Free online editions as a marketing tool
Out of the thirteen books nominated by SF Site readers for best novel of the year 2005, two of them (Cory Doctorow's "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" and Charles Stross's "Accelerando") were released by their authors free online, under a Creative Commons license. http://www.sfsite.com/columns/best06b.htm It would be interesting if SF Site asked those readers whether they first encountered the novels, or received word of them, through the online editions. That would tell us something about how effective a marketing tool free online editions are.

That and whether they did eventually purchase that book or another book by that author.

That, I think, is of less importance than whether they passed the word on to readers who *would* buy it in print. My perspective on this is as a lifelong library user. I've purchased very few new books during my life. But I've recommended a lot of books to people who do buy new books regularly.

t seems to me that they would be more liekly to recommend the free version as they found it easy to use--and it's available to anyone with internet simulataneously. A library book is singular and localised... I am all for free content but it's effectiveness if often assumed. I would be happy to have my book in the libaray if only becuase that is at least one sale ;)

"I would be happy to have my book in the libaray if only becuase that is at least one sale" :). "I am all for free content but it's effectiveness if often assumed." Oh, I don't think it's assumed. I think it's the exact opposite: the prevailing sentiment at the moment seems to be that giving away your work for free is crazy. I don't think there's been enough of this taking place to be able to tell, one way or the other. Most of the high-publicity experiments have been with established authors who already have a readership, or with exclusively self-published authors who don't know how to promote their printed books. "t seems to me that they would be more liekly to recommend the free version" Depends on who they're recommending it to. If I recommended a novel to a fellow online reader, yes, I'd point them to the online version. But some of my friends do virtually no online reading. There was an interesting thread about this topic at Cory Doctorow's site, with some people saying that, if they read the book online, they'd never buy it, and some people saying that, if they read the work online, they'd want to have a "hard copy" afterwards. Probably the most successful experiment of this kind is Baen Free Library, but that's a case where they only give away some of the authors' books, not all of the books by an author.

Yes, the Baen method worked on me. It is so hard looking at ranks of books to find a new writer who is really good. So I do think that one sample would increas sales of backlist. Of course I'll finish writing my backlist before I try that with a real novel length work--