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My book is officially on sale tomorrow – but part of me wishes it was free…

There was a moderately strong correlation (r=.65) between downloads and Internet print sales (the more books that were downloaded, the more books were purchased online). Thus if more books had been available and downloaded the number of additional books sold would likely have increased.

via opencontent.org

Fascinating findings from a dissertation about how giving away free ebooks increases sales.

Makes me think…

Tomorrow’s the official publication date for Me & My Web Shadow in the UK (though many people already have their copies from Amazon already).

The first e-book I wrote was given away free on the iCrossing website. It was downloaded tens of thousands of times, re-printed as part of textbooks and as a standalone book in business schools in India and on marketing courses at UK universities. It was translated into Chinese where it has also been downloaded thousands of times and earned us lots of love link love.

So glad we didn’t ask for any money.

Now I have a proper, old-school, dead-tree book out there, I can’t get rid of the impulse to give it away. I’m so impatient for people to read it and just *know* it would sell a lot more if I was allowed to give it away.

Don’t think that will happen just yet (although it is available for the giveaway price of just £6.99 on Amazon now ;-)).

Anyway, just to satisfy my urge a little more to give it away first comment here and maybe the first Tweet on this post gets a free copy. I’ll even sign it if you like… :-)

Posted via web from Antony’s posterous

Antony Mayfield

6 responses to “My book is officially on sale tomorrow – but part of me wishes it was free…”

  1. andrewgrill Avatar
    andrewgrill

    Antony, congratulations on the launch of the book – I hope the sales go well.

    Are you allowed to publish excerpts? This would allow more people to see the content and comment on it.

    Andrew Grill
    http://www.londoncalling.mobi
    @andrewgrill

  2. Julian Avatar
    Julian

    Congrats Anotony, great to see your book now out.

    Personally, I've never read an ebook, free or otherwise. I can't read anything lengthy on a monitor and if I decide to print it I might as well just buy the real thing. So I'm all for good old fashioned paper books and if enough of your readers are like me, it shouldn't harm its popularity.

    Following on from that, I wonder what kind of person you would recommend this book to. What is your target market?

  3. Chris Faron Avatar
    Chris Faron

    Since buying a smart phone, I find I'm reading more pdf's downloaded for free. For the really good books I go to the “trouble” of buying the “dead-tree” version.

  4. amayfield Avatar
    amayfield

    @Julian I know what you mean… I think that the e-books I've published have mainly been printed out for reading from what i have seen and heard. I'd add that I love the physical artefact of my book, and I still buy other books – many of them in fact. I will be trying out an iPad as an e-reader though and will be delighted if it works out as I like to carry books with me to read when travelling and they can end up taking up a lot of space.

    In terms of who the book is for – really it is for everyone other than people who are deeply immersed in social media and extremely literate. The first reviewer of Me and My Web Shadow on Amazon put it very well:

    “I feel like I could share this book with anyone and they would find it useful.

    * My boss, for example, who wants to find out whether LinkedIn and Twitter apply to our business and how.
    * My sister, who wants to encourage her daughter to use Facebook positively as well as protect her from on-line 'baddies'.
    * My friends and colleagues already using on-line networking, who want to make themselves, their music or their message heard.”

  5. Sanda Maring Avatar
    Sanda Maring

    I found this information is very useful. Thanks for sharing. Do you care whether I mention a few sentences written in this post in our site if it’s stated you as the source and links back to your site? Thanks!

  6. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Yes, that’s fine. This blog is published under a Creative Commons Attribution licence, so you can use what you like as long as you link back to it. Where I have used other people’s content please respect the licences they have used it under (you can usually find this by following the relevant link back to their website or social network profile, e.g. Flickr).

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