Another data point that online distribution actually *helps* the content
cartel.
If they'd only realise it.
Some background here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/6475
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/3574
Udhay
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/07/results-of-free.html
I got an email from Harper Collins this morning, giving some final
statistics and information about the free American Gods online read
thing we did to mark the blog's seventh anniversary. (If you're
interested in the back story, read the entries at
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/free%20book up to here.)
The Browse Inside Full Access promotion of American Gods drove 85
thousand visitors to our site to view 3.8 Million pages of the book (an
average of 46 pages per person). On average, visitors spent over 15
minutes reading the book.
The Indies [ie. independent booksellers -- Neil] are the only sales
channel where we have confidence that incremental sales were driven by
this promotion. In the Bookscan data reported for Independents we see a
marked increase in weekly sales across all of Neil’s books, not just
American Gods during the time of the contest and promotion. Following
the promotion, sales returned to pre-promotion levels.
Through an online survey, we know that 44% of fans enjoyed this
browsing experience and 56% did not. Some of Neil’s fans expressed
frustration with the Browse Inside tool for reading through a whole
book. (This poor result is partially due to two problems which were
fixed soon after the initial launch – mistaken redirect to the
Flash-based reader and slow image load time)
(The reason that independent booksellers were the only places they could
see it having an effect was that some of the chain stores were doing a
promotion that my books were also in, which fogged the results for them.)
We also received some valuable insight from the 1k people who
responded to the User Survey that Neil posted to his blog.
The vast majority of respondents had already read one of Neil’s
books, but 20% of them had not previously read American Gods
41% were new to the e-reading format
Response to our Browse Inside Online Reader was mixed – with 44%
saying they enjoyed the experience at 56% saying they did not. The chief
complaints were that you had to have an internet connection to read the
book, you had to scroll to see the whole page and that the load time was
sometimes slow. 69% of respondents said that they would like to be able
to download. Some people complained that since they couldn’t bookmark
where they left off, they got lost between reading sessions.
Back to the 44% who enjoyed the experience….9% of respondents said
that they read through 100% of the book and 30% of respondents said that
they would use this tool to read the whole book.
In the comments section of the survey many people requested that
more of Neil’s books be made available.
As I said back when were doing it, to a bookshop owner worried that I
was taking his livelihood away from him,
Anyway (it probably bears reiterating) this is an experiment.
Harper Collins are going to be looking at the figures over the next
month and longer. If sales of American Gods crash in bookshops -- or if
sales of all my other books crash -- they won't be doing it again. If
American Gods sells more, if my other titles sell more, on actual
Bookscan sales, then I think we'll all agree that you and your fellow
booksellers will be selling more books, and will thus have nothing to
worry about.
Remember, publishers aren't making their money from free downloads
or from free online books. Like you (and like me), they make their money
from books sold.
Given that Harper Collins sold a lot more of all my books while the free
American Gods was out there, with sales of all my titles up 40% through
independent bookshops, I think I can safely say that we'll be doing it
-- or rather, something similar -- again. And that the 56% of people who
didn't enjoy the online reading experience may be a lot happier with how
we do it next time out.
And thank you -- to everyone who initially voted, and everyone who read
(or failed to read) American Gods online and everyone who filled out a
survey.
