Comments on: Random House Starts Free Content Library

By: Jane

Jane — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:11:10 +0000

@John Hilton III Thanks for leaving the link. Fascinating numbers. Even taking into consideration non reported sales (i.e Wal-mart, etc.) the logical conclusion is that if Bookscan numbers are increasing, it's doubtful that big box retailers numbers are decreasing.

By: John Hilton III

John Hilton III — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:07:19 +0000

Sales data on these books for the 8 weeks before and after are available at:

http://www.johnhiltoniii.org/hard-numbers-on-free-random-house-books/

By: DeeCee

DeeCee — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:15:06 +0000

forgive this question, but can they be put through Adobe digital editions and transfered onto the Sony reader? I’ve been wanting to read the Pratt book for ages, but can’t find it in pb locally.

By: Kaye

Kaye — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:14:54 +0000

Assasin’s Apprentice is THE best fantasy novel I have ever read, hands down. It’s amazing, and the series is spectacular.

By: Sunita

Sunita — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:17:09 +0000

What Sherry said. This is all kinds of awesome.

One possible reason for starting with SFF is that the Baen Free Library has made it very clear that offering free books not only doesn’t cannibalize sales, but more likely increases them. And also what Sherry said about the series hook aspect.

By: Sherry Thomas

Sherry Thomas — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:11:38 +0000

And I really think it’s awesome that RH is doing this.

By: Sherry Thomas

Sherry Thomas — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:09:58 +0000

Evangeline, I’m guessing that it may not so much be the sf/f factor as the continuity/series factor, as in, RH prolly thinks that there is a good chance if readers read the first book in an excellent series for free, they’d rush out to get the rest.

Romances tend to be stand-alone stories even within a series, i.e. main characters/conflicts in one story do not remain main characters/conflicts in the next story.

By: rebyj

rebyj — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:40:17 +0000

Thank you Jia.

By: Jia

Jia — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:21:48 +0000

@rebyj: Yes, those 5 are all that's available so far.

By: Evangeline

Evangeline — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:18:02 +0000

Kind of interesting that they’re releasing sf/f titles. Is there something about that particular genre that publishers find it more lucrative to set up free libraries? HC has allowed a few romances to be read in full, but I’ve never seen anything like this for the romance genre.

By: rebyj

rebyj — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:44:55 +0000

I may be blind or just ignorant but I find it hard to navigate.
http://www.suvudu.com/freelibrary/ has 5 new releases on the page and links to see others in those particular series but I can’t find a data base of all books anywhere. Are those five the extent of what’s released so far?

The author links on the side go to the author’s individual websites, the tags take you to blog posts and all the Suvudu banners on the page just take you back to the front page. What am I missing?