[jbjb]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I understand the part where winning a reader with a free ebook might win you readers for your other, not free, ebooks.

It seems to me that this would be the primary motivation for an author to release free ebooks - increasing sales of other books, not necessarily the one which is released free.

But from the point of view of the economics of writing, paper books are still where most of the money comes from. And one's standing with one's publisher, and with all the wholesalers and bookstore chains, depends far more on the sales of one's current p-book than anything else.

That (the standing with the publisher part) is interesting - is that just due to the fact that that's where most of the money currently comes from , or is there a p-book focus in addition to that? In other words, would your standing with your publisher be higher if you made them $X from p-books than if you made them the same amount from e-books? (Clearly the wholesalers and bookstore chains have different priorities).

/JB