28 Dec
Posted by: admin in: Free books, Open Educational Resources
Not sure that anyone will want to read this; however, if you’re researching the influence of free digital books on print sales the review of literature may be helpful to you. Below is a version of the first two chapters of my dissertation. I’ve had to take out a few parts because some of the studies I cite have to be published before I can legally cite them; however, most of these chapters are available. I welcome any feedback you are willing to offer.
These chapters are available at the below link:
On another note — all the data for the dissertation. has been collected. Here is the short version of the results:
102,556 free e-books were downloaded during the study (18,000 more since the study “ended”). This number seems to be sufficiently large to indicate that there is a demand for free e-books and that enough people viewed them as to possibly have an impact on sales.
In the ten weeks following the free books being made available, sales of the seven books studied increased 25.9%. In contrast, the previous year sales of these seven books decreased 38.2% over the same time period. Furthermore, in 2009 the comparison books declined 15.6% (even after the title with the largest decreases in sales had been excluded). In 2008 the comparison books declined 6.4% (after the two titles with the largest decreases in sales had been excluded). Thus, based on historical and comparison sales it would be expected that print sales of the seven books would decrease during the ten weeks following the free versions of the books being made available. This decrease would be expected not as a result of the free versions; rather, it would be expected based on the fact that sales decreased the year previously, and well as for the comparison titles. However, sales did not decrease. The fact that sales increased when a decrease was to be expected is one of the most important findings of this study.
More to come!
One Response
Neal
07|Jan|2010 1It seems like your research indicates that people want to find new books without jumping a price barrier, and that when they find something they like they are willing to pay for it. Anjuno.com is trying to set up something like that using a pick your price model. There should be some interesting changes coming to the book world in the next few years.
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