Open Media Review

Tor Authors on Results of Free Electronic Books

Bloggasm has a nice piece summing up the results of Tor’s free ebook giveaway so far. I like that the poster spoke with participating authors directly. The worst case saw the giveaway have no effect one way or another on the author’s sales. One of the authors interviewed was John Scalzi who as usual has some pretty articulate thoughts on the subject.

“‘Scientifically’?” he wrote to me in an email. “Probably not, unless you somehow managed to control (or at least account for and factor in) every incident of someone discussing your work and or going down a decision path to acquire the work, which is probably more work than it’s worth. But I don’t think that ’scientifically’ is the standard required here; I think ‘heuristically’ is probably better. If you consistently see a rise in sales of an author’s work after the release of a free e-book, then heuristically you have a good idea it’s beneficial.”

I think there’s a key implication, here, to which the article did not speak. Anything that increases visibility of a work is generally going to help the author. If a free ebook doesn’t directly lead to a sale, it may yield benefits in other ways. In particular, an ebook could simply fuel word of mouth buzz, especially in blogs and podcasts where the availability of the work makes it attractive for review and discussion.

The Tor giveaway is more of a cross subsidy, as it is tied to their newsletter. In return for helping them t build a readership for the newsletter and the forthcoming site, you get free ebooks. I think direct release is more effective, especially since most of the time I have seen authors do so, it has been part of a larger marketing push which improves the author’s identity as a brand.

Unfortunately, the giveaway looks like it will be wrapping up with the launch of Tor’s new site. Several of the authors expressed an interest in giving away their works beyond that. Since Tor has published several of Cory Doctorow’s books, perhaps if those authors were to approach the publisher about using CC or similar licenses for future works, they’d be agreeable.

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