Post-use purchase?

[Ishido]

Depends largely on quality and more importantly re-readability/usefulness after being read once.

In all likelihood this sort of model would increase exposure while drastically reducing sales.

[BaneTheBrawler]

In answer to the way the poll question itself is phrased: Yes. I have and will continue to do so. In fact, I read the first six novels of a series called the Saga of the Seven Suns from a library. The library didn't have the 7th book, and after a few years, I found the whole set at a book store. I bought all 7, re-read them, and have since read them again. I have done this for several other books, and if I had more money I'd do it for all my favorite books.

In answer to the question in the context of the OP: No, probably not. If I've already pirated a permanent copy of your book, I'm probably never going to get around to paying you for an "authentic" copy. If, however, I were to have downloaded a temporary digital copy, and really liked it, I would definitely pay $5 to have a permanent copy. I'd pay significantly more than that for a physical copy. Again, I have and continue to do so. Kindle ftw.

In short: Make yourself a digital lending library, and sell permanent copies.

[Elrina]

tl;dr - I mentioned Warbreaker earlier, by Brandon Sanderson. Granted, it's a fantasy book and not instructional/non-fiction, but since it was an experiment regarding a similar idea (giving it away online for free, then publishing/selling a copy afterward), I'm going to post a bit more info in case anyone is interested. If you aren't, feel free to disregard the rest of this. :3


Sanderson released the book on his website as he wrote it, from the early rough drafts, and there are currently 7 versions of the book available on his website for free, from the first draft to the TOR final hardcover print release (which was available on his website, free, before it was published).

The book hit #24 on the NYT Bestseller List for hardcover fiction about 10 days after it released in hardcover, and he gave a pretty good breakdown of the sales stacked up against his other books.

Here is the reasoning he had when deciding to do it in the first place, spoilered. (Edit: I decided to bold one specific line from what I quoted.)

Spoiler: show

Introduction by Brandon

A while back—June 2006—I started work on the novel which would follow my Mistborn trilogy. At the time, I noticed the work of Cory Doctorow, who releases all of his books on-line at the same time as the hardback comes out from Tor. At first, I thought this was insane. If you give it away for free, nobody will buy it!

Then, I spent some more time considering. Readers can ALREADY get their books for free; I went to the library often myself as a youth. And yet, I still bought books. I often bought the very books I'd checked out from the library, as I liked them so much I wanted to read them again and loan them out to others. What do I really believe? In resenting libraries and used bookstores because they share my books without any direct profit to me? Or, would I rather look at all of that as free publicity?

I've been kind of annoyed with how the RIAA has treated the MP3 explosion. I also realize that something Cory says is very true—my biggest challenge as an author is obscurity. I believe in my novels, and believe that if people read them, they will want to read and buy more of them. I believe that readers like to own books and, yes, even like to buy them specifically to support authors they want to write more books.

And so, I did something crazy. I went to Tor and asked if they'd be okay with me posting the entire version of Warbreaker AS I WROTE IT. Meaning, rough drafts. The early, early stuff which is filled with problems and errors. They thought I was crazy too (my agent STILL thinks this project is a bad move) but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do something that would involve and reward my readers. For those who are aspiring novelists, I wanted to show an early version of my work so they could follow its editing and progress. For those who are looking to try out my novels, I wanted to offer a free download. (Hoping that they would enjoy the book a great deal, then go on to purchase or check out ELANTRIS or my Mistborn books.)

So, that's what this novel is. It WILL be published in hardcover by Tor. It's not some old work I pulled out, dusted off, and offered for free. This book will be coming out in 2009 sometime. And, I'm offering it years ahead of publication here for you to read.

Part of me still worries that I take a huge hit in sales when this thing is released, as my readers will have read it ahead of time. Another part of me worries that new readers will see the flaws and the rough sections of the early drafts, then assume that the finished project will be inferior, and not ever bother to read any of my other books.

The stronger part of me still believes that this will make better publicity, and a better experience for my fans, and is well worth the risk. So, for better or worse, I present WARBREAKER.

Spoiler: show

Synopsis of the book by Brandon

It's been almost ten years since I started the first draft of ELANTRIS. It was my sixth book, and it took me four years or so to eventually sell it. By the time I did get a book deal and release the book, I'd moved on to the Mistborn books.

Still, ELANTRIS is very special to me, and I'm still planning to do sequels some day. Why do I bring that up here? Well, there is one thing about ELANTRIS that has always kind of bothered me. It's not a terrible thing—the book turned out way better than I had any right to expect at that point in my career, and still stands as the book I've written with the best 'high concept' ideas. However, the book focuses on a kingdom where regular people are turned into gods—yet, the nature of the plot line makes it so that you never get to SEE what it's like to have to live as a god after gaining all of these divine powers. (ELANTRIS focuses on a period of time where the magic doesn't work, and the once-gods have lost their abilities and caught a terrible disease instead.)

I wouldn't change ELANTRIS, but I've always kind of wished that I could write a book that actually focused on what it was LIKE to have to live with all of the expectations of being transformed into a deity. How would that affect a person? What if they, themselves, didn't believe that their powers made them a god—yet everyone else did believe it? Could you have a god who didn't believe in his own religion?

Eventually, I couldn't leave this idea alone. I needed to explore it, perhaps for the same reasons I needed to explore the opposite idea in ELANTRIS. In many ways, this book is a companion—yet opposite book—to ELANTRIS. Though set in separate worlds with very different systems of magic, both take the same concept, then run different directions with it. I hope very much not to seem like I'm repeating myself as an author; I think by doing Mistborn and Alcatraz between these books, I've shown my versatility. Now, I want to try another book about deified men. (Coincidentally, I decided I wanted to deal with another concept I promised in ELANTRIS, but then ignored—the bride who is sent to another kingdom to marry a man she doesn't know. Once again, I wanted to take it the opposite direction. In ELANTRIS, Sarene arrives to discover her fiancé is dead and gone. In WARBREAKER, however, I wanted to show what happened if the bride didn't get to dodge this uncomfortable situation, but actually had to marry the man she'd been promised to.)

And so, we are introduced to four characters in this book. Lightsong is a God of the Hallandren people—a regular man who died in a heroic way, and was therefore brought back to life by the magic to rule as a god. (Or, at least, that's how the Hallandren people interpret it.) We have Siri, a rebellious daughter sent by her father to marry the tyrant god-king of those same Hallandren people. We have Vivenna, sister to Siri, who goes to try to rescue her sibling from her fate. And then, there's Vasher—whose motivations and goals are his own. (You can read about him in the prologue.)

The magic is one I've wanted to put into a book for a long, long time and the setting—with its vibrant color and tropical climate—is very different from the worlds of MISTBORN or ELANTRIS. This is the book I wrote when I, myself, got engaged and married, and I think it had a great influence on how I interpret the world.

I hope you enjoy the book! Click on the link to the top right (the one under "Content" titled "WARBREAKER Downloads") to go to a page listing downloads and explaining the Creative Commons License I'm giving the book.

Brandon Sanderson
December, 2007

And here is his breakdown of how well it sold when published (this was written 10 days after it was released). Pretty stellar imo, especially considering how long it was known by his fans that the book was available on his website for free, from the first draft through to the final print.

Spoiler: show

First off, the Idaho Falls book signing tomorrow is from 1:30-3:30 at the Barnes and Noble at the Grand Teton Mall.

Now, for those who didn't see my Twitter/Facebook post, WARBREAKER hit #24 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List. You all have my deepest thanks for continuing to support me in this writing addiction of mine. It's because of you, truly, that I can do this thing that I love for a living.

#24 is a good place to be. You'll note that it isn't quite as good as Mistborn Three's number (#21.) But at the same time, this is a much different book. With Mistborn Three, we had a large, multi-city tour planned and we had the benefit of being the concluding volume in a series. I don't think hitting #24 is a sign of failure on Warbreaker's part, but instead a sign of just how above-the-baseline Mistborn Three was. (Some people may note that MB3 came out during a stronger period of the year, when the recession wasn't as bad yet—but realize that all the books coming out now have the same general issues, meaning they would all drop relative amounts too. Therefore, if MB3 came out now, it would probably sell fewer copies, but still be in the same place in relation to the other books being released.)

So, a lot of people have been asking what I think—now that it is all done—of the process of releasing drafts on-line as I wrote them. Will I be doing it again? Do I think it helped or hurt sales? Both are hard to answer. I think that, seeing how the book has done, that it's unlikely I lost sales because of this. Actually, I still like to think that I picked up some readers—or, at the very least, reassured some Wheel of Time fans. But the numbers are right dead-even where I guessed they would be, and beyond that, there are a large number of variables at work here. I don't have a good estimate of how my books should be selling right now. I haven't been an author long enough to establish an average. However, because I like to be open and forthcoming about these things, I thought I'd try to figure out a system by which I could talk about my sales with you all.

I don't want to talk actual numbers for a couple of reasons. First off, the numbers I have are the Bookscan numbers, which are flawed. Bookscan says they only reach about 70% of the market, and that percentage can vary widely depending on the genre and even the specific book. For the Alcatraz books, Bookscan missed more than 50% of the sales because of all the non-bookstore markets that Scholastic uses.

However, generally, we can use Bookscan as a comparison between books in the same genre by the same author. And so, I've devised some units of measurement for us. the EL(h) a the EL(p). One EL(h) is equal to the number of copies in hardcover that Elantris sold in its first year of release. (Which, in most cases, makes up almost all of the hardcover sales.) One EL(p) is then the number of copies Elantris sold in its first year of paperback release. Sound good? I use Elantris as a baseline because it was my first book, and it did modest—without being overwhelming—in both hardcover and paperback format.

Now, how do my other books stack up? Well, lets look at them book-by-book.

Mistborn Hardback: 95% EL(h)
Mistborn Paperback: 136% EL(p)
Mistborn Promotional 76% EL(p)

Mistborn comes first. If you were reading the blog back when it came out, I believe I mentioned our worry about there being a dip in sales here. Elantris was a breakout book by a new author, and that tends to draw attention, getting us a number of extra sales for novelty. It was also priced a few bucks cheaper than it should have been, something Tor commonly does in order to help give a first-time author a push. By raising the price three bucks and by not doing a sequel next, we saw a small number of the hardcover people jump over to the paperback. However, the paperback numbers were very good (this is all pre-WoT) so it means that the novel got good word of mouth and sold well, even better than Elantris.

The third number is the promotional edition we did with the new cover (which is now the only cover) after the WoT announcement. So you can see us picking up steam there.

Mistborn 2 Hardback: 175% EL(h)
Mistborn 2 Paperback: 210% EL(p)

Mistborn two showed an impressive gain on both fronts, taking us up to about double Elantris's numbers. This was a big relief, since this was kind of the 'do or die' book. Would people stick around and keep reading after they read the first book? Would I be an idle curiosity, or would I become a consistent seller. About halfway into the release of the Mistborn 2 hardcover, the WoT announcement was made, and it had an impact to say the least.

Mistborn 3 Hardcover: 360% EL.(h)
Mistborn 3 Paperback: Too Early to Tell. It's only been out for a few months, but it's gotten to about 75% EL(p) so far, and looks like it will hit about 300% El(p) over one year.

Mistborn three marked a HUGE jump in sales. I talked about this above; I think it has to do with the push we gave it mixed with the salability of being the final book of a series.

Warbreaker: 60% EL(h) in the first week.

This release for Warbreaker puts it between Mistborn 2 (which did about 25% EL(h) in its first week) and MB3 (which did about 90%EL(h) in its first week.) So we've got a solid release for it, I think.

Other notes for those who are curious. Elantris did the following in its three years of paperback release:

Year One: 100% EL(p)(Duh, this is the baseline.)
Year Two: 81% EL(p) (Holding up well, selling almost as many.
Year Three 142% EL(p) (Yes, it sold better its third year than it did its first year. Hello, Wheel of Time.)

And if you're wondering, here are the numbers for Knife of Dreams:

First day: 1600%EL(h)
First Year: 7100% EL(h)

Yes, that's seventy one times as well as Elantris in its first year, or just shy of 20 times Mistborn Three's numbers. And Mistborn Three was one of Tor's biggest books of the year last year. Robert Jordan was in his own league entirely. One thing you should probably know about modest bestsellers like mine is that we aren't selling nearly the number of copies you probably think we're selling. That was one of the eye opening things about this business to me. Most bestselling books are not selling in the millions of copies, or even the hundreds of thousands of copies, but closer to the tens of thousands. It's possible to hit the NYT list and sell a total of under 10,000 copies during the hardcover release.

[Zalius]

Thanks, that was a good read. I'd definitely consider a hard cover edition of this, but there's also a few side projects that would make sense to group with it, so I probably wouldn't be able to do that for another 8+ months

[Amastacia]

Yes, depending on the content.

I do think, however, that what Louis CK tried recently makes even more sense - release a high-quality product at a very reasonable price and cut out the middleman. Rather than depend on human decency after the fact, make the process of buying and getting your product so easy, simple, and pleasant that the nearly nominal fee is a small price to pay for the simplicity and the content itself.

I mean, if you can pay $5 for a 720p video of a 1h standup special, with no DRM, no regional restrictions, no BS whatsoever, and download directly from the content creator at the maximum rate your pipe into the intertubes will support, why bother going and torrenting? It's more work and takes longer.

[Mrf]

I follow a few different authors online that mostly publish for free. A few of them offer initial books in a series for free and then sequels you have to pay for. I've bought more books from those authors than any others, though if a free author has a donate button I tend send some when I can. One of the other things that gets me to pay is posting a chapter/week or allowing me to pay for to get the book immediately.

The biggest thing though is don't price gouge. I don't care how much I like you as an author I'm not paying $10 for a single book, if it's $4 or less I'll probably buy it without thought. (I'm looking at you Penguin Publishing, no way is the original Dune novel worth $15 as an ebook!)

Another important thing is publish in all formats (epub / mobi / html) and NO DRM. I can't stand DRM since it keeps me from being able to format shift books I've previously purchased, and it's pointless anyway since all of the encryptions have been hacked and have handy 1 button decrypters.


Most of my favorite authors I only learned about since I read their initial books for free, now I purchase their new releases as soon as they come out.

[BaneTheBrawler]

Unless a novel is brand-new, I won't pay more than 10 bucks for a digital copy. Even then, I only buy books i'm sure I'll like for more than that. Like parts of a series I'm following (Song of Ice and Fire, Foreigner, etc)

Because goddamn it I NEED TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK TYRION LANNISTER IS DOING RIGHT THE HELL NOW.

[Zetanio]

I voted yes but with caveats. I don't have an e-reader and will probably never get one. I read for pleasure and really prefer paper. That being said I downloaded Slash's autobiography, read about 40-ish pages and then went and bought it.

In the same vein (kinda) I also do it with independent or low-budget movies.

[Demosthenes11]

voted yes, but don't for tv shows simply because it's so damn expensive to go back and purchase them when I've already seen it

Not going to spend $120 on 3 seasons of something I've seen a time or 2.

[Osede]

I'd buy a print version. Not paying for a .pdf no matter how good it is.

This.

I do indeed, bought a few sets of novel series after I read it online some where. And usually I do this on the song I like too, but most of the time I bought the CD, then torrent the shit before it arrives my home.

[Kitsuu]

Yes.
I prefer/love having physical copies of my books. I read and re-read and re-read constantly, so it'd be worth it for me.

[Cruzizzle]

Yes.

Only one was actually offered free by the author online (Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson)

Same. I read Warbreaker from the website releases, then when it came out I purchased a hardcopy. Haven't even ever read it again.

Though this also has the opposite effect on author's who I don't think need my support, or have mediocre books, or who are dead. I'll pay if I think you deserve it.

Also, if I've already purchased your book, I have zero problems obtaining a pirated electronic version. That shit should be included anyway.

[aurik]

I tend not to read/watch/listen to stuff I wouldn't pay for. After all, my time is the most precious resource. So yes, when I find useful stuff, I generally like to pay for it even after the fact.

[Aleth]

Hmm, I don't think I'd ever get round to it.

Kind of like winrar. It says it's both a free trial, but that I should consider paying... but then lets me use it anyway. I think it's been over a decade.

Having said that there are many games and such that I have bought full versions of after playing the demo.

If what you're offering is instructional have you considered offering the basics free and then a small fee to obtain the more advanced stuff?

It's difficult with electronic media.

[hey]

People actually use winrar? Even though 7zip is better, free, and extracts everything?

[dejet]

I read a lot of book series. Most of the time Ill DL the first one for free, read it and make up my mind if I want to keep going. If I do, Ill Pay for the rest and pay for the first even. Done it many times.

[Kerberoz]

People actually use winrar? Even though 7zip is better, free, and extracts everything?

Was going to say this.

I've never purchased shareware, because it's fucking obnoxious. I've pirated games at release, then bought them later at a reasonable price, though. Have... 178 games on Steam that were all purchased during sales. All of my movies/TV/anime and 99.9% of my music is pirated, the 0.1% being a "buy Tshirt get free album in .flac" deal and Amazon freebies. Rarely bother with ebooks because I prefer the aesthetic of paper, but half my textbooks were pirated.

[Aleth]

I just always had the ancient install file handy...

Shareware games were awesome once upon a time. Doom, rise of the traid, the 2d duke nukems, C&C. My brothers purchased the full versions of a decent number of the best shareware games. Oh and commander keen & Jill of the jungle. Shareware on cover discs used to be like a chest full of treasure.

Demos don't seem to be as revealing of what the product is actually like these days. Shareware used to give you something relatively substantial, like the first chapter of a trilogy.