Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
Hey Maria,
Logic question on free versus paid books.
Are the freebies not being read because the reader's TBR got so large that the reader is about 3 years behind?
Or could it be the freebies aren't worth what the reader paid for them?
Or perhaps a bit of both?
The reason I ask is I am cleaning out my ereaders. I am just doing the cookbooks at the moment. Over 50% are getting deleted because of formatting or just plain unreadable. There was one that all the recipes had strike throughs.
Part of the problem stems from author expectations. Some put a book free then complain the very next day that I didn't get any reviews.
Granted I know a few people that can read a book in a day. I know a couple that read multiple books a day. But the vast majority take at the very least a week and usually longer.
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eta: I just lost my huge response here. Darn it, stupid keyboard. All is gone
Sigh. Short version. I have books going back to 2008 that are paid and free. I cleaned out my account last year, got rid of 1000's of books then.
My average time to get to a book, paid or free is 2-3 years. Sometimes I read them right away, sometimes it takes me years. I am not in a hurry. They aren't going anywhere.
Don't think most readers get to free books they download right away. While the author sits on the day of the offering hitting F5 all day long, we have TBR lists, we have library loans, challenges, reading buddies, book groups. We have moods we have to be in.
Doesn't mean we never read the free books. It just means we'll get to them when we get to them.
Even for a book I might have waited a year for, one of my all time favorite series of all time. Book I am reading now. Even for it did I not drop everything. I read it weeks after it came out. I even had to put a hold on the library, a suspend so I could finish other stuff first. I had to be in the mood for the genre. And that is a must read now, must know what happened kind of series. More than a year wait. So imagine how everyone else fares then.
I agree Cin with author expectations. Or maybe its just today's expectations that everything must happen in real time. Some get all twitchy after 2 days, a week of having had a freebie on offer and no reviews yet. Not only have most readers not read the book yet, most will never leave a review in the first place. I never get a free book from amazon thinking that I have to write a review now. I might, or I might not. Same for paid or for free.