Baen Re-evaluating their Free Library

[Xanthe]

This thread reminds me that I need to go over to Baen to see what's new and pick up a few books. If it's a favorite SF/F author, I check their site first before Amazon.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Which is EXACTLY what the original article said.

No, it's not.

[rdjack21]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

This thread reminds me that I need to go over to Baen to see what's new and pick up a few books. If it's a favorite SF/F author, I check their site first before Amazon.

If it is a Baen published book I always get it direct from them. If they do start selling at Amazon I will still get it from Baen. Why because I want them to get every Penney of my money because I do like what they have done and are continuing to do. Good pricing no DRM great combo!

[starrigger]

As a buyer, I can certainly appreciate buying direct from Baen, and have done so myself. But if I were a Baen author, I'd want them to get all the books into the Kindle and other stores, because that's where most of the sales go down. (I'm not a Baen author in the usual sense, though my E-reads titles are in the Baen store, and one self-repubbed is in the free library.) They do have a really customer-friendly store, which is to their credit, but there's no way it can compete numerically with the exposure of all the other stores. So for the sake of all the Baen authors, I hope they do expand into all of the other venues.

[rdjack21]

I'm not disagreeing with you Jeffery I just think that Baen will have to raise priceses to maintain there profit margen when they do start selling in other books stores. One thing they could do though is give a member discount if you purchase the book on Baen's own web site. In this way they would avoid the price matching issue of the other store fronts. I'm not against Baen raising priceses and I think they could get away with a small increase (raise base price to say $7 ) for onsite sales but they would have to increase the price to around $8 to maintian there current profit margin on the books at other sellers. But then again we don't know what they will do. For all we know they will keep the current pricing model and hope to make it up in volume.

[Soldim]

Originally Posted by rdjack21

they would have to increase the price to around $8 to maintian there current profit margin on the books at other sellers

I'd think that with additional sale channels they would sell more books and could hence decrease prices while keeping the same profit margin per published book.

[leebase]

I agree that times have changed. eBooks are no longer secondary. If you give me the eBook, you aren't going to get me to buy the hard cover. The eBook is what I want. Authors don't have concerts to make money from. They make money selling their works. Giving away the thing that makes you money....not the "sure fire" way to win.

If I had a long series, I could see giving the first book or two away. After that, I think I'd just put up the first half of a book for free. If folks like it, they buy it. If not, they should know by half way through the book.

If an author offeres me their work for free, I pretty much accept it and say thank you. I don't pirate books even though I can get them just as easily. I find that morally wrong. So giving away ebooks is not a cure to piracy IMHO. Sure, some folks will just get the book free no matter what you do.

I've thought Baen needed to rethink the Free Library for some time, and have told them so.

[Arbait]

Respect for BAEN, but after 10 years is normal to change/move forward with the Free Library.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Books!

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

She {Lois McMaster Bujold} won't care; it won't affect her sales in any measurable way.

In fact she noticed that the Vorkosigan eBook (Memory) that isn't on the Cryoburn CD was selling about 3 times better.

And the single volume novels are now up on the Kindle store world wide and selling steadily even though all except Memory are on that CD and also, except Memory, available from Baenebooks.com in Omnibus eBook editions.

Lots of people don'tknow they can buy from a non-ereader store.