Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger
Maybe in future years. Ebook sales are not yet high enough to account for a significant dropoff in paperback sales (generally speaking). A few percent, at most. But not 50-70%. Free downloads, on the other hand, can run into much larger numbers.
Mind you, I don't think the free downloads are the cause of the problem I'm describing. But I also think they did not have the boosting effect I was hoping for.
Except for my backlist, for which I am grateful.
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The problem is there is just so much more out there for folks to consume and ways for folks to consume it. In the past video games weren't as huge as they are now. You didn't have MMORPG's where people spend hours and hours everyday. Home video has never been as huge as it has been since DVD really took off for the masses. In the past if you missed a TV show you just missed it, unless you taped it, and might read something instead. Now you have on demand and Hulu and can even catch the latest episodes on the networks sites a lot of the time. Plus you have the things that have been competition for years, TV, sporting events, movies, etc. Publishers have done a poor job of understanding that they're competing against all of that and more. They do very little marketing compared to some of those other forms of entertainment.
It's hard to know on free downloads. For a lot of folks if it's free they'll download it if there's the slightest bit of interest, but would be unlikely to buy it. I don't really get why some pubs have offered freebies that are the latest book in a series or a book in the middle of a series, it makes no sense. Baen does it right with the Free Library by offering the first (and sometimes 2nd and 3rd, etc.) in a series to potentially get you hooked. It's worked with me on a few series from them.