I'm a terrible ebook hoarder. I have bought a ton of free ebooks, and have probably read less than one percent of them.
I occasionally read some of the sample before deciding if I want to buy a free book, but most of the time I'm in a hurry and just download it and figure that if I ever get around to reading it, I can just delete it if I don't like it.
I do try to put it into an appropriate category though so I can find the promising ones later.
Often I buy a questionable freebie just so that I don't have to waste my time again in the future reading the description and trying to figure out if it's worth buying.
If the reviews were dependable, I probably wouldn't do this as much, but they are mostly worthless at this point.
I do try to make more of an effort to add an unbiased review when I do finally get around to reading something. (Especially if a book seems to have a lot of fake reviews.)
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Odds are it is equally valid. At the very least. Once you factor hoaders (and the fact that the ratio includes samples) I wouldn't be shocked if Amazon came out and said it is 200-300 to 1. (Might be one of the reasons for the pressure on the pure free ebook sites.)
The thing is, there are many authors and publishers from the traditionalist world who don't get the difference beween hoarding and reading and see every unpaid download (whether from an ebookstore or... elsewhere) as a guaranteed lost sale. And similarly assume that every ibrary checkout is displacing a guaranteed sale.
Having a rational discussion on those subject requires credible, commonly accepted metrics. So far it looks like 1% might be a good starting point as long as its understood that it is an average.
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That is so true. Pretty much none of the books I've bought for free or borrowed from the library were lost sales. I was never going to buy it if I didn't have free access.
I used to buy a lot of books when I was younger, but I mainly either read all or part of a book and was disappointed or otherwise never got around to reading them at all. There were only a small number that I read cover to cover and felt good about the purchase. I think it is largely because of this that I don't buy many paid books any more.
I recently moved and donated about twenty large bags and boxes of books to the library store. I also sent a number away to be scanned in hopes that I will find that more convenient and actually read a small percentage of the books I bought over the years now that they're in ebook form.
When I first got my Kindle I did buy some non-free books... but then I put myself on restriction - I can't buy another paid ebook until I read all the non-free ebooks I already bought, and I'm not even close to that point.