Quote:
Originally Posted by Rev. Bob
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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I think this may be why I'm wary of getting rid of too many freebies. A number of series that I have loved started with a freebie. One particular series had 7 or so books. I had never heard of it until stumbling across the first book on the freebie lists. 6*$9.99 later, I had read all the books in the series, and was a very happy camper!
I think I got rid of around 700 books from the early years of Kindle ownership in the past week or so. I've had e-readers since 2007, so....
I have watched the Kobo freebie list recently, but I'm trying to be super selective on the Kobo books, and am hoping to get most books for my Kobo from Gutenberg or the library, with minor supplementing from the Kobo store.