Beyond MatchBook: ebooks regardless of where the print book is published.

[Michael_J_Sullivan]

I'm really happy that Amazon rolled out MatchBook - I plan on offering my ebooks FREE (for any of the ones that I control e-rights to) but even before they announced that program I proposed to do exactly that for my readers but independent of any outlet).  Basically I put a big note at the front of the print book (which should show up in the "sample section" regardless of whether they sample the ebook or the print book  that basically says, "Email me your receipt of print book purchase and I'll send you a DRM free ebook in whatever formats you want).

Yeah it will be a bit of logistics to service it.  But if it gets too bad I can pay a teenager to email the books.  I was wondering if anyone was doing this, or thinking of doing this in the future?

[KBoards.com]

[Michael_J_Sullivan]

I'm really not sure why no one else seems to be interested in doing this.  I'm interested to know why.

[nico]

We do it with our print books, but i haven't received any emails. Probably because we've only sold about 5 print books.

[Christa Wick]

I do a lot of honor-based free stuff. For example - I have a bundle of 6 shorts/novellas, 4 of which were individually on sale before the bundle for 2.99 each. I did an honor-based coupon (in my newsletter) for a free download of the bundle if the individual had already bought at least 2 of the included 2.99 titles. I've had maybe 140 people use the coupon with potential pool well over 1000. Sure, there were likely a few coupon users who were fibbing, but those people could have also acquired the title on any number of pirate sites. I don't care about who's going to cheat, I care about making it easy for the honest people to get what it is I want to give them (and for me in giving it to them). I was considering similar for the books in expanded distribution who aren't eligible for Matchbook.

Edited to add - the bundle's been out less than 3 months and only went live on Apple today. The bundle price is 6.99. Anyone meeting the honor criteria spent at least $6 and likely, based on my reader patterns, had all four of the 2.99 titles previously purchased. While I've had about 140 people use the coupon (which took about 10 minutes total to generate and put in the newsletter), over 670 individuals have purchased the bundle (so over $3000 in new royalties for old short stories that were down to a few hundred in royalties cumulative monthly). Plus, bundling let me do a print version. Point being, honor based system is easy to manage, shows respect to your fans, and isn't giving away anything to the cheats that couldn't easily steal another way.

[Saul Tanpepper]

I offer a free ebook to customers who purchase the print copy of "The Essential Book Blog," since digital is the optimal format because of all the links inside. The link to get the e-copy is buried well within the interior of the print book (so as to prevent those who just want a freebie) and it requires the buyer to subscribe to a newsletter; confirmation comes with a link to the ebook. It's all automatic, so I don't have to worry about sending them out or missing any.

[68564]

I'm really not sure why no one else seems to be interested in doing this.  I'm interested to know why.

Because... I am currently only selling my print books through Amazon so match book solves it for me. If I ever move beyond that... I might think about this.

[JamieDeBree]

I've done this from the start at my own BSB store (4 yrs now). When someone puts a print book in their cart, the ebook is automatically added free.

I don't sell much through my own store, but it's there if someone wants to take advantage of it. :-)

[Susan Kaye Quinn]

Logistics, mostly. Plus Matchbook takes care of it now.

Interestingly, sometimes I can't give away the paperback! I had a subscriber-only contest yesterday - winner in the US gets paperback, international winner gets an ebook. The winner was from the US, but she wanted the ebook, because her eyes were no good and she could blow up the font.

#ebooksFTW

[Dolphin]

I'm really not sure why no one else seems to be interested in doing this.  I'm interested to know why.

Actually, can we turn that around? Why are you interested in doing this?

It looks like you're trying to use it as a selling point on Hollow World, but it's still not your lead. On Amazon, I'd only find out about it if I expanded the blurb after reading the first nine lines, or if I read seven paragraphs into your author's note. I'm not sure I'd even be looking at a book listed as paperback only if I cared about ebooks.

Oh, and since you don't have an ebook version posted, isn't it impossible to use Matchbook? Why wouldn't you want Amazon to handle this for you whenever possible?

The best thing about Matchbook, of course, is that Amazon is taking the time to promote and support it. It'll be common knowledge soon, making it easy for buyers to factor it into their decisions. Beyond that, the barriers to using it should be lower, because it's built into Amazon's user experience and it automatically leverages their database to check your purchases. No scanning receipts, no forwarding emails, no PDFs, no asking a big scary author for a favor, no querying you afterward about how to load it onto their Kindles.

Matchbook makes a lot of sense to me, but I'm not sure I'd go so far out of my way to mimic it. What's the expected ROI? How will you assess its success? Are there better uses of your time and resources, like simply posting an ebook version of the book (or even a free pirate edition)?

I'd love to hear your thoughts! As an aspiring spec fic indy, I'll crap my pants with glee if I someday achieve even half your level of success.

[KBoards.com]