Via Amazon's Kindle and other e-readers, book publishers are finally catching on to the age-old marketing method of offering something free in order to encourage sales of additional products.
In a variation of "buy one, get one," publishers are offering best-sellers for free on Amazon and other retailers. The latest is the Kindle version of James Patterson's "The Angel Experiment," a four-year-old release that is the first book of the "Maximum Ride" young adult series. It joins Greg Keyes' "The Briar King" and Joseph Finder's "Paranoia" as the biggest movers on Amazon.com's site in recent days.
"The Angel Experiment" was originally released in 2005, and its free e-book release may have been timed to generate some buzz for the movie version, due next year. And that is exactly the point.
The idea of giving away the e-books is to boost the sales of others, which usually cost about $10 online. Most e-books are sold through Amazon.com, although rivals such as Sony and Barnes and Noble also sell them. Amazon includes the free titles on the Kindle best-seller list, while Sony does not include those on its list, choosing instead to differentiate between paid and unpaid downloads.
Publishers seem hesitant to embrace the free model entirely, fearing that the lower priced editions will take away from sales of hardcovers and paperbacks. Furthermore, they seem to worry that the $10 price tag will set new expectations for the cost of a book -- much in the same way the music industry feared the much-cheaper MP3 downloads.
Book publishers do not have to fear illegal copying as much as the music industry did -- but they do need to understand the benefits of the technology and market wares to capitalize on it. Free e-books encourage consumers to try out new authors. Likewise, a free e-book that offers an in-depth interview with a famous author could prime the pump for paid sales of the writer's next work. In fact, authors could stand to benefit greatly from using one work to market another: Offering "The Angel Experiment" at no cost could be a very effective way of igniting excitement -- and ticket sales -- for the soon-to-be released film.
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