Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
This thread was the impetus for my culling over 50 books from about 200 at Amazon. Thank you. I'd become much more selective about epubs and had pruned them long ago, but I had let the freebies at Amazon accumulate and they had started to drag me down.
I used to think that freebies were fully priced; now I think they're overpriced for me. In a morass of dimly remembered and entirely forgotten titles, it becomes difficult to identify the occasional gem purchased because Amazon had the best price. In general even the high quality freebies are at best fungible; there would always a huge selection if I felt the need (and I won't, frankly).
Life is short and there are only so many books I'll be able to read. Not everything has to be deep or great because I have a need for light reading as well, but it should be good of its kind. Losing the dross makes it much easier to identify.
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Along those lines, I've always felt that if a person actually wants a book and pays money for it, that person is invested in the book enough to read it and to have paid attention when they bought it (ie buying a genre they might actually like). With the thousands of freebies, it sets a standard where books are not being worth much, not even time.
The new amazon associate rules just out are going to mean a lot less sites touting freebies and therefor a lot less authors going free (I think. I only had a couple of short stories free, so I am not the right person to really speculate too much on the logic behind the free model.) I have seen several authors already moving away from free and the discussions so far range back and forth, but I do see several saying they are dropping the free idea. We'll see.