Given our fondness for all things publishing here at Freakonomics, we’ve been following the development of e-books with particular interest. In the past few weeks, it appears that the free e-book movement has officially begun. Last week, publishing monolith HarperCollins (the publisher of Freakonomics) announced that it would offer free electronic editions of a group of its books on the company’s Web site. This week, Suze Orman‘s Women & Money made headlines when more than 1 million copies were downloaded after Oprah Winfrey announced the book’s Internet availability on her show.
Now, author and George Washington University associate law professor Dan Solove informs us that Yale University Press has allowed him to put the full text of his new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, in free downloadable format on the book’s Web site. The publisher has also started releasing other their titles, such as Yochai Benkler‘s The Wealth of Networks, in full on the Internet.
It remains to be seen whether availability online will translate to higher sales for these books, though 1 million downloads in one day certainly bodes well for both Orman’s sales figures and e-books’ overall popularity. Whether this movement will lead to the rise of the Kindle remains to be seen.
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Why can’t book publishers use the same business model that magazines use? Namely, inserting advertisements among the pages to offset the costs of production.
I for one, would gladly put up with some ads in favor of a lower price. Imagine paying $5 for a new release, rather than $30.
Its definitely something to consider. Could this work or do we consider books a sacred item that can’t be sullied with advertising?
Offer was for a limited time–it was not suspended, Manini–this was clear in all the coverage. And it has increased book sales. Book is # 4 on Amazon.
It’s a shame Suze is such a lousy personal finance guru.
Good tips or Tor and Baen. Now, to pony up for a Kindle/Sony Reader.
How about this for analysis? Find the average number of MP3s people “have on their computer/laptop” who also own an MP3 player. Find the average number of MP3S people “have on their computer/laptop” who don’t have an MP3 player. Compare these two numbers. How many songs does one need to have before he/she become willing to buy a MP3 player.
What is the average number of ebooks do kindle owners have? What is the average number of ebooks do non-owners of kindle have? How many ebooks does one need to have before he/she would be willing to buy a kindle?
@9: While certainly a great business idea, imagine the outcry people would make when they found advertisements for McDonalds on page 37 of Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’, or a 2-page spread for the DVD Box Set of LOST in the middle of ‘The Great Gatsby’.
The problem with that idea is that, for many people, books are not meant to be time-pertinent. My mother gave me her copy of Albert Camus’s ‘The Plague’, which she had read when she was in high school. Novelty aside, it seems entirely pointless to place advertisements in books, because books will long outlast their advertisements. Additionally, there’s the issue of rate of consumption. Sure, new sellers will sell like hot cakes at first, and advertisements will be pertinent, but for books by authors like Jeanette Winterson, Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan–truly talented writers whose writing is not nearly as popular out of their respective home countries–the advertisements could easily become outdated before the product even sold.
Physical books may be read decades after their printing, but if you download a book you’ll probably expect to read it straight away, and most of the reading of e-books will happen soon after downloading. And it would be easy for the distributors to change the advertising in the available books often, so the advertisements are current to anyone who reads soon after downloading.
Thanks for the correction guys. It makes sense that it was a limited time offer.
I am not sure how popular Kindle will be if you can’t share the ebooks even after you have bought it . My local library has ebooks which are meant to be read on PCs but I still prefer to wait for the “real” thing. It is a nice feeling reading a book in bed and I can’t see that being replaced soon for me at least.
Kindle sounds really cool, in theory, but I’ll never buy it until it comes down to about a quarter of its current asking price.
The idea that you can’t share ebooks is a potential problem, too, but not a deal killer. The price is outrageous, end of story (note: perhaps it really does cost that much to make it. Tough! It’s nowhere near worth it to me, and that’s all that really matters).