What's the % of freebies actually being read?

[Nik]

Some authors oppose offering books for free (having sound reasons supporting their approach), while others do free giveaways fairly regularly, for various, also legit reasons.
These free g/a result in dozens/hundreds/thousands of downloads.
However, I imagine most of those free files sit on computers somewhere, never to be opened again and only a certain % is being read.
What do you think? What's your experience ?

[Graeme]

I suspect a lot of no-reads. But I have no way to know for sure.

[Graeme]

On the flip side.

If someone downloads the 1st book in a series and then buys subsequent books in the same series, it may be a safe assumption that they have read the 1st book.

If you saw a pattern where after multiple iterations of free promotions you had.

100000 free down loads of the 1st book
1000 paid down loads of the 1st book
10000 paid downloads of the 2nd book.

It may be reasonable to assume that the free downloads were driving 9000 buys of the second book.

[Marie Silk]

My guess would be 5-10% are being read, and of course not everyone who reads it will do so on the day of the download. I have some freebies on my kindle that I plan to read in a month or so when I have the time. They have been there for awhile ;). As far as sales patterns, it seems like the majority of sales of sequels can be linked to paid purchases of book 1. Paid purchases of book 1 are a natural side effect of running free promotions. So I'm not extremely worried that most of those books are going unread.

[Nik]

Authors (especially indies and myself included) distribute whole lot of free books in hope to entice new readers into their craft. Downloading something for free to sit on your hard disc is not a big deal, but how many of these freebies are read? Maybe will hear some opinions from the readers who take them?

[Holly]

As a reader, I have only ever downloaded three free books. I treat free books the same way I treat books I buy; I won't get them unless I am absolutely interested in them. Of the three, I've read two and I'm saving the third for my supernatural themed reading in October.

I will read anything that appeals to my personal tastes, and I don't pay any attention to who (or what) the author is, whether it's indie or big publishing, none of that matters.

[Marie]

Love these topics you are putting up on here, Nik! :-)

I am one of those readers actually! I use to spend hundreds of dollars on books at bookstores for years until I bought my kindle. When I found out there were free books available, I was ecstatic to say the least!

I have owned my kindle now for near four years and I literally have in my amazon cloud over 2,000 books with 90% of them being free. I have found some amazing authors through getting free books that I would have otherwise not known about if I didn't own a kindle.

I have actually been able to get free books from main stream authors too as sometimes their books are free for a limited time.

I read a wide scope of genres and being able to go get books for free off amazon has helped me be able to broaden my reading horizons.

In today's economy there are quite a few readers turning towards the free books as opposed to buying books as some books run between $8.99 to $14.99.

IMO indie authors are really "diamonds in the rough" as they are just as great of storytellers as the main stream authors. I would rather have 1,000 books by authors unknown on my kindle as it gives me a chance to explore the authors work without paying an astronomical price for it.

On a personal note: I grabbed your first book for free the other day when you made it available! :-)

[Nik]

Holly wrote: "As a reader, I have only ever downloaded three free books. I treat free books the same way I treat books I buy; I won't get them unless I am absolutely interested in them. Of the three, I've read t..."

Thanks for sharing your reader's perspective, Holly! And for undiscriminating attitude too -:)

[Nik]

Marie wrote: "Love these topics you are putting up on here, Nik! :-)

I am one of those readers actually! I use to spend hundreds of dollars on books at bookstores for years until I bought my kindle. When I foun..."

Thanks, Marie, trying to bring up stuff that might resonate with our members here -:)

Thanks for your interest and hope you'll enjoy the Oligarch when his time comes -:)

[Fiona]

I find that if I have to pay money for a book, even if it's just a tiny amount, I will read the sample pages first before committing to buying. So once I've bought, I'm already interested.

Whereas if the book is free, I might just download based on the title and blurb, but I treat it much the same as a sample. I'll read the first 10 or so pages, and then decide if I'm interested in the rest of the book. And it might take a long while for me to get around to checking out those pages.

I'd estimate that I finish about 90% of the Kindle books I pay for, and maybe 20% of the Kindle books I get for free.

[Nik]

Good to know and thanks for your helpful input, Fiona and Ella!

[Nat]

So, I have about 190 books on my kindle. Not all of these are free, but a fair amount of them are. I went a little crazy when I first got the tablet. Then I usually get friend's books, or books that are also in promotions I'm a member of. So, lots of books. I have read 48 of that list. So, that's about 25% and I consider myself a medium reader... a bit slow unless I'm totally sucked into a book/series. I expect for the average collector of free books, it would be less than that.

[Lizzie]

Most of my paperwhite is sci fi, with some mysteries and legal thrillers thrown in with only an occasional non-fiction or other type of fiction. The simple answer is I have read about 1/3 of the free books.

Detailed answer -

Initially, when I discovered free books through bookbub, I downloaded lots of freebies and read all of them. In the process, I discovered authors I really liked. I also finally learned that I didn't have to finish books that were boring and/or poorly written. Many of those early freebooks were completely lacking in proofreading or even a basic spell check but I had spent 44 years always finishing every book I started, and it took me a number of years to realize I didn't have to do that.

Two years ago, I stopped opening the emails from bookbub and similar sites, but I still checked the sites in authors' emails that had free books. 4 months ago, I stopped doing that too. I don't recall what the books are about that are sitting on my kindle, but every once in a while I randomly open some of them to decide what I might like to check out next and the result was I created another list.

Books for free from sources other than Amazon, I have 247 of which I have read 173 (26 of which I had read in the past in their paper version (not the ebook) - Honor series and Andre Norton). So 74 or those freebies yet to read.

Since I am on my 5th kindle, having lost 2 to water damage and one that just died, in actuality the number of books free from other sites that I read is higher, but coming from sources other than Amazon and having loaded them directly on the kindle from the experimental browser, some of those freebies were lost. (I had a copy of them on my computer but dropped and broke it.)

I have purchased around 300 e-books in the past 5 years and read all but the Lensmen series and a couple others, maybe 20 in all.

My kindle shows I have 610 unread books and 651 read books. I have read much more than that in the past 5 years as a result of having a free kindle subscription for 3 months and a free kindle book to read each month as a prime member, together with library books from Amazon and from our local library. I have over 890 tracked in Goodreads of having read in the last 5 years. There have been others not tracked which I read as a beta reader or which authors kindly sent me with no strings attached, although I do try to write reviews on those when my disability permits.

The unread includes 75 short story and novella collections; 102 mystery/legal; 23 general fiction; 20 non-fiction; and 11 little kids books. The remaining 400 are all some type of young adult or general adult sci-fi or subgenre.