Neil Gaiman’s ebook results
Perfect timing. A day after I published my article on the effects of free ebooks, Neil Gaiman posts some numbers that he received from his publisher after it tried a similar experiment.
From Gaiman’s blog:
The Browse Inside Full Access promotion of American Gods drove 85 thousand visitors to our site to view 3.8 Million pages of the book (an average of 46 pages per person). On average, visitors spent over 15 minutes reading the book.
The Indies [ie. independent booksellers -- Neil] are the only sales channel where we have confidence that incremental sales were driven by this promotion. In the Bookscan data reported for Independents we see a marked increase in weekly sales across all of Neil’s books, not just American Gods during the time of the contest and promotion. Following the promotion, sales returned to pre-promotion levels.
Through an online survey, we know that 44% of fans enjoyed this browsing experience and 56% did not. Some of Neil’s fans expressed frustration with the Browse Inside tool for reading through a whole book. (This poor result is partially due to two problems which were fixed soon after the initial launch – mistaken redirect to the Flash-based reader and slow image load time)
Several people have noted that all the people who are touting their successes with free ebooks happen to have very popular blogs. I noted as much on an article about creative commons licenses I wrote last year. This is somewhat of a given, a kind of elephant-in-the-room situation. Yes, a free promotion isn’t worth anything unless you have an effective distribution system. That’s been true since before the internet existed.
But so far in all my research in the subject I’ve never come across someone who went the free ebook route and regretted it. And I think it’s an especially effective tool for promoting sequels by releasing the first book for free. That way the product you’re actually trying to sell (the sequel) isn’t in any sort of danger whatsoever.
Obviously, it’s a big advantage to offer an e-book if you’re Neil Gaiman as opposed to Cliff Burns, just as it’s easier for Radiohead and Trent Reznor to release their work without the benefit of record companies. Less well-known groups aren’t going to have two millions downloads (or whatever). However, these technologies are still emerging and the dust has yet to settle. I decided to publish on-line to protect my work from inept tampering AND to access readers directly–in both cases the decision has turned out great for me. Some writers use their sites as promotional tools but I’ve decided to go one further. I no longer submit work anywhere, nor will I sign any deal with a publisher that doesn’t retain my autonomy and give me control over cover design, layout, input on promotion, etc. As I wrote on Redroom: I’d rather starve in a garret than sell out like a whore and live in a mansion. I’ve walked away from a movie deal, anthology appearances, publishers and agents because they failed to meet my terms. “Integrity” isn’t the brand name of a shampoo, it’s fundamental to my approach to my work, my ART…