Have you ever wakened in the middle of the night with a random thought that seemed to come from nowhere? It used to happen to me a lot when I was working. A solution to a problem would come to me in the middle of the night and I kept a notepad beside my bed to capture the moment. It doesn’t happen as frequently now, but when it does, I get up and write it on a white board in my office. Sometimes, I can even decipher it the next day.
A thought came to me last night, although I didn’t write it down. I must have been thinking about writing a blog post before I went to bed. My thought was actually a little more complex than usual because it was in two parts: Why am I, as a reader, expecting to read e-books for free and why, as a writer, am I occasionally offering my e-books for free?
As a reader, I think the answer is because they are there. Check out Amazon and you will find free e-books every day of the week. It’s kind of like a professional athlete who is offered a $24 million contract. They are not going to turn it down. I’m not going to turn down a free book. Maybe there is an expectation that if is the author is unknown, we don’t want to invest anything in their work. We can read to our heart’s content and never spend a cent. But is that right? Is it fair to the author?
Reading is a hobby. So is golf and a golfer will spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on equipment and green fees. Fishermen spend money on gear. Skiers spend money on equipment and lift tickets. Moviegoers spend money for a two-hour movie. Even if our hobby is sitting in a coffee shop, we will spend exorbitant amounts on specialty coffee and we will sit there and read an e-book on our device that we downloaded for free. But why should a book that offers around six hours of entertainment be free when there is a cost attached to any other hobby you can think of?
Indulge me while I put on my author hat. There are some questionable benefits to authors to offer free books, and some that are worthwhile. Let’s start with the questionable ones. Authors need reviews so when books are offered for free, the hope is that readers will at least provide some feedback. But thousands of free downloads will provide a return in reviews that can be counted on one hand. Amazon counts free downloads as sales so a free day or two can boost the author’s profile temporarily. The key word is “temporarily.” The boost is fleeting. If the author is exclusive to Amazon, he or she is paid for page reads. There is always an uptick in page reads after a free day, but that peters out after about three days.
There are some tangible benefits to offering free books in certain situations. The main benefit is to introduce a reader to an author. It makes sense for an author to offer the first book in a series or a short story introducing characters. The reader might be enticed to purchase other books by the same author. It’s a valuable marketing technique.
As readers, we shouldn’t be reluctant to try new authors, even if they are independent. E-books by independent authors that are not free are usually in the $2.99 to $4.99 range compared to $16 for a well known author. That’s less than a specialty coffee! There are some great authors who have remained independent or extracted themselves from contracts because traditional publishers are not providing the same services anymore. We may pay for the occasional book we can’t finish, but we have also paid for a specialty coffee we couldn’t drink. It doesn’t mean we will stop drinking coffee.
Authors invest their talent and considerable time and money in writing, editing, book cover design, and marketing and they deserve to be compensated. I, for one, am offering my short story, An Interview With Marcie Kane, free for signing up for my newsletter. The first book in The Marcie Kane Thriller Collection, The Vanishing Wife, is available at a reduced price. The rest of the series will only be offered at a reduced price from time to time. But not free! I hope other authors will consider doing something similar.
Damn the 3 am epiphanies!