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I have a more forgiving view of freebies, and I've accordingly acquired a bunch of 'em by now. What I've started doing is using them as extended previews. If a paid work catches my eye, I'll see if I have a freebie by that author. If I do, that'll give me a taste of what their style is like before I commit cash money to the cause.
I was offline over the weekend - the power went out Saturday evening, came back Sunday afternoon, and my cable was out until a few minutes ago - which gave me the chance to read such a freebie. It was generally decent, and I have some more free stuff from that author, so I'll read some of those soon. OTOH, I've gotten some freebies that were positively atrocious - I'm talking about writing quality that makes a distracted second-grader seem coherent - and I can flush those without remorse.
The really frustrating part, to me, is when there's a mixture. I finished Some Kind of Hero on my Aura H2O while the power was out, and the guy tells a good story... but he needs someone to proofread his work before publication. He's certainly not the worst I've seen in that respect, not by a long shot, but it's distracting just the same.
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