Post by Kilarin on Aug 11, 2005 11:55:10 GMT -5
I've got some e-marketing questions.
Baen (of Baen Books) started selling one of Lois McMaster Bujolds books for about cost, (It was running $1.25 I think) under the theory that if he could get people interested in one book for dirt cheap, they would be more likely to go out and buy more books by the same author. He also made most of David Weber's "Honor Harington" series available for free. (It was included on a CD that came with one of the last books in the series, along with permission to copy and distribute it). Here the theory was that people will be willing to try books for free that they wouldn't pay for, and if they like them, they might purchase the actual dead trees version. It worked on me, I purchased one or two of Webers collaborations that I had decided to avoid, strictly because I read the free version and decided they were better than I had expected. I also purchased at least two books by another of Baen's authors who included his works on the same CD.
Baen continues to expan its free collection with it's Baen Free Library
You offer samples of your books online, but I'm curious why you don't just put the entire text of the first book of a few of the series available for free download? Would that free download create enough interest in the rest of the series to compensate for the loss of money on the first book?
It looks like you once offered the first book of the Oerth series (The Last God) as a free read on the web. You aren't doing that anymore, so I'm assuming that either it wasn't actually getting people to purchase the rest of the series, or you were using a java reader to stop people from copying the book and folks were bypassing the security? Or was there some other reason?
You have a LOT of experience at this, so I'm just curious as to what you've learned and why you have made the e-marketing decisions you have. You probably understand this field about as well as anyone out there.
Baen (of Baen Books) started selling one of Lois McMaster Bujolds books for about cost, (It was running $1.25 I think) under the theory that if he could get people interested in one book for dirt cheap, they would be more likely to go out and buy more books by the same author. He also made most of David Weber's "Honor Harington" series available for free. (It was included on a CD that came with one of the last books in the series, along with permission to copy and distribute it). Here the theory was that people will be willing to try books for free that they wouldn't pay for, and if they like them, they might purchase the actual dead trees version. It worked on me, I purchased one or two of Webers collaborations that I had decided to avoid, strictly because I read the free version and decided they were better than I had expected. I also purchased at least two books by another of Baen's authors who included his works on the same CD.
Baen continues to expan its free collection with it's Baen Free Library
You offer samples of your books online, but I'm curious why you don't just put the entire text of the first book of a few of the series available for free download? Would that free download create enough interest in the rest of the series to compensate for the loss of money on the first book?
It looks like you once offered the first book of the Oerth series (The Last God) as a free read on the web. You aren't doing that anymore, so I'm assuming that either it wasn't actually getting people to purchase the rest of the series, or you were using a java reader to stop people from copying the book and folks were bypassing the security? Or was there some other reason?
You have a LOT of experience at this, so I'm just curious as to what you've learned and why you have made the e-marketing decisions you have. You probably understand this field about as well as anyone out there.