NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of several posts David Nygren of The Urban Elitist and I will be cross-blogging concerning the issue of authors (whether traditionally published, e-published, or self-published) actually getting paid for their work.
Yesterday (grimace) was David’s turn and he’s got me seriously thinking about that whole FREE thing again. I swear, the more we hash this out, the fewer solid opinions I’ve got.
I believe in seeding my books free to create a greater readership, but it comes at a cost. To me.
I give hard copies away. That is my investment. But it resolves the “PDF read round the world” problem.
Well. If I had written an epic like you there would be NO WAY IN HELL I’d give it away. But that is also why I write freebies under 10k to offer. PBW was one of the first to offer free stories as promo. She was snickered at. But it worked and now, for some, it’s an obvious thing for them to do. I love doing them because it gives my little weirdo stories a place to go.
As a classicist, my problem is that the business model seems to be a blind poet who recited after a free meal.
I’m not so sure that works in modern times.
That’s probably not far off the mark. What to do, what to do.
Eva, PBW?
I’m all over the place on the issue as well. Except for me, it’s less about whether or not I’ll do freebies, and more about how to best leverage them so that it’s not a waste of my time and can be of some benefit to me and not devalue my work.