Wednesday, September 17, 2008

is HOW and WHERE we read changing?

Author Melanie Lynne Hauser did something really interesting. After publishing her first two books (Confessions of SuperMom and SuperMom Saves the World) she decided to make the novel she wrote first, Jumble Pie, available as a free e-book.

It didn't take off that fast at first, until she found this eye-catching graphic and started using some targeted google banner ads.

Now she's had at least 1300 downloads of the book!

Besides the surprise that people were finding and reading her book, Melanie found out some interesting things by a survey she conducted of the people who downloaded Jumble Pie:

96.7% survey respondents were women
35.7% of readers who read all or part of the novel has so far forwarded the file to an average of 4 other readers

What she also found was that many of them women were reading her e-book during the day, at work.

Do you read e-books? Do you read them at work? Would you admit it?

Click here to download Jumble Pie by Melanie Lynne Hauser. Melanie is my guest on this week's Realgoodwords and I asked her about her experiment with e-books.
"I personally don't feel that stingy about my writing. Obviously I want to be paid to write. I have a lot of words in me and a lot of stories in me and I did not have a problem with sharing that book with people because I love Jumble Pie."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No e-books for me!! If I can't hold it in my hand, it's difficult for me to read it. I mean, I don't want to read it! I cannot fathom the thought of the new "Kindle" or other reading "machines."
CT

Anonymous said...

Fantastic idea-maybe not for everyone but what is? Do not be afraid of something new and different.You never know unless you try.

Anonymous said...

So much for work ethics. I can't say I'm surprised...