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Originally Posted by Olympus
I guestimate that for each payed shareware version 100 versions are not payed for - could somebody explain to me why this seems to be OK for software but not for e-books
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Except for extreme cases, the majority of those shareware products do not make the creator a significant profit... certainly not enough to live off of. Simply put, when given the choice to pay, most people won't, and very little money is made.
The closest examples the publishing world has to shareware marketing are authors like Doctorrow and Stross, giving their e-books away in order to entice you to buy a printed book. As I said before, that's fine... if you have a printed book to sell (or whatever other product you're really pushing), and you already have a name and presence in the market. For those authors who don't have those things, the method is of little use to them.
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Originally Posted by axel77
No, I'm still strictly against product placement in books. Okay it works with fiction that plays in the "now-time". But what about a story that plays in the age of romans? How do you place products there? So what happens nobody is going to write that kind of stories anymore. And then we already have it, we have advertisment taking seriously influence on the content, going as far to determine what is going to be written and what isn't.
The stuff gets even more troublesome when doing non-fiction. Say I write a book about the life of may beetles? Do I have to mention a hummer there too? And yet a step worser, say I write a book about the history of cars. When making money from product placement, doesn't it make my effort look really hypocritical?
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Movies and TV shows have the same problem... no, you won't be seeing any Hummer placement in a
Star Wars movie. But that doesn't mean those movies don't get made. They have to arrange their sponsorships differently (for instance, fast-food shops offering
Star Wars action figures. "Get the whole set--while quantities last!").
That's where the creating ideas need to flow, starting with simple ads at the beginning, end, or at natural breaks within, a book, or at the web site when you buy it... and running from there.
As to looking hypocritical... that depends on what you do, and will be looked at differently by every consumer. Ultimately, you should do what feels comfortable to you.