Well, it does state that they are only giving away 1,500 copies. I’m guessing their strategy is like that old shampoo commercial. . . “if you like it, you’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends”, etc.

They also create an urgent need – it says on the sidebar, “only a few free copies left!”, so the visitor is coaxed into that mentality of, “I better get it NOW!”

It is an interesting opening strategy, but as you point out, not one that will keep you in business for very long.

I got my copy a few weeks ago, but have not read it yet.

If you are a writer, publishing with a small press in a run of 1,000 … you’re likely to make pennies per hour anyway, if you are lucky. Is the work you did (say, two years of your soul) worth the few hundred or couple of thousand bucks? Would you prefer to be read or to “make money”? …I never would have come into possession of this novel, except it was free.

Now, for the publishing house, what’s the true cost. You guys will know the numbers, but say that’s $5 a copy + shipping x 1,000 copies = $6,000.

From a philanthropic view, if each novel that ships generates say $20 for charity, you’ve just generated about 20k for charity for the cost of 6k. Pretty good returns.

From a marketing point of view, how many small literary presses have you written about recently on 26thstory?

Hugh,
Maybe I’m cynical or a pessimist, but really. . . do you actually think people would donate $20.00 each, even for charity?
Those numbers are quite inflated. I do a lot of charity and donation type work and the honest truth is that people tend to take and take, not willing to give a cent or even their time in return. Then add to the mix these tough economic times and you’ll get even less of a return.
Granted, I’m not saying that charity work will not get any money, it will, but not those kinds of numbers.
Terrible, yes. But honest truth.

While I don’t believe that giving your books away for free and hoping people will voluntarily recompense you is a model likely to replace regular publishing anytime soon, I do think it’s a brave way to establish a name for yourself and get your work out into the marketplace.

Seth made some good points, and I think he’s right that pubs focus on the launch of new hardcovers too much. As a bookseller, my focus is providing good advice about good books for each customer. Sometimes the variables coalesce around a title that happens to be new in hardcover, but more often the answer to the reader’s needs is an older paperback. The two main factors driving that are price ($26-28 for new hardcover fiction is too steep) and the best fit for the customers needs. Usually, I can suggest a greater number of titles to meet the reader’s needs in paperback (simply because I’ve been a bookseller for a long time and a reader for longer) and both parties are happy.

Another important and overlooked factor in this is that out of all the new hardcovers published annually, each bookseller can only read a tiny number, and only hear about another relatively small percentage, so there are far fewer new hardcovers that we can intelligently discuss compared to the number of paperbacks that we’re familiar with and able to enthusiastically handsell.

Publishers swamp bookstores with unrequested galleys, but most go unread, gathering dust in the backroom. One strategy to change this would be a system where frontline booksellers are able to easily and quickly request and receive galleys (electronically or physically) — because then we could read the books we’re interested in months before the pub date, and thus could write reviews, blurbs for the indie Next list, blog postings, etc. Despite my access to hundreds of galleys, about than half the books I read each year I purchase the week they come out, which enables me to handsell them but prevents me blogging, blurbing or reviewing them in advance of publication. I do read quite a few galleys, so I’m not saying the galley distribution model is pointless, just flawed. Publishers fail to capitalize on many booksellers’ latent enthusiasm for certain authors or subject matter. Maybe publishers need to set up a social network for booksellers, where they can preview each season’s books, and field galley requests. Booksellers could set up a profile and list the genres or subject areas they are knowledgeable about, and maybe then more galleys would find their way to interested booksellers in a timely manner. Bloggers & other tastemakers could also be invited, so there might be more advance buzz.

Going back to the reasons that paperbacks are more often what I end up handselling, I want to point out that the field of titles booksellers have to handsell is reduced immensely by titles going out of print relatively quickly. This is particularly bad in genre fiction, where books are sometimes out of print within two years, but also a problem in nonfiction. Better availability in print on demand and ebook format would be a good solution to this problem.

Another opportunity that I see growing in the coming years is that once somebody has read something in ebook form and liked it, there is a good chance they will then want their own personal physical copy — many of us still revere books as physical objects — now we can essentially try (often at a lower price) before we buy (at full price). I know some people who end up buying ebook and paper editions of the same book. When more people are buying relatively cheap ebooks, a decent number of those readers will want physical copies, and some of those will want hardcovers for their permanent libraries. This will present further opportunity for print on demand. So Seth’s intuition about giving content away for free as a way to build a relationship with readers that will bring in income many times over the course of the relationship is correct.

Rather than focus on the idea of “giving content away for free” however, I think it’s important to focus more on repurposing content or drawing on content to create value. For example, for Seth’s new book, Tribes, he invited readers of his blog to join a private online community he created. In return he asked that we pre-order his new book. Because of Seth’s long history of spreading his ideas for free through his blog and elsewhere, many people, including me, judged the bargain to be a fair and attractive one. Now we are learning far more than just the lessons in Tribes (the book) through daily interactions with like minded individuals and Seth himself on Triiibes.com (the social network). For me, this is a clear win for both parties.

Other ways to use the ideas/plot/characters soon to be enshrined in a printed book that the author hopes to sell could be as simple as blogging about them, or as complicated as working with some high school students to make a short film, benefiting the students, the readers/viewers, and building awareness and interest. It seems to me that the factor causing most of the derision is a lack of a road map of ways to position the ideas/content/characters from a book project into any other media. This is breaking relatively new ground, and that’s always daunting. Writers will have to face the fact that the market is more complicated than ever before, and it’s not enough to simply be a good writer anymore.

Happily, writers have a tool which allows their fans to help them repurpose their content/ideas/characters in ways that get them out into the great global discussion: the creative commons license. This license allows fans of the writer’s work to create films, songs, audio recordings, translations and other creative projects based on the author’s work without payment, so long as their derivative work is distributed for free. Before you scoff, consider that this means that writers who may not also be good marketers/filmmakers/bloggers can get free help from people who may be talented in these areas, and who also have an enthusiasm for the writer’s work and an eagerness to spread the word. Thus writers can harness the power of their talented fan base to promote their work. Google the work of science-fiction novelist Cory Doctorow for examples of these fan-created derivative works, and learn more about creative commons licenses at http://creativecommons.org/ So maybe that indicates at least one way where fiction authors can make use of Seth’s ideas to revitalize the promotion of their work and spread word of their books through the networked world.

As for speaking engagements, poet David Whyte found a niche for himself as speaker/creativity trainer to corporations, so why couldn’t suspense novelists take their research on hacking and give worst-case scenario talks to silicon valley startups, or romance novelists become romance advisors to match-making websites? Heck, they could think of the work as research for their next novels.

scroll down on the front page of
http://www.concordfreepress.com/

and you’ll see a long list of people who did give. $30, $50, $40, $60, $375.

one problem I see here is that this may not be creating any new giving, just “attaching” it to a free book.

as for the cynicism, seems to me there are many more things worth cynicism in life than a neat experiment like this.

again: how much money do you think your average small literary press makes in a year? answer: not a whole hell of a lot. ditto for most writers. yet writers and little publishers slave away, writing and printing, because they love books, not because they expect to get rich.

so maybe there is an interesting other model, not necessarily as a business but something else altogether.

Will they be successful? Depends on how many tshirts they sell I guess.

I think it’s an interesting model. Giving away books digitally makes sense because there’s no cost involved.

Getting people to pick their free copies at local bookstores is BRILLIANT because it gets people into their local bookstore where they’ll hopefully also buy a few other books.

It also serves their purpose because it’s buzz-worthy, look here we are talking about a book that we may not have been otherwise.

I think it’s start the buzz going but at what point do people actually BUY the book? Now what’s great is that they have a limit on how many books they’re giving away; getting 1500 books out there into the universe then after that the rest are for sale.

And the good karma that goes along with donations doesn’t hurt anything either.

Hugh, I have a question for you as someone who got the book a few weeks ago. How did you hear about it? Did it cause you to talk about the book to anyone else and convince them to get it? It would be interesting to hear about it from YOUR perspective.

If I may put in my two-cents as an author about ebooks. They are the future. We all know that eventually something cheap will come out that will flood the market and become like the IPod of ebook devices.

Print books will always exist, even if it’s as a novelty item or if the print book has something of VALUE that the ebook doesn’t that will make people run out and get them. And people will want print books to add to their libraries.

Bookstores should consider, if they haven’t already, making themselves a meeting a place, a social area for refreshments, dialogue, book related events, “THE” place to be in the local community and oh, by the way we also sell books-type of model. Even though millions are communicating electronically we crave real live social interaction. Look at those video game competitions as an example thousands of teens in a huge tent playing each other on these screens but they’ll travel thousands of miles to physically be with other gamers even though they can play each other normally without ever meeting each other. We have an inner need to interact face to face.

Right now it’s interesting, a lot of author’s wonder since everything’s going digitally why do they need a publisher anymore? Amazon/Kindle allows you to upload your books directly and whether you have a major publisher or you independently publish you still have to do the exact same amount of publicity and promotion on your own. Author’s are wondering, what do you need them for then? They wonder in the case of Kindle, then why do you need an agent either. It cuts out the middle men completely.

Agents could be replaced by Intellectual Property Attorneys or managers with IP degrees that give writers the “attention” they need. People who know how to exploit all the other rights available such as film rights. But filmmakers too have the tools to make quality movies HD digitally too. They can upload to Netflix directly, all they need is a way to upload their film to a movie chain theater website so that the film is distributed in whatever cities they’d like for a fee and they won’t need a studio anymore.

And furthermore most major publishers are now only this: printing and shipping houses. They provide credibility and an umbrella label but other than that?

What will always be needed in the future is this: a Book Promotion & Publicity Company hired by the author as an outside firm and an Intellectual Property Company to watch your back legally and exploit your rights.

It’s an interesting & exciting time in publishing ….

Right now, having worked with a major publisher and done so independently I’m re-thinking my future as an author about which route I want to go, weighing the pro’s and cons and I’m doing some really new and interesting things right now that I’m set to roll out shortly …

Sorry to ramble on … I’m just passionate about the changes that are happening in the industry.

Hugh- Their model of free e-books is not something bold and new. Many small press have been doing it for years, and some of the larger publishers have followed.
As far as my cynicism, yep, you guessed it, I’m cynical with other things as well.

With regard to e-books and the publishing industry, it’s hard to tell what the future will bring. E-books have been out for quite some time, it’s really nothing new. However, after much discussion with many other writers and readers, I’ve come to the conclusion that e-books will never replace the hard copy. Too many people love holding the book, turning the pages.
The publishing industry is ripe for change, it has been a long time coming. I hope that the changes will reflect a less wasteful business model.

And, as far as speaking engagements for novelists. . . there are a ton of opportunities, but you have to look around. For instance, I tend to find places like sci-fi/fantasy conventions a great experience. Another place to look into is a coffee shop – books and coffee what a great combo! A friend of mine writes children’s books and talks at schools around the country. Think outside the box (of the book store), and you’ll see plenty of opportunity for novelists to get out and be seen.

@Jeff: A writer friend of mine (who knows I do lots of work in the free culture world), sent me a link to the site. I read, liked, ordered the book. Posted about it here:
http://blog.bookoven.com/?p=238

Emailed a few friends about it.

I think this is great. It isn’t something that a business can lean on to get it through tough economic times, obviously, but I don’t think that’s the point. Two things happen here. First, judging solely on the title, this seems like a pretty nice tie-in for the book. Why not “give” a book called Give and Take away? It makes perfect sense. The second thing it achieves, and this works whether or not anybody donates at all, is name recognition. People will now remember this tiny publishing company for doing something that was outrageous with just a few hundred (1500) copies of their first novel that probably wasn’t going to sell like hotcakes anyway.

And since I’m not equipped for TrackBack, you’ve got a link on my site where I’m blogging about this at http://www.jonathandozierezell.com/blog/4/Literary Freebies.