Free Books!!!!
As many are aware, I am an author on Amazon.com. Amazon is a great platform on which to make money, spread your ideas and get freebies. Yes, so many books these days on the Kindle Store are free. Don't we all love that. I mean it's FREE, I don't need to have ever wanted it, but now I do because its free.
What many fail to realise is that these freebies are actually promotional tools, especially for authors on Amazons's Kindle Direct Publishing. This 'free book promotion' is a strategy whereby writers offer their books for free for a limited period of time. This lures readers in to 'buy' the book in the hopes that they may review the book and later buy one of the author's other 'paid' books.
While all this seems so good for authors what are the implications? These freebies have created a mindset amongst readers that they can always get free books so why should they ever pay. Hence, they search only for free books on Amazon and not for paid books. This has become a habit. Yet this situation poses another problem. It is understandable that new authors need to get their foot in the door and earn a reputation so they use free promotions and low prices, but what if the book isn't a massive hit. Is an author going to make a lot of money from about 10 $0.99 sales. Their earnings from that would be below $4. Thus an author must lower their living standard too, hypothetically.
Yet readers say that it doesn't matter. It was free so they lost nothing and sometimes have never even read the book or purchased another book by the same author. Other readers are sceptical about the quality of the book. That is natural but it again undermines the reputation of the author.
So the issue is that beyond the loss of income from such promotions, there is a problem posed with regards to quality. More low quality writers are flooding the market and succeeding just because most readers care more about the price. So an excellent author who sells books for a reasonable price will lose sales to less experienced authors.
Therefore it's necessary that authors and readers reconsider their mindsets. Authors must not settle for less than they deserve because if their book really deserves success then it will achieve just that. Instead they must hone their skills and aim for writing higher standards instead of wasting time marketing a useless work or writing more of that low standard just to increase their chances of sails. Readers should appreciate the quality of work and not the author's quantity of written works or their prices. Ultimately we need to raise the standard and respect of our authors.
