I am a new reader. I learned of your existance through TOR and at random loaded your OMW into my BlackJack phone to try the eBook reader experience, while thinking about a Kindle.

I really like OMW which I am still reading (on my phone). I was a sale you never would have had on that story but will have on the rest of your collection. I believe that you made a very wise decision seeding TOR with your novel. I would ascribe some of your sales increases to that “free” publicity.

I am not a scifi fanatic and I mostly read professional writings for work, but I found your novel very diverting and relaxing and interesting and refreshing. I am pleased to make your acquaintance!

Best regards,

Bob Hare
Stroudsburg, PA

Now I’m trying to discipline myself to wait for the paperback version of the third volume…don’t think I’m gonna make it.

As a marketing effort the free download worked on me like a charm.

I’ll buy “watermarked” books (I have in the case of a couple of Roleplaying supplements), but anything more restrictive than that; fuggedaboutit.

I read OMW, and quite honestly, there is no reason for me to spend any time or effort buying other books in the series.

Which means that to the extent that I would have bought the book (cover art, blurb, only book available at a train station, etc.), the author/publisher lost a ‘random’ sale (no better term suggests itself), plus any following ‘random’ sales of the series.

Though not of other books of the author, necessarily. After all, the author was already paid by the publisher, and as the copyright holder, the author may be making a smart marketing move based on reciprocity – when choosing between the work of someone who shares, and one who doesn’t, the sharer has a certain edge.

The question is, at least from a publisher’s perspective (the publisher being the one burdened with real costs of unsold books), is the amount of lost ‘random’ sales covered by the amount of new real sales being factored into the margin calculation. Especially after the novelty wears off – Baen being a somewhat lonely exception, but in Baen’s case, the leveraging of long running series is certainly part of the calculation in the background.

From an author’s perspective, there is little to lose – authors were writing before the publishing industry existed, and will certainly exist after the publishing industry is no longer recognizable (music neither started nor died with the music industry). Especially authors who have rediscovered the serial concept.

While for a true niche player like Baen, exploring new areas is necessary for survival, corporate entities have other interests.

The “American Gods” ebook is downloadable – just load it up in your browser and hit “save this page”, you’ll get all the jpegs. It’s still ugly to read the images, not least because if you zoom in you just get bigger pixellated blobs instead of bigger text. Hint: don’t do this.

Please, for the love of Bob, make your ebooks both available and portable. Most of your readers will buy them if you let them, it’s the publishers’ … ah… “resilience in the face of new ideas” that’s making the darknet so popular.