pass-along
Neil Gaiman, on giving away American Gods for free, in response to an indie bookseller worried that this would hurt sales at his store:
I don't see this as either they get it for free or they come and buy it from you. I see it as Where do you get the people who come in and buy the books that keep you in business from?
The books you sell have "pass-along" rates. They get bought by one person. Then they get passed along to other people. The other people find an author they like, or they don't.
When they do, some of them may come in to your book store and buy some paperback backlist titles, or buy the book they read and liked so that they can read it again. You want this to happen.
Just as a bookseller who regards a library as the enemy, because people can go there and read -- for free! -- what he sells, is missing that the library is creating a pool of people who like and take pleasure in books, will be his customer base, and are out there spreading the word about authors and books they like to other people, some of whom will simply go out and buy it.
If readers find (for free -- in a library, or on-line, or by borrowing from a friend, or on a window-sill) an author they really like, and that author has a nice spanking new hardback coming out, they are quite likely to come in to your shop and buy the nice spanking new hardback. You want that to happen. You really want that to happen a lot, because you'll make more in profit on each of the nice spanking new hardbacks than you will on the paperbacks (or, probably, on anything else in the shop).
I don't believe that anybody out there who can afford a copy of American Gods is going to not buy it (or another of my books) because it's available out there on line for nothing. (Not at this point, anyway.) I think it's a lot more likely that some of the people who read it will find an author they like, and buy more books. Which is good news for people who run bookshops.
Link to the rest. It's just too bad that HarperCollins released the book in such a horribly unreadable format (as detailed by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing).
I don't see this as either they get it for free or they come and buy it from you. I see it as Where do you get the people who come in and buy the books that keep you in business from?
The books you sell have "pass-along" rates. They get bought by one person. Then they get passed along to other people. The other people find an author they like, or they don't.
When they do, some of them may come in to your book store and buy some paperback backlist titles, or buy the book they read and liked so that they can read it again. You want this to happen.
Just as a bookseller who regards a library as the enemy, because people can go there and read -- for free! -- what he sells, is missing that the library is creating a pool of people who like and take pleasure in books, will be his customer base, and are out there spreading the word about authors and books they like to other people, some of whom will simply go out and buy it.
If readers find (for free -- in a library, or on-line, or by borrowing from a friend, or on a window-sill) an author they really like, and that author has a nice spanking new hardback coming out, they are quite likely to come in to your shop and buy the nice spanking new hardback. You want that to happen. You really want that to happen a lot, because you'll make more in profit on each of the nice spanking new hardbacks than you will on the paperbacks (or, probably, on anything else in the shop).
I don't believe that anybody out there who can afford a copy of American Gods is going to not buy it (or another of my books) because it's available out there on line for nothing. (Not at this point, anyway.) I think it's a lot more likely that some of the people who read it will find an author they like, and buy more books. Which is good news for people who run bookshops.
Link to the rest. It's just too bad that HarperCollins released the book in such a horribly unreadable format (as detailed by Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing).