an idiot would buy a book a piece at a time when the whole thing is already out for the cost of about 3 chapters. This is evidence for the total disconnect that there is between publishers and reality. If they had half a brain, they would be giving away the first chapter of every book in their catalog for free. I've already bought at least half a dozen books I never would have bought if not for the sample chapters I can get on the Kindle.
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Maybe it's because Amazon has experience
selling books while Random House has experience
publishing books. In bookstores I always read the TOC and at least part of the first chapter to sort out exactly which book I want to buy. Amazon has found how to do that on-line. Maybe the publishing houses would be well advised to let book sellers handle the selling.
I bought The Green Mile that way too, Snookums, and found myself looking forward each month to the next installment. They were $3 a chapter, then jumped to $4 for the last one, making it cost $19 for the entire book, which came out in a single volume for about half that price. They never tried
that again!