Posted on the Business Model Innovation Hub and the freemium.eu blog
I firmly believe that you should give away a free PDF version of your book. It would be a possibility letting the book spread virally, while adopting new sources of revenue and following the great examples within the publishing industry.
Once before, I have mentioned this in a thread here on the forum. The other day I was reading your blog and thought about this again. Soon after, I found myself writing an open letter to you and people in your situation.
Please forgive me for trying to tell you what you should do. This open letter is meant as an invitation for a discussion on this forum.
Here is why you should give away a free PDF version of the book.
Go Viral
The idea behind giving a free PDF away is that it will help you spread the ideas. True viral comes when people can not only tell their friends about a great product, but when these friends also have a chance to try it out and then again tell their friends. Products like Gmail and Skype are a great examples of how great products can spread virally, without any advertising. The reason such products spread so rapidly, is that people can actually try them out as and when they hear about it.
Adopting Freemium Principles
The basis of the freemium model is that you give a product away for free, in order to sell complementary products to a certain number of the free users. Flickr uses this principle to sell pro accounts to 5-10 % of their free members. The Brazilian tecno brave scene uses this principle, by giving the music away for free and selling tickets to parties.
This principle is ideal for a writer/consultant because the books can be used to promote an idea. Once this idea spreads, the writer/consultant can profit from this in a number of ways.
Or as Chris Anderson puts it
“I don’t write books to sell books, I write books to increase my personal “fame” and then capitalise on this in other ways.”
While Chris Anderson’s book is very popular and sells well, this does not compare to the revenue generated by the high-price-tag talks he is giving around the world.
Great Examples of Success
Within the publishing industry, there are various examples of success achieved by releasing a free PDF version of a book. One such great example is that of Paolo Coelho.
In 1999 he posted a free Russian version of “The Alchemist” on his website. With no additional promotion the sales climbed from 1.000 to 10.000 within a year. The next year the sales reached 100.000 and by 2002 he was selling a million copies of several titles.
Personally he is convinced that the free download made the difference.
It Will Most Probably Not Hurt Your Physical Sales
Some smart guys are looking into the effect of ‘free’ on publishing.
Their initial results include an observation that “average results in small sample were up”.
Or in other words: Based on their initial findings, it seems that a free digital book helps the sale of the printed book.
Personally I looked into around 30 examples of authors providing a free version f their book for download. What I have found is that most of these were happy with the result obtained after providing the free copy.
There was only one author who expressed bad experiences. This was from raising a book solely online and depending on donations for all of his revenue. I conclude that even this single negative experience could have been positive, if the author had also sold a physical copy.
Recently Nine Inch Nails experienced something similar in the music industry. Even though their latest album was freely available with a Creative Commons License the album made it to the top of Amazons sales charts (besides generating a lot of revenue from their other products).
Walk the Talk
I have been following your blog for a while now and like the examples of business model innovation that you provide. One thing that I see that all great examples have in common is that they are all radical innovations that are modeled towards the specific circumstances of their target group. By providing a free PDF version you would be treading this path that has proved successful to many.
Radical innovation
Most of the examples you use are radical innovations, things that make these companies change the face of their industry by changing the business model.
A great way to illustrate this would be to adopt a business model that seems radical. In the writer/consultant industry, free is only now starting to catch on. By giving away a free version of the book, your own business model would seem radical.
Modeled Towards the Target Group
Giving away a free PDF gives you a unique opportunity to shape the business model towards the target group.
Within the segment of established businesses, you have a great possibility to sell workshops and talks at a high premium. Along with this, revenue could be generated from licensing, referrals or similar.
Amongst students, NGOs and similar segments, a free giveaway would give them access to your ideas and concepts. A free book could greatly increase your spread in these segments, which will palpably have a great spillover effect into the more mainstream and profitable segments.
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10 Comments
Peter,
thanks for creating this great case and sharing your arguments. Definitively of value!
Peter,
Awesome.
However, I encourage you to find a way to walk the talk here too, it’s easy to give advice with nothing to loose right? Maybe we can sweeten the deal for people who take your advice.
As a freemium “consultant”, maybe you can take a pay-per performance bet on this to convince Alex to do it? Each sold book above target of N, you make a %. Each sold book below target of N, you PAY a % to the author.
Partially kidding here, but I’m actually partially interested in if there is a model for you to start giving “free” freemium consulting best practices to ensure success on products and services where you see the opportunity - offset with a “freemium bet” of some sort?
Thanks for the food for thought!!
-Alan
I like your input and the idea of the bet, i has definitely given some thoughts for me. At the moment I am actually contemplating something similar for a current client. That i run the freemium part of their business. They do the consultancy work that they have always been doing and i run the freemium related parts of their business “create and distribute the free products, adjust and run additional complimentary products”
The success of a freemium model depends on the ability to distribute the free product and adjust the complimentary products. Even just releasing a free PDF can give freemium advantages. Yet in order to reach the maximum benefit, you need act on several levels around a product. This creates a situation where a direct “offset bet” would be hard to control.
In line with you comment,one option could be to offer “no cure no pay” consultant services. Where I only get paid when there are results. Would that be in line with you chain of thought ?
I believe the business case for giving the book away for free is very strong for the following 3 reasons:
1. The book will be beautiful, graphical and though provoking, people will want to own the book and use it for inspiration. Pdf and printed versions will not cannibalize on this.
2. A free ebook gets spread like a virus and with some links in it to buy the physical book I even believe you will sell more books than not providing a free pdf. Better and cheaper marketing than colleagues sending this ebook to each other is difficult to get.
3. I believe the main target audience for this book will buy the book even when they have the pdf version because they like books and have money to buy books. Also I believe that the buyer doesn’t want to have it in the suitcase everyday but be able to pick it up anytime anywhere and a free searchable pdf version will do the trick.
Perhaps Alex should have a business model where he after X copies start sharing the revenues with the co-creators in the hub? That will create a strong sales force… (I only take 2% commission if they use the model)
//Anders
TheBusinessModelDatabase (tbmdb.com)
Hi Peter
Interesting idea. I did it with my Ph.D. thesis on business model innovation already in 2001 and due to the openness of the idea, it spread. You find the book either at Google Book Search (look up Patrick Stähler Geschäftsmodelle) or on http://business-model-innovation.com
The bad part is that the book was written in German so the market is limited, but if you understand a little bit of German, check it out.
It is fantastic to see how the idea of business model innovation spread with the book. In the old days an idea diffused from the top (eg professors to the students). Today, the world turned. The students find my book easily on the Internet, cite it and then it spreads to the top. Interestingly, my book is still being sold even after 8 years. And that is definitely due to open access on the web.
Thanks for the comments, it is great to hear you opinion.
@Patrick Unfortunately I don’t read German, so I will not be able to chack out your book . It’s a same because it sounds interesting.
@admin
That is the reason why I started my blog in Englisch. So we can share better our ideas.
Peter, thank you for the suggestion and thank you to all others for your comments. There has indeed been a big discussion around the idea of giving away a FREE PDF.
The conclusion:
YES we will go FREE with the PDF: however, we will go with a slightly “lesser” version as some suggested in order to still boost book sales! This is also what Seth Godin mentioned in his free e-mail distributed book. The idea is to give the real thing (full content, full color), but in a particular format: two pages (spread) per PDF-page. That makes it possible to read, but slightly uncomfortable (e.g. printed on large A3 format). This way the content can spread freely. People will see the content and the beauty of the book and those who want to can buy it. Those who won’t buy it probably wouldn’t have bought it anyway.
The big question is of course: what are the things we have to pay attention to so sales take off based on the free PDF… Suggestions?
Great Alex!
Most people will still buy the book since you will design the book for paper with lots of pictures, graphs and colors and therefore printing at home will be a hassle and much more expensive than just buying it.
Cheers Patrick
I totally agree with the idea of giving a free pdf. It would increase the spread of the book’s ideas to those people as well who can’t afford to buy it. Moreover, there aren’t many book lovers who would not buy the book even if it is available online. Reading a book with its exquisite paper, and great style, gives a whole new experience not comparable to PDF. So, it shouldn’t hurt the sales much, and may just increase by viral spread using word of mouth, and instant availability of the book for people who don’t normally go to stores for checking books out.