Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
Personally I have not been taking advantague of these free ebooks. Perhaps I myself have subconsciously fallen victim to the syndrome I describe above. I now intend to try some of these free ebooks.
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Pre-ebooks, free books cost money. At least nominally.
The closest to that in the old, pre-multinational takeover days were book club editions and the coverless paperbacks that were supposed to be destroyed but were instead sold for a quarter or so: technically illegal but ignored by the publishers precisely because it at least raised the author's visibility.
With ebooks, there is no real cost associated with free copies which is why BAEN did it regularly through their bound-in promo CDs and Harlequin and Tor tried it, too. The BPHs, as a rule, are so hung up on their delusional perceived-value dreams and reader-spend obsession that they ignore this proven marketting tool as much as they ignore pretty much every other marketting tool this side of payola. Their loss is the smaller publishers' gain... in market share.
And open-minded readers' gain.