That's right. For three days, Amazon will allow customers to download the digital version of as many books as they want absolutely free! No, this isn't happening now. But it should.
Random House just followed the marketing experiment started by HarperCollins and, for three days last week, gave away the digital version of Charles Bock's 432 page debut novel, Beautiful Children. Why are they doing this? Aren't they in the business of selling books? Two simple reasons:
First, by doing something radically different (by industry standards), they get big mentions in the mainstream media. Random House made the front page of the Life section of USA Today. And even long tail exponents like Chris Anderson are smart enough to know that a cover article in Wired will sell more books than giving away a digital version of ones book on ones blog.
The second reason is just as simple. Not many people are going to download and read books on their computer screens. Nor are they going to print them out and read them. The paper and ink would cost more than the books, including shipping. But what they will do is download them and skim them. Just like they flip through books at Barnes & Noble. Then if a book peaks their interest, they'll buy it.
So if Amazon could pull this off for all of their books, it would create a huge spike in book sales. Customers would browse all of the titles that interest them, download as many as possible during the three day time limit, and then peruse them when they get a chance. And this perusing - without the potential of reading a negative review, mind you - will lead to book purchases.
But here's the one caveat: When the day comes that the majority of books are read on digital readers, like Amazon's Kindle, the free experiment will be over. Unless, of course, they offer the books in proprietary formats which will be unreadable by digital readers. Hmm . . . sounds familiar, doesn't it? :)
Posted March 6, 2008
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