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Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and CommentaryBook reviews, industry news, and commentary from a reader’s point of view
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Dec
30
2008
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This week Harlequin has been giving a book away a day at its ebook site. The first day, I bought a couple of other titles, as the free book looked lonely in my cart. I wondered how many others actually bought books with their free book download. Related Posts: Jane is a long time romance reader whose passion is, you guessed it, reading. She's currently loving contemporary authors like Sarah Mayberry and Kristan Higgins but her first love will always be the historical. Some of her old time favorites are Amanda Quick and Johanna Lindsey and some of the new favorites are Sherry Thomas, Joanna Bourne and Claudia Dain.
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10 comments to “Free Giveaway Poll”Say What's On Your mind |
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Just the freebies.
But now that I have a handle on how to deal with the drm issues (Digital editions/how it creates a pdf which I can then swap to my eReader) and the Sony Reader I will download more. I used to have a Blaze monthly subscription, but it went by the wayside when I swapped banks/didn’t change card details. Now that I’ve got the digital thing sorted, and won’t have to read on my screen, I’ll start picking them back up again I think.
I didn’t vote, only because there’s no “None, because the ebook listed didn’t appeal to me”. I think it depends on where the ebook leads me (genre) as to whether or not I would buy more. So far, none of the ebook giveaways anywhere have really caught my eye. *sigh*
And I love free things!
I went in search of Rhyannon Byrd’s books heh
The only freebies I have downloaded have been from author’s websites so there
weren’t any books for sale.
As far as the other freebies, none of them have appealed to me.
Honestly, even if the Ebook is free, I don’t take part in the offer as I still like to hold something in my hand….turning the pages, flag an important message in the book.
I usually will just take the freebie, but I generally hope it’s going to be good so that I’ll want to go back and buy something by that author.
I take the download to read later and then have gone back to look at the author’s other titles if I enjoyed the freebie.
I also try to pass the freebie site on to someone I know who reads the kind of fiction with a note that they said they were looking for a new m/m or sci-fi or fantasy or whatever author.
For me, it depends what site I’m on. In the case of Harlequin, I don’t even go for the freebies. :/ I’m not into category books, but the first time I saw they were giving something away I figured what the heck and went and got it. I couldn’t get it to work, though — I forget whether it wouldn’t download, or I couldn’t open it, or whatever the problem was, but I futzed with it for half an hour or so, then shrugged and walked away. I was willing to try one of their books for free, but if it was going to fight with me, I wasn’t interested enough to fight back.
On other sites, if they have books I actually want and assuming I can download and open them to actually read [cough] I might or might not grab some books to buy while I get the freebie. I’ve done it on Fictionwise, and maybe one or two other places. Even if I don’t buy anything right then, though, if I like the freebie a lot I’m likely to go back looking for more by the same author later, which is the point of giving away a freebie, right?
Angie
I just get the freebies. For a couple of reasons.
Reason one: Paying for non-freebie stuff. How to do it? Don’t have a credit card, or Paypal account or whatever.
Reason B: Figuring out what works on my MacBook is a headache. I’m a bit (!) technically challenged and none on my nerd relatives is Mac-literate (except the husband of a cousin and since he’s pretty much a stranger to me, the idea of calling him with stupid questions doesn’t appeal – unless I screw up really badly, and I really, really try not to do that).
In case I ever get it together, I have a list of authors I want to try.
I just get the freebies, for the simple reason that I have yet to have an ebook work with Linux, even though PDFs are strongly supported.
I just tried again with another freebie. No dice.
Both my laptop and my portable internet tablet run Linux.
If any “industry” people are reading this: Linux has over 30 million users worldwide, and is growing. Yes, it’s mostly a freeware platform on the desktop, but people do buy software for it, and certainly buy content that works on it.
A lot of Linux users would certainly buy ebooks… if we could open the files. Even if (when) ebooks become the norm, all that means is that eventually someone will write an ebook reader for Linux, with or without the help of the content providers. Since the content providers are providing the content, not the software, I don’t see why they would care, but they seem to.
Any no, I’m not going to switch from my operating system and all the applications I’ve come to rely upon just for something I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather buy on paper anyhow.