(image courtesy Smashwords)
Smashwords today on their blog revealed some interesting statistical data; that people are cheapskates.
I know, you’re shocked. Try to keep it together for the rest of this post. Apparently, in a wide-ranging study (353 people!) only 15% paid. Everyone else downloaded the book for free. Smashwords explained their take on this data:
Not captured in this data is any other ancillary benefit received by the author/publisher. Possible author benefits might include:
* customer goodwill
* purchases of print versions
* free author and book publicity from satisfied readers on blogs and social networks
* increased fan base to which to market other titles by the same author/publisherI neither encourage or discourage our authors to use the Radiohead model. As I’ll discuss this weekend in my Ebook Revolution session with Dan Poynter at The San Francisco Writer’s Conference, there’s no one-size-fits-all pricing strategy for ebooks. Your choice of pricing really depends on your objective as an author, and also your subject matter. Are you looking to maximize readership or revenues, or do you want to do both?
High prices tend to discourage readership by reducing affordability. Lower prices expand the available market. Free eliminates price as a barrier. And the Radiohead model offers a middle ground by trusting the customer to decide.
Smashwords has an interesting point, even if their data is highly, highly suspect. I wonder why they picked 353? Did they not have an even number of people for the time frame they wanted to use? Or were they just looking for a way to show the most shocking numbers possible (ONLY 15% OF PEOPLE WANT TO PAY FOR BOOKS) to prove they are right?
There is definitely something to the idea that there are psychological triggers for consumers, and when prices cross them we all subconsciously recoil. $.99 is a bargain, $1.00 makes us pause. Mike did a great job of showing how this has affected the music industry earlier this week.
But my issue with Smashwords post is that it seems designed to tilt us all into believing free riders dominate ebooks. And they do, to a certain extent. But there’s no context to the reasons the statistical pool was chosen, and that makes it very tough to believe it is as bleak, or that pricing expectations are as low, as Smashwords wants to make it seem.
Do you believe Smashwords is right on with their assessment? Do you pay for books you download from them, or do you just enjoy your free ebook and move on? Share below!
I don’t begin to know about the specifics, but there have been a number of these recently, including the indie game World of Goo ). That article – like so many others – provides a large amount of context and data. I found the article linked here very thin and not very communicative …
Sorry to come late to the party, but I was on vacation.
I think that people are more inclined to look at books, regardless of format, as something they can read for free, but pay for to own.
What I mean by that is that to download a book and plan to read it only once, a large percentage of people believe should be free, and then feel no desire to pay for the experience. Libraries and book loaning offer the basis for this. You can borrow a book from a friend or library for free, read it and then return it. Libraries even offer ebooks that are downloadable and compatible with mobile devices for free.
Those of us who desire to build libraries of books from authors we like, will purchase the books (physical or electronic) in order to maintain our libraries.
There are also some books not available for sale, **cough** Harry Potter **cough** that I have downloaded for my library. Do I feel badly about that? Nope. I have purchased multiple copies of every book in hardback for my own use,given countless copies as gifts, and bought all of the audiobooks as well. So, I feel zero regret that I have the books in a format that is unavailable for purchase.
As to the validity of Smashwords statistics, well, regardless of their time frame or the number of people in their sample, they are not stating that this reflects ALL people who read ebooks – they are simply stating that when a book is offered legitimately and legally by the publisher where people have an option to choose to pay or not pay, that the majority opt for the free download is valid.
It’s kind of like donation-ware. Many people download it because it’s free but don’t know if they will like it or if it will serve their needs. If they find that it does, they may go back and make a donation to the creator or they may not. But, since they are not required to, many will not.