Read books for free meanwhile make more money for authors

[Azolla]

Hi authors and readers,

Have you ever dreamed of reading books for free as a reader, meanwhile making more money from your writing if you are an author?

Actually we do read some books for free from time to time, either legally or illegally. In the era of information and social, I do believe in the following formula:

1000 copies sold * $10 each copy < 10000 copies sold * $1 each copy

Because given the same money made, the broader the audience the better, as it could potentially generate more buying and reputation. So let's amend the formula to below:

10000 copies sold * $1 each copy < 100000 copies given * $0 each copy

Here we get more audience (presumably 10 times larger), but looks like the total income will be 0 since it is free. Yes it is free for readers, but if Ads or other sponsoring mechanism can come into play, say $1 for each copy, then it could be a win-win situation where the author gets $100000 (roughly), and the advertiser gets 100000 audience, and readers get the book for free.

Of course for hardcopy books, it won't be easy due to inevitable costs of printing and distributing, but for ebooks, it is definitely an option. And also the above figures are to be verified and tested. I came up with those from my previous free ebooks and commercial ebooks sales.

I highly appreciate any feedback and thoughts on this model, and hopefully it can become a reality over time.

Kind regards,
Johnny

[Ju]

Sounds good. hehehe!

[Jennifer]

As a reader I don't want to see ads in my ebooks.

[Azolla]

To clarify, there is no Ads in books, readers need to finish viewing ads before they get books for free.

[Mellie]

Azolla wrote: "To clarify, there is no assign books, readers need to finish viewing ads before they get books for free."

What are your criteria for the free books? Who is vetting them for quality? Some free books aren't even worth that price... :/

Why would I watch ads for a free book? Every day I get the Bookbub email, which I browse for free books.

[Justin]

I have no idea what your trying to say in the message. Are you asking or selling us something or giving out some information with some rather large numbers? Kind of confused..

[Azolla]

Sorry about confusion, a simple example is:
the book of "Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography", if people want to read it for free (legally), do you think the model is feasible?

I'm seeking opinions from book fans here, thanks.

[Marie]

There seems to be a missing piece in the "model". How will you go about getting the free copies distributed to people who may come back to purchase later books? Explain that, please?

[Michael]

There seems to be some confusion about the OP's intention. If I understand correctly, (s)he is pitching a business model wherein readers watch a set of advertising on their eReader/app in order to read books for free. Advertisers pay the business who then shares in the cut with the author.

Presumably, this would be a service targeting Indie authors, in which case I believe there are already a ton of options for reading free Indie material.

I personally, wouldn't use an ad-supported service for free eBooks.

[Christine PNW]

Azolla wrote: "Sorry about confusion, a simple example is:
the book of "Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography", if people want to read it for free (legally), do you think the model is feasible?

I'm seeking opinions..."

I wouldn't be interested. If I want to read a book enough to pay for it, making me look at ads is going to annoy me. If I don't want to read a book enough to pay for it, offering it to me for free isn't going to make me want to read it.

[Azolla]

Marie wrote: "There seems to be a missing piece in the "model". How will you go about getting the free copies distributed to people who may come back to purchase later books? Explain that, please?"

It is aiming for ebooks for now, so distribution is via email or download link. Once readers have viewed the Ads, they will get a email or link to download the ebook.

[Azolla]

Moonlight Reader wrote: "Azolla wrote: "Sorry about confusion, a simple example is:
the book of "Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography", if people want to read it for free (legally), do you think the model is feasible?

I'm s..."

Imagine you buy and read 10 good books a year, it is always a good thing if those 10 books can be free, and you might have chance to read far more than 10 good books a year.

[Christine PNW]

Azolla wrote: "Moonlight Reader wrote: "Azolla wrote: "Sorry about confusion, a simple example is:
the book of "Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography", if people want to read it for free (legally), do you think the..."

I buy more than 100 and read around 200 books a year. If I couldn't afford to buy books, as many people cannot, I would go to the library, where I can get access to thousands of books for free, through the support of my community.

The problem that I immediately see is that the books that are going to participate in a free program are the ones that aren't selling well. They aren't likely to be books I'm actually interested in reading.

[Michael]

Azolla wrote: "Moonlight Reader wrote: "Azolla wrote: "Sorry about confusion, a simple example is:
the book of "Steve Jobs The Exclusive Biography", if people want to read it for free (legally), do you think the..."

I'm not an online advertiser, but a quick web search produced the following:

"YouTube advertisers pay per view of their ad, with an average cost-per-view ranging between $.10 – $.30."

Considering that my first novel (which I make freely available on all major ebook distributors through Smashwords) only has about 2K downloads in the first year of publication, I would only made $50-$150 dollars, under the following assumptions:

1) I ONLY published it to the ad-sponsored site

2) The ad-sponsored site is willing to give me a 50% cut

3) The ad-sponsored site has as many visits as Amazon, Smashwords, Apple, B&N, and Kobo combined

4) People would be willing to sit through video ads to obtain free books when all of the above services (not to mention public/online libraries) do not require watching ads.

It could be an interesting business model, but one that might need some tweaking. I would be wary of dropping too much money into such a venture.

[R.F.G.]

Another point to consider is that many e-books are priced at $0.00 based on the premise that it will lead to paid sales later. While this strategy worked in the early days of e-readers, today is a different circumstance.

Some e-books priced at $0.00 are good works, but larger majority of e-books priced at $0.00 aren't worth downloading and usually get deleted to make room for other free e-books.

As for looking at ads to get a book or anything else for free, whenever you have to give up something other than money in exchange for something then what you receive isn't really free, it just doesn't cost money.

To many people time equates with money. I could have been writing if I hadn't read this thread and the little demon had actually obliged by taking a nap. The cost to me is time, as the kid has now made a mess I need to clean up. For others, they have activities like reading or writing they would better spend their time with than looking at ads.

In short, if one has to buy a book with either money or taking an inordinate amount of time to look at ads, it's better to spend the money in order to have the time to do things one values more.

[Azolla]

Thanks Moonlight Reader & Michael & R.F.G. for your feedback.

Yes you are all right in many aspects, that is the reality at the moment.

I've been thinking about best selling books like "Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography", it is Kindle edition is $9.27. The royalty is from 35%~70%, the actual amount for the author is $3.2~$6.5. Suppose each Ad view costs $1.00, I can get this popular book for free by viewing 3~6 Ads meanwhile the author can get a fair amount.

Now let me explain why each Ad view can cost $1.00 or even more. Because it won't be ordinary Ads, it's interactive and engaging, and readers can choose which types of Ads they want to see or not see, so that advertisers can target their audience more precisely, even readers reading patterns can help. So the quality of the Ads will be better and less annoying.

The core idea is to benefit the 2 most important sides, readers and authors(including all the contributors of the book such as editors, publishers, and etc), and reduce any other middle-tier cost as much as possible.

[Vanessa Eden]

huh?

[Sarah (Presto agitato)]

@Azolla - It's interesting that you should bring this up now. I don't know if you follow tech news, but content/ad blocking has been a big topic for the last couple of days. It's not that it's anything new, but now that millions of iPhone users can do it with the flip of a switch, there is a lot of anxiety about what will happen to websites supported primarily by advertising revenue (which is almost all of them) (see "The ad blocking controversy, explained", "Please Don't Block Our Ads. Here's How to Block Ads in iOS9").

So much web advertising is terrible. There are tons of trackers harvesting user information, intrusive videos that pop up over content, potential for malware, slower page loads. On top of that, ads gobble up cellular data that users have to pay for.

I think you would need really, really good ads to overcome all of that. You might also find that people aren't too excited about having more of their personal information harvested for the purpose of advertising.