A Call For Opinions
May 26th, 2007In 1998 I wrote a young-adult novel entitled Skye Object 3270a. It was set in the Deception Well story world, but was otherwise independent of that book and its characters. The novel didn’t find a publisher – no one knew quite what to make of it, I suspect – and it has been sitting ever since, until this spring when I decided I would offer it as an e-book. My first plan was to charge a nominal $5 for the PDF, and I already wrote most of the script to automatically email a copy when a purchase is made… but now I am reconsidering. Is it better to follow instead the model of most open source software, and make the novel available for anonymous download? Certainly it should get much higher circulation that way, and then those who enjoy it can make a small payment if they wish, or return to the website to purchase other books.
So what is the best business model? To make a few dollars upfront? Or to try to get my name out to a wider audience? At the moment, I am definitely leaning toward Plan B. If anyone has thoughts on this, I’d be interested to hear them.
Thanks!
Posted on: Saturday, May 26th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Categories: Publishing, Writing.
May 27th, 2007 at 6:06 am
I say go with your gut. If you think giving it away will help cast a wider net, or if charging a nominal fee will help fund keeping it online. Free music provided by musicians directly tends to have a greater impact, but I’m not sure if the same is true for novels.
I had forgotten about this story, but looking back at your other site I remembered wondering how soon it would be available. So I’m glad to see that it’ll find an audience.
Andrew
May 29th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Hello Linda,
Love your work. Your nanotech novels had an impact on me.
As a long time ebook reader, I have a few suggestions.
1. Please consider publishing in formats other than PDF. PDF is fine on a computer but it does not do as well on small hand devices. (I read mostly on a Palm Tungsten PDA.) I suggest the MobiPocket prc format (http://www.mobipocket.com/) or the eReader pdb format. (http://www.ereader.com/). Or both! They have free readers for almost any platform. (And the ebook makers are cheap.)
Also, you might check out the formats that Baen Books publishes in (samples here -> http://www.baen.com/library/.)
2. Have you considered using an eBook publisher? You would get a lot more exposure that way. I know I buy quite a lot of ebooks from Baen and eReader. I notice that you already have two books at eReader — Memory and Limit of Vision. (http://www.ereader.com/product/detail/10754?book=Memory)
I highly recommend Baen. They are looking to expand their range of books and would probably be interested in republishing out of print work as well as your new book.
If you do self-publish, I recommend that you charge something upfront. Between $4 and $6 seems to be the sweet spot for me.
Best regards and Mahalo,
Clyde Wisham
May 29th, 2007 at 6:24 am
I enjoyed the nanotech quartet, and would pay $5 for the PDF of another book in that series. If you release it for free, you might want to time it to match the publication of an actual print book so it serves as promotion.
May 29th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Gentlemen, thank you! You’ve given me a lot to think about. It was interesting that the writers I talked to were more inclined to put it out for free.
Clyde, I looked briefly into other e-book formats, but will give it another look (the new website is not quite ready yet anyway).
Max, your thoughts were pretty close to those of another friend of mine. I will think things over for at least a few more days.
This topic is still open if anyone else has an opinion. Thanks again!
May 31st, 2007 at 2:59 pm
You might think of offering a free sample (say, the first chapter) and charging $5 or so for the full book (either via an eBook vendor or independently).
In that way you would be offering the best of both worlds. I would definitely pay for the book straightaway.
Keep up the good work!
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 am
Hi Linda
I would guess you’ve read Cory Doctorow on creative commons and free e-books – craphoud.com. He gives his stuff away as he sees it as promoting his name and selling more of the “real” versions of the works.
Unfortunately you’re not in quite the same position. Are you able to get your e-book on to a couple of the more reputable e-book sellers sites? Some of them do a range of free books (though maybe they could just sell it as usual while you do a free version (maybe in a different format) for the people who manage to find your own website.
Is print on demand a possibility? Then you could offer a non virtual alternative. There is Cosmos Books in the states and a few specializing in sf here in the UK.
Oh yeah, James Patrick Kelly has some interesting things to say about giving stuff away.
I notice you say your website is still a work in progress, so maybe you know, but I got the following error – Fatal error: Call to a member function print_header() on a non-object in [snip] on line 1 – when I tried to download your book.
Thanks, I’ll be back to download it a a few weeks.
Simon
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Hi Simon — thanks for the heads-up! Everytime my hosting company upgrades, certain necessary files get re-named. I fixed the issue in the main directory, but forgot that it had to be done in several places. Good thing this is a simple website….
At any rate, I’ve been meaning to open up the the e-book for general download at no charge. So give me a few days to get that done.
I’ve been distracted by other things, but I do want to move on to making hard copies available for some things, and will take another look at POD.
… by the way, your cottage looks wonderful!