Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
That's me. As a result of the free library I discovered a couple of Baen authors that I had never read before and now I buy their hardcovers when released.
|
That's me, too.
One of the things I point out to people is that Baen is not promoting
books, they are promoting
authors. You download one or more complete novels by an author, decide you like what they do, and add them to your "Buy when a new one appears" list. And Baen discovered that their market has the money, and is willing to buy the hardcover editions of books by authors they really like.
If the download doesn't result in a sale of that author's work, no matter. The book(s) just didn't do it for you, and chances are good that you wouldn't have bought the book(s) in any case. Baen and the author haven't lost anything.
And in Baen's case, I think a fair number of readers are buying the hardcover
and the ebook edition.
It wouldn't surprise me if Baen's ebooks were cannibalizing their
MMPB sales, but I suspect Baen doesn't
care. They were struggling as an MMPB house, and if the Free Library hadn't been instituted, I suspect they wouldn't exist now. Paperbacks are a very difficult market in which to make any money. I've heard tales of MMPB releases with press runs as low as 15,000 copies, which I find hard to believe. Given what's normally needed to fill the distribution channels, and the normal level of returns, I have a hard time understanding how that sort of press run can make money.
I would not be surprised down the road to see Baen publish hardcovers and ebooks, and drop the mass market paperback editions entirely.
______
Dennis