Double or Nothing: HarperCollins Continues Experimenting

I recently got an e-mail message from the PR team at HarperCollins (HC) for Tom Breitling's book Double or Nothing.  Although I'm not interested enough in the topic to read the book I have to admit the message got my attention.  Why?  HC is offering access to the entire book for free on their website till April 14th.  So if you really think you can read a 256-page book via HC's Browse Inside service, go for it!  Details are on Tom's site and here's the link to HC's Browse Inside access for the book.

The reality is very few people are going to read the entire book online even when the price is zero.  Rather, what HC is doing is leveraging their Browse Inside service to see how much of a sales bump they can create by providing full access for a limited period of time.  As a fellow publisher, I'm intrigued by the experiment.  And thanks to the magic of Bookscan data, I can keep an eye on the sales trends during and after the free access period.  My gut tells me they could leave the full access in place indefinitely and it would only help sell more copies in the long run...  Regardless, I love it that a major trade publisher like HC is experimenting like this with free access to e-content.
 

Comments

[Dave Taylor]

Thank you, Joe! I have been saying for years that authors who get their knickers in a twist over the freely downloadable PDFs of their books are missing the point: people do not read 300+ page books in digital form. In fact, many of my books are freely available via peer-to-peer networks and I truly believe that the electronic copy of something like "Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours" actually generates sales, rather than costing sales. I mean, let's face it, books are usually in the $10-$20 range now (at least, after a few months on the shelf) and that's a cheap investment in learning or enjoyment.

This is one interesting unintended consequence of the potential success of the Kindle, however: what happens if it evolves to being a beautiful reading device that truly is a competitor to the printed book? Then suddenly clean electronic copies are genuine competition because they can be bookmarked, annotated, shared, etc. What are your thoughts on that?