The latest craze: Free e-books offerings

[chaznsc]

The latest craze: Free e-books offerings

This Feb. 28, 2003 file photo shows author James Patterson, of Palm Beach Fla, posing in his study. Patterson's latest best-seller, "The Angel Experiment," is a little different from his usual hits. The novel isn't new; it came out four years ago. Its sales aren't happening at bookstores, but mostly on the Kindle store at Amazon.com. And the price is low even for an old release$0.00

NEW YORK — James Patterson's latest best seller, "The Angel Experiment," is a little different from his usual hits. The novel isn't new; it came out four years ago. Readers aren't picking it up at bookstores, but mostly on the Kindle site at Amazon.com.

And the price is low even for an old release: $0.00.

"I like the notion of introducing people to one book, while promoting the sales of another," says the prolific and mega-selling author (and co-author) of numerous thrillers." His Kindle download is the first book of Patterson's "Maximum Ride" young adult series.

"We've given away thousands of free e-copies," Patterson said. "`Maximum Ride' is big already and we think it could be a lot bigger. That requires getting people to read it."

Patterson is among the biggest brands added to the growing list of free e-book offerings. Over the past few months, top sellers on the Kindle — with downloads in the tens of thousands, authors and publishers say — have included such public domain titles as "Pride and Prejudice" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," and novels by Jennifer Stevenson and Greg Keyes.

In recent days, the top three Kindle sellers have been free books: Patterson's, Joseph Finder's "Paranoia" and Keyes' "The Briar King."

"There's always going to be someone who wants free things. What we're trying to do is link free with paid," Maja Thomas, senior vice president of digital media at Patterson's publisher, the Hachette Book Group, said. "It's like priming the pump."

[rjfarrell]

I am sure that there are many people who read only free books. And they probably read free from books shared from friends and family.

I have bought 10x the number of books since I got my Sony reader than I ever did pbooks. I have purchased MANY books from authors after I read their free book. I have adored Lee Child after reading "The Persuader". And "The Alchemyst" Series? I Bought the rest of the series and waiting for The Necromancer to come out in 2010.

As a note, I most likely would NOT read free chapters. That would irritate the heck out of me to be at the end of the chapter, and have to wait to read the rest. BAH!

Fear not to the publishers and authors. I think the freebies are a most excellent marketing tool.

[zelda_pinwheel]

hi chaznsc, thanks very much for sharing this article. in the future though, we'd appreciate it if you could post a link to the article and cite just a few paragraphs to give an idea of the topic (i've taken the liberty of modifying your post to show what i mean) ; quoting the entire article can get us in trouble for copyright reasons.


actually, there is already a discussion about this article going on, so i'm going to close this thread to prevent a fragmentation of the conversation. please continue the discussion in this thread.