Quote:
Originally Posted by petermillard
SNIP
No doubt. As a consumer, I wish they published something I wanted to read. As a co-'content provider', I'm left wondering how the authors feel about seeing the value of their work reduced effectively to zero after a couple of years?
Best, Pete.
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Pete:
By and large, the authors love it. They
volunteer their books for the Free Library. You see, sales of stuff that's in the Free Library go
UP. Both in dead tree ware and in bits. And so do sales of other books by the same authors. Having your book in the Free Library means an increase in sales of the author's backlist, and that means more money in their pocket.
I won't claim that every (or even most) readers purchase books they've gotten for free from the Free Library. What they've seen empirically, however, is that
some readers do -- viewing it as being like tossing some $$ in a tip jar. And the number is big enough to increase the sales of these books.
For my part, I've discovered authors through the free library, and wound up purchasing most of their backlist. Many of these were folks whose books I'd been passing up for years! What is it about this picture that they're supposed to not like? I've also had the experience of trying to order a book that's been out for several years (or more), and found that paper copies are unobtainable; they can't
get a royalty on the sale that they can't make because I can't buy the book. But I can get the bits out of the free library, and toss some $$ in the jar (by buying the bits I've already read) if I decide I like it.
It's counter-intuitive, but the empirical results are that books put into the free library increase in value -- and boost the careers of the authors as well. This is very different from "seeing the value of their work reduced effectively to zero after a couple of years."
Xenophon
P.S. There's actually a rather broad range of stuff in the Free Library. I've heard people claim that Baen only publishes "military stuff" or "exploding spaceships," but that's not even the majority of their output. Plenty of thought-provoking and award-winning stuff too. I recommend you take another cruise through there. Perhaps a sample of "In the Mountains of Mourning" by Lois McMaster Bujold...