9 Responses

1. Neal

   07|Jan|2010 1

   It 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.

2. John Dale

   29|Mar|2011 2

   There is so much free material available for download today that it is mind boggling! Nonetheless, there is still a perception that free equates to poor quality and that you get what you pay for. For this reason, there will continue to be a market and many people will be happy to pay a high price for what they perceive as being high value.

3. Jason Scofield

   31|Mar|2011 3

   Hi John,

   This is quite an interesting study. I do a lot of reading for both educational and recreational purposes and it’s interesting to compare my own behaviour with the stats you give here.

   The interesting thing is, when it comes to recreational reading (fiction) I will go out and buy the physical book 100% the time, because nothing beats the feeling of lying in bed or in front of the fireplace with a good book. Howeverm when it comes to educational stuff and work related stuff it’s almost the opposite and I don’t mind spening hours reading e-books on the computer.

   Keep up the good work.

   Jason Scofield
   Webmaster,
   Wendy Houses Cape Town

4. Colin L.

   31|Mar|2011 4

   “The interesting thing is, when it comes to recreational reading (fiction) I will go out and buy the physical book 100% the time”

   Jason, I used to do that as well. However now with the Kindle and IPAD, I now buy only transfer the ebook to my I-Tunes and read next to the fire. My Mom actually will go out and buy the book still, even if it is on the computer. I honestly think there is a generational influence on this.

   Colin
   Property Management Thousand Oaks

5. Slash

   01|Apr|2011 5

   I’ve worked in publishing for some years (I’ve been a project leader for the Harry Potter books at a publishing house that had the rights in one of the European countries) and I agree with the statement that free digital publications can help you sell printed books.
   Just as you say in the document, good content brings lots of visitors to your site and a small percentage of them will buy the book. But the point is, one you get them, you can offer them more books or other products they may be interested in – you just have to do it right and not be too pushy about it. My experience is that this will make them come back again and you get a returning customer from a free book.

6. Sam Weston

   11|Apr|2011 6

   Although the number of free e-books downloaded is high at 102,556 I wonder just what sort of percentage of these are actually read. There seems to be something of a ‘free’ culture which is especially strong on the Internet and I believe that a large number of people just download things because they are free and never have any intention of actually doing anything with them.

   Sam – The Club Car and EZ GO golf carts guy

7. Michael

   11|Apr|2011 7

   “There are a lot of factors at play here.

   Freely available books would help people develop a reading habit- which would help increase the sales of other books.

   However, some people may restrict themselves to free books alone if a decent collection is available, so that may hurt sales.

   A lot more data is needed to make any kind of analysis out of this.

   Michael Holman,
   Webmaster, http://omega3information.com/“

8. Henry

   11|Apr|2011 8

   - 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 -

   I think this statement speaks volumes. By giving something out free you sometime stimulate ensuing purchases of a product. Look at how Costco gives out the samples e.g., it’s the same for books.

9. Dave

   18|Apr|2011 9

   I believe that if your product, whether a book or something else, can be freely obtained by those who know how, it can actually strengthen its position in the market. An obvious example of this is the operating systems and software of Microsoft, which have been pirated all over the world, making them the de facto standard. (It remains to be seen how their more recent forays into copy-prevention will affect their dominance.)