I’ve been considering the possibility of making Sunborn available for free download, perhaps in installments leading up to the actual pub date (end of October). A number of writers, including Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi, have offered their books for free download and discovered that it seemed to increase their audience and interest in the novels, and thus sales of their books. While there are no doubt some readers who will read only the free version and skip the hardcopy, it seems that many more decide they’d like to own the actual book once they’ve read the electronic version. At least, that’s what these writers have reported. Past experience is no guarantee of future performance, though, as the mutual funds tell us.
I’d be interested in knowing what you folks think. This is new territory for all of us in the fiction world, and I’m feeling my way in the dark just like everyone else.
(I’ve already used this quote, but it just seems to fit, so here’s an encore…)
“Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow