Do Sales of Free Books Count?
Soon after Christmas, Amazon announced they had sold more Kindle versions of books on their web site that print-on-paper editions. This is a rather remarkable figure, and one that does not bode well for the printing industry even though we are only specifically talking about one small segment of that industry. The fear is that digital forms of communication will largely replace print-on-paper (or perhaps we should say “print-on-substrate.”)
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has also been quoted as saying that he believes that the print book will eventually disappear.But Bezos may be digging his own grave rather than one for the printing industry, because there is a significant catch to Amazon’s numbers.
According to market analyst Galley Cat, referenced in the Huffington Post, “64 of the 100 bestselling eBooks, the majority, were, in fact, free, including the number one bestseller, ‘Midnight in Madrid’, by Noel Hynd.”
Publishers tend to want to make some money selling their books. Oddly enough, authors would like to get paid.
A recent video for the Addy awards conference satirizes the digital versus print argument by pitting a young woman playing the ”Social Media” (aka: “I’m a Mac”) role with a conservatively dressed paunchy male playing “Print” (aka: “I’m a PC.”)
Social Media is surprised to see Print showing up at the Addy’s saying, “I thought you were dead.”
Print responds to this rumor of his demise be recognizing that revenues have been down lately.
To which Social Media asks, “Revenues? What’s ‘Revenues’?”
Exactly!
Seems to me numbers of sales don’t matter nearly as much as revenues. Even though print-on-paper books are more expensive to produce (in general) giving them away is not a way to produce a revenue stream.It’s true that giving away one book in a series may get people to buy the rest of the series. Book publishers have been using that ploy for decades and sometimes it works nicely.
But there seems to be a trend in e-commerce that giving things away is the only way to get eyeballs, and Internet revenue is made from eyeballs. It’s just that what works for Internet companies doesn’t sound very viable for publishers. They make money selling books.
Or at least they used to.
SB
Michael J commented:
Spot on! I think the "eyeball meme du many jours is finally starting to dissipate. Everyone has seemed to figure out that eyeballs only equal profits when advertisers have nothing else to measure.
The reality is much closer to what Seth Godin, who's been pretty successful selling books and giving away content. Free to is to assemble and find tribes. To monetize you sell books and have events and anything else you can figure out.
