Comments on: What happens to books when the Kindle is free?

By: Tiffany Kennedy

Tiffany Kennedy — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:41:44 +0000

My bf got me a Kindle Fire for my birthday and I love it. It’s lightweight and easy to use straight out of the box. The first thing I recommend anyone with a new Kindle do is install the nook app. We got our instructions from http://www.kindlemad.com through google.

It basically unlocks all the Android marketplace apps and unlocks the device. Super happy!

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 03:23:43 +0000

I think people have such a hard time with the concept of “the cream rises to the top”. You don’t need to be backed up by a huge publishing company to be a popular writer or create a best seller. It’s what the publishing companies want you to think, of course.

By: Self published writer brought this on themselves.

Self published writer brought this on themselves. — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:36:31 +0000

“You might not think authors — or Amazon, for that matter — would be able to generate much from 99 cent books, but you would be wrong. Young-adult author Amanda Hocking has become famous for making millions of dollars from her Kindle books in less than a year, without the help of an agent or a publisher (although she has since signed a publishing contract). Other self-published authors such as John Locke have sold millions of copies of their books. Some authors, such as J.A. Konrath, have noted that when they lowered the price of their books to 99 cents, they sold orders of magnitude more copies.

This message hasn’t gotten through to traditional publishers…”

If your book is only 99 cents -of which that writer only earns a 35 % royalty- then it doesn’t matter how many copies they sell because they’re not making anything. It balances out.

Why is it when people want to “prove” how “profitable” 99 cents is they always bring up the same 2-3 people (Hocking, Locke, sometimes Konrath)? Can’t you find anymore “examples” of this or are there only 3 to begin with?

And btw, Amazon is NOT going to GIVE you a free Kindle. Amazon doesn’t work on FREE and 99 cents-you want something from them, they expect to be paid according because they’re in the business of making money.

Writers are not, which is why they’re in the situation they’re in. Self published writers have put “themselves” in this situation where they’re trapped in 99 cents and not pushing the volume to make such a low price even make sense, let alone be profitable.

Now they’re stuck. And broke. Meanwhile, Amazon is slated to bask in another financial bonanza with ads in Kindles. And poor self published writers with their 99 cents will see none of that.

By: Eva Hamori

Eva Hamori — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 06:53:30 +0000

Publishers publish such a narrow variety of books for the mass reader. I love the idea that more quirky, outside the box writers have a chance to saturate the market. With information passing so quickly, writers who blog, write shorter stories, even small online magazines for communities, may have a shot at widening their readers.

By: Michael Riser

Michael Riser — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:12:14 +0000

Taste is everything, I guess. I hate ebooks, ereaders, and staring at screens more than I already do. Why anyone would pay to continue staring at screens is beyond me. I’ll keep my books, thanks.

By: agavin

agavin — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:49:41 +0000

Amazon can never truly offer Kindles for “free,” too many people would “order” them. Only a finite number can be built any given month. They can, however, keep lowering the price point to make demand keep up with manufacturing capacity. At a low enough price, they are effectively free. Hell, if you are a serious reader that is the case now at $79. It will be the case for anyone who reads at all at an easily reachable slightly lower price. Sadly, there are vast numbers of people, even in America, who read about one novel a decade, and there is little point in Amazon giving them a chunk of money they will never use.

By: Doyle Buehler

Doyle Buehler — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 12:11:55 +0000

This is a typical model that can be found in a number of industries. The technology is not really the driver of this economy, but it is the enabler. the real value is in the information and in this case the ebooks. Information is the value economy that more and more will make significant monetary gains with.

Free is a used to get a high adoption rate of the technology. Amazon will make more on the ebook sales, as they are spanned across multiple sales, not single unit sales of “technology”. Business is information. Information is ideas. Ideas are of value.

Doyle Buehler
http://twitter.com/onekanzuru
http://kanzuru.com

By: Jack Caughran

Jack Caughran — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:25:07 +0000

We have the same thing in our town. We call it a public library. And it’s free.

By: Aaron Markowitz

Aaron Markowitz — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:40:38 +0000

I’d buy Game of Thrones a few chapters at a time rather than waiting 5 years for the next book.

By: Kirsten Mortensen

Kirsten Mortensen — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:02:30 +0000

The Swedish band OK Go works with sponsors to fund their tours.

It’s similar to the way artists once worked with wealthy patrons.

In an article for the WSJ, Damian Kulash, the band’s lead singer and guitarist wrote that his arrangement gives OK Go “complete creative control.” They get the money they need “to make what we want,” their fans get free videos, and their sponsors get exposure. “While most bands struggle to wrestle modest video budgets from labels that see videos as loss leaders, ours wind up making us a profit.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703727804576017592259031536.html

My worry is not that ad-supported books will result in worthless writing. It can’t — because if the writing is worthless the books won’t sell, which means the ads won’t have value.

My worry is that writers will be cut out of the deal.

What we really need is a way to broker our own ad deals.

The idea of a Google stepping in and becoming the middle man would represent a huge missed opportunity for writers, IMO. Perish that thought, thank you very much.