Cory Doctorow pretends the only successful eBook publishers are those who give their eBooks for free. But how could he talk about successful eBook publishing if his eBooks do not generate benefits by themselves?

Could it be because, in fact, he is not marketing eBooks at all? Are his eBooks only part of a marketing strategy used to sell other products and services? It must be. Otherwise, if his real activity was eBook publishing, he would not consider receiving no profits on his eBooks as a success.

Using eBooks as a marketing tool

This is well known - eBooks are an excellent marketing tool!

Many expert Web marketers use eBooks only as promotional material. For them, the goal of giving an eBook for free is only to make it spread all over the Internet as fast as possible. But of course, they make sure their eBook is full of ads promoting the products and services they actually sell.

So if we believe Cory Doctorow, because these eBooks get a huge amount of downloads, it means the future of successful eBook publishing is by giving them for free.

For me, it's like if we were saying this: if a small toy given away for free in cereal boxes gets widely distributed, it means all small toys should be marketed this way and given away for free. Should we believe cereal boxes distributors are marketing toys? Of course not - they are only using them to promote their real products. In no way are they are selling toys.

Following the same logic, we could say that Cory Doctorow and many other Web marketers are not selling eBooks at all.

The effect on eBooks market value

The extensive use of free eBooks as a promotional tool might have a negative effect for real eBooks publishers - doing so could affect the value potential customers will grant to eBook contents. Giving away eBooks for free might end up taking away some of their value. If people become used to get eBook contents for free, they could end up thinking that such non-physical products have no value, making the content itself something they wouldn't be ready to pay for.

Using again the cereal distributors example, we all already saw free video games offered in cereal boxes. But, in order to avoid loss of market value, the games given away are carefully chosen - they will choose old games that are not good sellers anymore. And what do they expect by doing so? The goal is to make these free games promote the next games that will be released.

Games publishers would never authorize their brand new bestselling video game to be offered for free in a cereal box! Why? Because they sell games and doing so - giving them away - would only make their potential customers think a video game should cost nothing.

When Cory Doctorow is giving away eBooks for free to attract potential customers for his hard cover books, he only makes people believe the content has no value - they only pay for paper, covers and shipping.

Shouldn't authors and publishers be able to live from eBook publishing?

I definitively say "Yes". eBook publishing is a pretty new reality that will expand greatly in the coming years. But I think more efforts will be required to make potential customers grant high value to the content. And it's even more important to do it because, on the other side, we have all these Web marketers for whom the value of an eBook only depends on how many other products it will make sell.

But remember, when you hear these marketers, that they don't sell eBooks. Remember that giving away free eBooks might not the best thing to do if your goal is to publish and sell eBooks.

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Alain Thibault
www.secure-ebook.com