Comments on: Value Perception of eBooks is going to zero

By: Marcus

Marcus — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:28:26 +0000

Wow, this article is clearly written by someone who doesn’t understand anything about the digital age. As with any device, it is only as good as the content that is available for it. Thus meaning, if digital content had no value, then digital devices would cease to exist. As for eBooks, their sales have been growing exponentially, so a value of $0 is illogical.

By: Where the money in Books is migrating to « Kindle Review – Kindle 2 Review, Books

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:16:53 +0000

[...] value perception of ebooks is going to [...]

By: “Free” as in “books” « debgpi

“Free” as in “books” « debgpi — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:06:03 +0000

[...] stuff. One blogger recently found that 44 of Top 50 Kindle Bestsellers are $0. Does that mean the Value Perception of eBooks is going to zero? I’m not sure, but I think that it’s going to be increasingly harder for publishers to [...]

By: switch11

switch11 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:48:10 +0000

Thanks Krigan – that was a brilliant way of solving that puzzle. Thanks a ton.

By: Krigan

Krigan — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:19:12 +0000

I have checked Kindle top 50 just now, and all of them entered the top 100 list over 5 days ago (Kindle for PC was released 4 days ago). Clearly it is not a K4PC efect.

By: switch11

switch11 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:04:04 +0000

Sorry – no full reprints because then its considered duplicate content and eventually the main article gets penalized.

By: April L. Hamilton

April L. Hamilton — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:52:18 +0000

I was looking for a full reprint. Oh well. I’ll still RT the article on Twitter.

By: ECM

ECM — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:08:57 +0000

Another issue you didn’t enumerate:

With all of these free books flooding the Kindle market, people are going to take a wait and see approach to buying the books they are actually willing to pay for, holding out for sales and the hope that a book they are on the fence about will soon wend its way to the free list. (Those books may never go free, but it will cut down on impulse buys and, in the end, cost authors–especially new ones–dearly.)

By: Fred Coulter

Fred Coulter — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:34:36 +0000

I think Paul Story’s link to the Stephen Windwalker blog on why there are so many free best sellers has merit.

Another potential reason is the limited time that many of the free books are actually free. If I think I MAY be interested in the book when it’s free, I have very little reason to hold off “purchasing” the book now, and adding it to my library. Will I actually read the book, ever? That’s a much more interesting question. Will it cut into the purchases of other books? Probably not, unless I find a lot of books I want to read for free.

After an initial urge to download all the free books while the fire was hot, I curbed my impulse and read the description of the books. I limited my viewing to the top 10 best sellers on Amazon since they’re placed right on the front page and are easy to find. I ended up downloading one of the books, Kiss of Shadows. I already own the print version, but thought having it on my Kindle would be nice. One of the books isn’t free, but I’m not sure I want to read yet another one of Dan Brown’s books. The other eight did not strike a chord, so I didn’t bother.

But other readers may download first, and cull later. So it’s probably too early to tell if the free books will seriously eat into the not free book market. Only time (or Amazon) will tell.

By: Jamie Eisenhart

Jamie Eisenhart — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:02:12 +0000

All that the factoid about 44/50 Kindle bestsellers being free proves is that people are downloading a lot of free books. It doesn’t prove that they are reading those books or that they are buying fewer non-free books. It might be that people download free books just to have them on their Kindle in case they ever get around to them.