Comments on: Ebooks outsell Pbooks: My own story

By: walt

walt — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:13:08 +0000

Doug,

It would be interesting to see what happens with that. More than 4,000 copies “distributed” is impressive, especially for Lulu…on the other hand, the oft-repeated credo “you gotta give away the ebook, then people will buy the print version” doesn’t seem to work out all that well in this case.

By: Doug Johnson

Doug Johnson — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:33:49 +0000

Hi Walt,

A little book that my son and I wrote is available on Lulu either in print edition for $7 or as a free download.

To date: 25 copies sold*
4329 copied downloaded

*To be fair, I sold a lot of hard copies when it was new.

I think I will next try an experiment and charge a nominal fee for downloads – say, $5 with half going to a charity (Home for Wayward Librarians) and the other half to fund my wife’s Christmas present. Might be interesting.

But your point is well-taken – we need to be careful in drawing conclusions about some pieces of data!

Doug

By: walt

walt — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:09:26 +0000

Carolyn: You’re welcome–and I deliberately didn’t name or link to you, as it’s the kind of error you can make through a quick reading of the PR. The rest of the post is interesting, and I don’t feel qualified to comment on it.

By: Carolyn Foote

Carolyn Foote — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:23:30 +0000

You are correct, and I wanted you to know I have corrected my post. Thanks for holding me to task!