Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Ah, I see your position; the freebies crowd out the non-free book's mindshare.
It's possible.
But so far, it's not happening.
Paid ebook sales keep going up and for all the talk that "nobody" is making money in ebooks, a lot of people seem to be doing fine. Quarter by quarter, the dollar amounts grow and so does the size of the available book catalogs. And that ebook growth is outpacing the drop in pbook revenue at most of the BPHs.
I don't doubt that there are a fair amount of, ahem, frugal readers living off the freebies. Just as I don't doubt there is a fair amount of piracy out there.
But a lot of both is just hoarding and, just as every pirated ebook copy doesn't represent a lost sale for anybody, I don't think each and every freebie d/l corresponds to a lost sale for anybody, either.
All the publicly-available evidence so far suggests that the majority of readers do buy ebooks and that a good portion of the quality promo-ebooks result in increased sales for the author. Even the Price Fix Six seem to be doing okay despite their eroding ebook market share.
Whatever their numbers may be, it doesn't look like over-frugal readers are an industry-wide issue. It may come to pass or it may not.
And like I said, I wouldn't necessarilly take online chatter as representative of even B&N's customers, much less Sony, Kobo, or Amazon. The issue is worth considering but without actual data from Nielsen or another of the poll-takers...
After all, if it were really an issue, it is one that has a simple solution: stop freebie promos. As long as freebie promos continue, the signs I see say it is more of a solution (to obscurity) than a problem. So far.
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I think one of the reasons Amazon resisted allowing Indies to go free for so long is because it IS an issue. With all those freebies, it cuts down on the other books sold. I'm guessing they weren't expecting the deluge of freebies that we see now (and this phenom hasn't been accounted for in any numbers because it didn't start happening until...Dec? I think.)
I honestly wonder if they will continue it past the first 90 days or if they will change the terms. It *has* to be cutting into sales. I know it is for a fact because my wishlist has totally languished and some of those purchases were ones I intended to make after getting Christmas gift cards. Turns out I just haven't gotten around to it. (So in this case it's probably more a pushed-out sale than a lost sale.)
Sales of ebooks are very hard to track. Indie sales aren't reported with the trad numbers (even though those are going up.) I get sent surveys from one of the tracking companies and I don't participate...I'm kind of private about that stuff and perhaps a tad on the lazy side with filling out the survey. It was rather LONG.
Personally, I think Amazon allowed indies into the Prime and free program to pressure more traditional publishers to get into prime and to do more promos. Now whether it will work, I don't know. From a reader standpoint I'd like to see it. From an author standpoint, it could further cook my goose!
Yes, people are still buying books, but all of this industry change is going to push prices down (that's not a bad thing so long as it doesn't start also changing the selection.) And setting expectations for free can be hard to undo. If it happens to cost B&N or other retailers to shut down, that is also a bad thing.