A few months ago Tobias Buckell noticed a trend in his book sales that most midlist novelists don’t typically see. His book Crystal Rain, which had been released in mass market paperback a year before, experienced a sudden spike in sales, more than doubling from the previous week. Perhaps even more noticeable was the jump in sales of the sequel to that novel, Ragamuffin, which saw an even more dramatic increase. [from Bloggasm]

What was the cause of all this joy? Well, Mr. Buckell's publisher, Tor, had been giving away free copies of the Crystal Rain pdf. We can imagine what happened next: punters downloaded the book. Some started reading it and realised they liked it, but that they hated reading it off a screen for 20 hours. Many of these will have clicked the 'buy' button.

A even greater number, must have kept scrolling to the bitter end, while their grannies rocked forward and backwards behind them, cackling, and warning about the imminent loss of eyesight.

Both groups, if satisfied, will then have added Ragamuffin to their collections.

All well and good and it proves, yes indeed and it does, that giving away free e-books leads to an increase in sales. QED. Can we all go home now?

Well no. There's an important aspect to this story that every writer and publisher should be thinking about. We have two sales bumps to consider here: the second one -- increased sales of the sequel -- is not so surprising. If you like the first book in a series, you're always going to want the next one, right?

But Crystal Rain improved its sales too, and it did so, in my opinion, because some of those who liked what they saw in the pdf, just couldn't be bothered reading the whole thing on screen. If Tor had given free physical books instead of files, there might be a few word-of-mouth increases, but other than that, it's obvious that the bump would have been confined to the second book alone.

E-books, in other words, are not books and those who have suggested that giving away free novels will increase sales have yet to prove their case. Pdfs are like the little samples of food they give away in supermarkets -- good for publicity, but not enough by themselves to fill a belly. They are not product.

A real test will come with the mass arrival of e-ink readers. With devices such as the Sony Reader, or the Amazon Kindle, we are entering a world where, for the first time, the e-book experience is every bit as valid as the printed page. Sure, there are a proportion of people who collect physical books and have to have them at any cost. But most of us, just want to lose ourselves for a few hours in Carribean Steampunk. Giving away an e-book to the owner of a Sony Reader, is the equivalent of giving them product and makes it very unlikely that they will buy the real thing. In fact, the offer of a free softcopy of something they had already been considering, might well lead to a slight dip in sales.

Even worse, the nightmare of piracy for struggling writers, suddenly becomes very real. If the file is as good as the book, if it can be copied by the million and downloaded with an absent-minded click of a button, how can the end of the world not be just around the corner?

UBIQUITY OF E-INK?

A while back, I was mouthing off on Westeros about how it would only take three years for the rise of the robots e-ink to change the world of books forever. I was thinking about mp3s, you see? But I wasn't thinking. E-ink readers are not cool and never will be. They won't be a must-have and most people who read, only consume a few books a year -- the odd Da Vinci Code, a bit of Harry Potter.

E-inkers, IMO, are likely to stay in a minority for a long while to come. When it changes, when it becomes a true phenomenon of the masses, will be when mothers with kids in school, get sick of sending them out there weighed down by 500 textbooks. When every child owns one, and when the latest Harry Potter equivalent appears in pdf, then, we'll see the dawn of a new wave of piracy such as the world of literature has never witnessed.

Maybe.

NEXT TIME

Next time, I will be outlining the huge advantages of e-ink for writers, reviewers and other book full-timers.