Secrecy is self-destructive

[taiwwa]

I recently listened to an interview with Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, and lo and behold, he reveals that he never set out for money. Instead, he posted his ebook for free on his website, where it gained a following...and suggestions from real scientists as to how to improve his work with some real science that was their expertise. Taking on such research on his own would have taken years, but by being able to draw upon suggestions from his fans, he got good sound science.

He put it on the amazon store and just the visibility of it lead to big sales, even though he at the same time had it on his website for free, and he recently had someone option the movie rights to the book.

And all along the way, he openly shared his work and was not secretive at all.

eh?

 

[Svrtnsse]

Sounds good to me.

It's what I'm doing as well. I've got all I've written on my WIP so far available on my wiki (see signature), including the original outline. I can't really say I have an actual following though, but I also haven't been doing any work on promoting myself. It's nice to see someone else has had success with a similar method.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

Yes, this is pretty much what I'm doing for the first book. I'm posting a chapter a week, and eventually the whole thing will be available for anyone who wants to read it for free. Although I plan to self-publish it as well.

 

[Jabrosky]

Pardon me, but I don't see the point of offering something for free on one website and then putting the same story on sale on another website. That would only make sense if the formatting was different for each version (e.g. the story on sale came in the form of a printed book rather than something freely accessible on the Internet).

 

[PaulineMRoss]

Pardon me, but I don't see the point of offering something for free on one website and then putting the same story on sale on another website. That would only make sense if the formatting was different for each version (e.g. the story on sale came in the form of a printed book rather than something freely accessible on the Internet).

I know it seems counter-intuitive. However, reading a book online is not the same experience as buying the entire book and reading it in your preferred way. Brandon Sanderson published 'Warbreaker' a chapter at a time, as he wrote it, on his website, including discussing his thought processes as he wrote. Then he got it tidied up and it was published, and sold a lot of copies, even though the original version is still available to read for free.

 

[Svrtnsse]

This is semi-related: Amanda Palmer: The art of asking | Video on TED.com

As far as I know Amanda Palmer isn't giving away her music for free, but I could be wrong. Her point is that it's not about asking people to pay, but letting them pay - or something along those lines. Check it out, it's a great talk.

I know it seems counter-intuitive. However, reading a book online is not the same experience as buying the entire book and reading it in your preferred way. Brandon Sanderson published 'Warbreaker' a chapter at a time, as he wrote it, on his website, including discussing his thought processes as he wrote. Then he got it tidied up and it was published, and sold a lot of copies, even though the original version is still available to read for free.

Indeed. I probably won't be putting up the fully edited and completed version of my novel as a free kindle download - but the actual text will be available on the website, along with previous edits and original versions and notes and all that. Technically, anyone who wants to can copy and paste it all into a document and convert it into a kindle file of their own, but that's a bit of a hassle. If someone is interested enough in reading it to go through all that they might as well shell out the price for the full thing.

 

[taiwwa]

I know it seems counter-intuitive. However, reading a book online is not the same experience as buying the entire book and reading it in your preferred way. Brandon Sanderson published 'Warbreaker' a chapter at a time, as he wrote it, on his website, including discussing his thought processes as he wrote. Then he got it tidied up and it was published, and sold a lot of copies, even though the original version is still available to read for free.

Not even that though. Like, Weir posted epub files on his website, but people with the Kindle didn't know how to load them on. So he put it on the amazon store.

 

[Chilari]

The way I see it is this: if people like your work and want to support you, they might be willing to pay for something they can read for free anyway, because they're not paying for the product, they're paying to support your work. That's what putting something up on Amazon for sale when it's already free is about, as far as I see it.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

The way I see it is this: if people like your work and want to support you, they might be willing to pay for something they can read for free anyway, because they're not paying for the product, they're paying to support your work. That's what putting something up on Amazon for sale when it's already free is about, as far as I see it.

Good point. There's also the hope that the 'free' readers will amble over to Amazon and leave a review, because they've read the book even though they haven't bought it.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

There is one big problem with this - Amazon. They will be upset if they find out they are being undercut. Given the scenario you describe they will either make the book free on their site which means you will get zero dollars from them - or because it's you yourself giving away your book for free and thus you that's deliberately undercutting them on a book you put on their site, they'll remove it completely.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

There is one big problem with this - Amazon. They will be upset if they find out they are being undercut. Given the scenario you describe they will either make the book free on their site which means you will get zero dollars from them - or because it's you yourself giving away your book for free and thus you that's deliberately undercutting them on a book you put on their site, they'll remove it completely.

That's not quite how it works. So long as you haven't signed an exclusive deal with Amazon (such as the KDP Select program), you can sell (or give away) the book in as many places as you want, including your own website. If you give the book away, Amazon may choose to price match and reduce its price to zero too.

However, posting early draft chapters of the book as blogposts is not equivalent to the final complete book. An ebook is a downloadable digital product, blogposts aren't. Look at the number of people who have compiled their blog posts into books and published them. Two different animals.