Do free ebooks increase book sales? « The Book Publicity Blog

Do free ebooks increase book sales?

Recently, several houses including HarperCollins, Random House and St. Martin’s Press have tried giving out free ebooks. The jury seems to be out on whether this move affects sales and if so, by how much. Today, TeleRead posts some feedback from a couple Tor authors about how they feel their free ebooks affected hard copy sales.

July 10, 2008 - Posted by Yen | ebooks | HarperCollins, Random House, St. Martin's Press | 1 Comment

1 Comment »

I think the problem of obscurity that one of the authors mentioned in the Teleread posts, due to lack of shelf space, limited time of a shelf, lack of promotion, and just the volume of authors and new works that constantly come out, all contribute more to low book sales than this overwhelming fear some publishers have about offering e-books at less or no cost, or even at all. DRM and the price of dedicated e-book readers is keeping e-books in an infant state at a time when publishers seem unable to put together a business model that can really take advantage of this potential new revenue stream to sell content in both e and p forms. How long, and how many studies, how much money will be lost before they wake up? Or will authors (and their agents)like the ones on the teleread site simply have to go around these relics of the past and market directly to buyers through some kind of guild/association in combination with a print on demand capability for p readers?

Comment by BillC | July 10, 2008 | Reply

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For some time now, I’ve closely followed a lot of very informative sites about media and about the publishing industry. Since I find myself quite voluble at times about issues that pertain to my job in the publicity department at a large publishing house, I thought I’d set up a book publicity blog. The purpose of this blog is provide tips, primarily, but also information about publishing / marketing trends that will help book publicists — and hopefully others in media and publishing — do our jobs with greater ease and efficiency. Please note that the opinions expressed on this blog are my own, not those of my company.

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Yen

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