So now the A to Z Challenge is done and I suppose a lot of people are doing the IWSG non-challenge today. Anyway, I mentioned in this entry that I followed former Forbes film critic Scott Mendelson's Substack but I didn't want to pay to subscribe because I don't have the money or inclination to pay for what are essentially blog entries.
About the middle of March I decided to finally unsubscribe. Why? Because he wasn't offering anything for free anymore. Pretty much every post was for paid subscribers so I could only read the headline and first few sentences. I figured I could do that just as well on BlueSky so why bother with getting emails I couldn't even read?
What this really brings up to me is the issue of how much authors and other content creators should offer for free. I have a few books for free on Kindle and Amazon reports make it kind of annoying when I see I have 15 "sales" and 13 are just free books because I don't get paid for them and thus don't really care. I also have a couple of other free books on "Prolific Works," including one that you can also get if you subscribe to my newsletter--which is free to read since it's just advertising new books and stuff.
The point being that I have some stuff for free but far more is paid content. Of course a lot of people would prefer that everything was free. But then the author makes no money, so the hell with that. At the same time, when everything costs money, it's harder to lure readers in because they might not want to spend money on an unknown quantity.
It's kind of a balancing act then where you need some things for free and some things to charge money for. How much in large part probably depends on how much content you have. I have a lot of Eric Filler books, so it's easy to keep a few of them free. I have enough PT Dilloway books that it doesn't hurt to keep Chance of a Lifetime free and it does occasionally spark a few sales of the sequels. If you only have one or two books then you probably don't want to offer a whole one for free. You could just do a sample. Or maybe write a short story in that world as a prequel or involving a different character or something. Something that can give people a taste of your writing and the world of your story so maybe they'll want to dive in.
That's baiting the hook, which is just one of the first hurdles. Of course then the next problem is if they take the bait, you need to reel them in. Unfortunately a lot of people just want to gobble up the bait and then swim away. Or to use a better example, they're like those people who go into Costco or wherever and eat all the samples and leave without buying anything. That is unfortunately probably 95-99% of the "customers" who download free stuff.
With books a large part of that is these people who download free stuff aren't necessarily reading it right away--or ever. They've probably hoarded hundreds or thousands of free books and will never actually read most of them. Still others might simply decide they don't like your book and don't want to read anything else. And some of them will be vocal with bad reviews or less vocal with bad ratings, which I usually think is a bit tacky for something you got for free. If you're lucky they'll just slink away without a bad rating/review.
Here's a good example of the typical "reader" of free books:
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This Karen Kathy is mad because she got a paperback ARC (all ARCs are paperback, BTW) and doesn't want to have to give a review of it. In other words she wanted the most expensive format for free with no strings attached. And of course hasn't read the paperback yet. "Where did I go wrong?" Let me count the ways. But that's the sort of freeloader you're going to get with most free books given away. They range from useless to a liability for authors.
The point being, if your fish doesn't like your bait then it's just going to let it go and swim off. That is literally where the idea of "hooking" readers comes from.
So you need some free content, but not everything should be free or you make no money. But also your content needs to be good enough that readers will want more. The second part is a lot harder.
Now you can unsubscribe from my blog.
(BTW, the other reason I unsubscribed from Mendelson's Substack is it just wasn't that interesting. Some of that is not his fault as he picked kind of a shitty time to do this. I mean with the strikes over and everything getting "back to normal" there just hasn't been that much going on in the movie biz. January-February the box office was pretty weak, so about all he could talk about was how we should go to the movies to support movies that really weren't that good anyway. Maybe there will be more stuff to talk about once some bigger movies hit theaters, though this year there aren't a lot.)
4 comments:
Complaining it's not a hardback? Has she never received a review copy before?
With so much content free on the Internet, a lot of people expect everything to be free.
I think people in the United States are having a difficult time grappling with their desire for people to all make "living wages" and to still somehow get really cheap goods? These things do not play well with each other at all, and I do think it is applicable to what you are saying in the above. I don't know how to sort it all out. There are many days when I think that I don't understand how the world works anymore. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that my present understanding of how capitalism is supposed to work depends highly on a caste system, with people doing labor for little money on the bottom and others who do nothing but rake it in on the top. It doesn't sound fair at all, and why would anyone support such a system unless you were guaranteed never to be on the bottom.
I would hope that on Goodreads the terms of the give away would be clear. Sending an uncorrected proof is not something I would do. However, her expecting a hardcover is also unrealistic. It's also odd how she thinks she has to do a review. Like she's afraid she'll get sued if she doesn't. As if it's the end of the world to write an honest review.
@Cindy uncorrected proofs are very common in the publishing industry. Since it can take weeks or months for someone to read a book, if you want reviews to be ready by the time the book releases, you can't wait to send a finished product.
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