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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WHile I think there is some of both, Kobo's experiments/data was pretty telling. If I recall correctly they tracked best sellers in one experiment and freebies in another by collecting data from the readers (the hardware) to see how far readers progressed. Now some readers don't read on the reader and some convert the books and read elsewhere (calibre) but IN GENERAL, I think the study was interesting because it showed that readers very often bought best sellers because they hear about them, but that didn't mean they read them. With freebies, the data was something like...shoot. I can't remember the percent of the books that were opened--low number was even opened. Then less than 1 percent were read.
So let's be generous and say that only 10 percent are even being OPENED to the first page. That tells you that most people who download free books aren't even looking at them so the problem isn't really formatting or other. Sure it is some of the time because I download freebies and then read two or three pages and toss them aside.
For me there are two data points: You give away freebies and can't expect most of them to be looked at or read. Of the number who do read them, you can't expect reviews or ratings very often. The WORST part of free is that there are also a certain number of free readers who NEVER buy books. They are attached to the free model for whatever reason and don't go on to read the others in the series.
The BEST part is that free spreads the word/provide visibility. It does attract readers who go on to read the series and other books. To be most effective, most authors tell me that you have to advertise the "Free" book. (I didn't do any ads. I mentioned it on my thread on mobileread and that's it. I didn't even mention it on my blog or fb). It took 2.5 days to give away 1000 copies of Lunch and right at 3 days to get close to that with Moon (the shut off is hard to do precisely because Amazon can take a few hours to stop free or a couple of days!)