Suggestion: Give all HC buyers the eBook for free

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Here's a suggestion which publishers (who are completely tied to paper) will happily ignore: I think HC buyers should always get the eBook version for free with their purchase.

Thoughts?

Amazon tried this with their upgrade program (you got the book online for extra and since you could print it, you could always print to pdf, ps... so even if theoretically you could not download it, practically you could). It got nowhere as of now.
Outside of creating buzz and for marketing purposes I see no rational reason from the publishers perspective to do that. Baen does that with their cd's and even allows their content to be posted online for free (AAC was #9, HHNF will be #10 and 1634 Baltic war will be #11), but as with their free library it makes good marketing sense since most of their popular books are long series and offering the older books for free may entice new readers who otherwise would balk at the required investment.

Liviu

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

Amazon tried this with their upgrade program (you got the book online for extra and since you could print it, you could always print to pdf, ps... so even if theoretically you could not download it, practically you could). It got nowhere as of now.

Is some branch of Amazon still doing this?

[Liviu_5]

Amazon.com is still doing it; it's called amazon upgrade, just check it at their site. However the selection is very poor (out of hundreds of books I bought from them, only 5 are available), prices are proportional to the print book so for 2 or 3 technical books that may have tempted me, it's not worth to pay the money they ask. Of course they blame it on the publishers - check the why? under "Not all books are eligible"

Liviu

Originally Posted by nekokami

Is some branch of Amazon still doing this?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Baen was truly ahead of its time... well, ahead of other publishers, anyway! The bit about cross-promoting other books in the series, plus similar books, is a natural way to advertise other material and generate more buzz and sales for your books.

So my next question is: Who knew about this? I know it's the first I've heard about it! How successful was it for Baen? And whose job was it to get the word out to everyone else? (Okay, three questions.)

Well the flippant answer is "anyone who looked at the book cover" -- it's printed on the dust jacket.

The more considered answer is probably anyone who already read their books, or happened to be in a position to run across the information -- not much more useful

As to their success, they're still doing it, so they can't be losing their shirts at it. Of course they were already established with a reasonable following, so that obviously would be a factor.

They also sell individual titles (mostly in the $4~$6 range) and Advanced Reader Copy bundles, that come in monthly installments leading up to the release date (so that you have the whole of each title the month before release -- 5 titles for $15, not too shabby).

Here's the link to their sales site, for anyone interested in a closer look: http://webscriptions.net/

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Baen was truly ahead of its time... well, ahead of other publishers, anyway! The bit about cross-promoting other books in the series, plus similar books, is a natural way to advertise other material and generate more buzz and sales for your books.

So my next question is: Who knew about this? I know it's the first I've heard about it! How successful was it for Baen? And whose job was it to get the word out to everyone else? (Okay, three questions.)

Steve:

As for promoting and who knew...
The books-with-CDs were (and are, and will be) prominently promoted inside the book-selling trade (a publisher's true customers). Each such book was clearly labelled with a "CD included" label on the cover. Lots of Baen fans (the "Barflies" of Baen's Bar) worked on getting the word out to other fans.

For "how successful"...
Several of these books were NYT best-sellers. Weber's "War of Honor" comes immediately to mind. The first 100K copies had the CD bound in. Otherwise, the best evidence I have of success is that they're still doing it. The next book with a CD will be... uh... Actually, I can't remember right now. But there IS another one coming up.

They're not doing it with every book, because adding the CD does increase production costs significantly. But it seems to have been successful enough to continue.

Dean

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

The next book with a CD will be... uh... Actually, I can't remember right now.
Dean

As far as I know,

HHNF (Hell Hath No Fury) is CD #10 Multiverse
1634 Baltic War is CD #11 Assiti Shards

As mentioned these cd's make a lot of marketing sense since Baen's succesful books are long series (the length of a series is by and large determined by the commercial success as you can find out by asking the author on Baen's Bar) and with such there is the problem of attracting new readers at the n'th book. The CD's allow this without a large upfront investment from the reader.

Liviu

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Baen was truly ahead of its time... well, ahead of other publishers, anyway! The bit about cross-promoting other books in the series, plus similar books, is a natural way to advertise other material and generate more buzz and sales for your books.

So my next question is: Who knew about this? I know it's the first I've heard about it! How successful was it for Baen? And whose job was it to get the word out to everyone else? (Okay, three questions.)

Didn't know about it myself until my book arrived from Amazon with the CD inside. Was very pleasantly surprised. Found several authors I had not tried that I like and bought their books. But best of all, I got to elliminate some that I otherwise would have had to buy to see if I liked them.

Also it's what let me know about their site & their ebooks. Have bought several and also recommended their site to others, so yes, I'd say in my case it has been very successful.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

I keep forgetting that Baen features SF genres that I am not so big on (no comments please), so I only have a few Baen books, and I never frequented their online site. And I never buy hardbacks. So for a casual Baen reader like me, I guess it was easy not to hear about it.