Author Reacts To Amazon Kindle Lending Policy By Dropping Book Prices
Cheaper Kindle Books May Prompt Readers To Buy, Not Borrow.
- (1888PressRelease) January 06, 2011 - Amazon's announcement that it will allow for the lending of Kindle books has disheartened some authors and sent others into panic. Will readers choose to borrow books instead of buying them?
The new feature allows Kindle users to lend out titles for a period of 14 days. Some groups have already organized on Facebook, ready to loan and borrow books amongst each other.
"Whether Amazon anticipated users organizing themselves into a lending club or not, we're not sure but it's likely to result in many lost sales," Next Web Editor Martin Bryant wrote this week. "After all, most books can be comfortably read in 14 days. If all you need to do to get hold of Kindle books is to request a loan from a stranger online, how many will you actually bother to buy?"
But some authors are reacting with a strategy of their own - dropping the prices of their books to next to nothing.
"I don't know about the next guy," says Maine author Mark LaFlamme, "but if I really like a book, I want to have a copy all to myself. A good book is something you hang onto and read again and again. You keep it in your collection. You don't just read and move on."
A popular paperback author, LaFlamme recently listed his titles on Kindle. Almost immediately, he dropped the price of his full-length novels to $2.99. That includes his brand new short story collection "Box of Lies."
For his baseball novelette "Asterisk: Red Sox 2086," LaFlamme is charging just 99 cents. His hope: readers interested in his books will spend a few bucks to get them rather than hunting around for a friend who has a copy.
"Long before Kindle," LaFlamme said, "people were loaning and borrowing paperbacks and hardcover books. The really good ones still sold by the thousands."
LaFlamme's novels can be found in print or digital form at Amazon or on his website at www.marklaflamme.com/books
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