Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
But free books do not a career or living make--not for Amazon or the author. So at some point the model will have to shift.
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Free books are a promotional tool, plain and simple.
And they serve different purposes for the retailer and the author.
They can be used to promote the retailer's platform, they can be used to promote an author's brand, or to promote the actual story being peddled.
Remember, most free ebooks on Amazon (and most *new* $0.99 offerings) are offered that way *temporarily*. Free isn't a business model for authors. ($0.99 is a whole different story, though.)
If you're a total unknown as an author, giving away 5000 copies might, in fact, result in maybe 500 reads (Assuming the thing is good enough to get that many people to finish it) and maybe 5 reviews. Some might say that is 500 lost sales, but others would argue that a good product with five reviews has a better chance to sell than one with none. ;-)
As you pointed out, some people get ebook readers primarily to pick up free reads so the platform holders need to "discount" their install base numbers appropriately to temper their revenue and sales expectations. These "customers' " practices will impact the platform holder but not the authors, though, because those people wouldn't have bought the book anyway.
So, I expect the practice of (temporarily) free ebooks (especially at launch) to continue. And I expect to see ebooks dropping to $0.99 for a week every few months to become a common practice among authors interested in maintaining their visibility, at least as long as there is a large pool of buyers trolling the top-sellers list for new reads.
Before we see a change, we'll need broad adoption of new discovery mechanisms among the buyers.