Oprah + FREE = Blockbuster

Reader Duncan Rawlinson writes in with a cool example of free books (AP story excerpted here):

"Free business book is Web sensation

The Oprah touch doesn't just work for traditional books. More than 1 million copies of Suze Orman's "Women & Money" were downloaded after the announcement last week on Winfrey's television show that the e-book edition would be available for free on her Web site, for a period of 33 hours....

"The download offer "has built excitement for Suze's book across all formats," Julie Grau, the book's publisher, said in a statement.

According to Saturday's statement from Winfrey, more than 1.1 million copies of Orman's financial advice book were downloaded in English, and another 19,000 in Spanish. The demand compares to such free online sensations as "The 9-11 Commission Report," which the federal government made available for downloads, and Stephen King's e-novella, "Riding the Bullet."

The publishing community has endlessly debated the effects of making text available online, with some saying that free downloading is a valuable promotional tool and others worrying that sales for paper editions would be harmed. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers each have sued Google for its plans to scan and index books for the Internet.

The offer for "Women & Money," originally released a year ago by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc., has not kept people from buying the traditional version. As of Saturday, the book ranked No. 6 on Amazon.com [Note: As of Sunday, it was No 2]. The paper edition of "The 9-11 Commission Report," published in 2004 by W.W. Norton and Co., was a best seller for months.

"I can tell you that with respect to the `9-11 Report,' the free download did not seem to hurt sales at all," Norton publisher Drake McFeely told The Associated Press on Saturday. 'There were people who wanted it quickly, in a less convenient form, and that was clearly a different market from the people who wanted the traditional book.'..."

For fun, I plotted the sales of the book on Amazon for the past month, which includes more than three weeks before it was available for free and a bit less than one week since it was given away for a day and half on Oprah's website. Here's the data, thanks to TitleZ:

Certainly looks like free books didn't hurt her sales ;-)

Comments

[Fza]

When I read this news the first thing I thought off was the Long Tail. Free is a powerful instrument in promotion. But then again, apprently everything oprah touches turns to gold.

On a sidenote, I found a bunch of graphs on the Long Tail in one image (http://hinchcliffe.org/img/andersonsthelongtail.png), and I can't make out the texts in them does anyone know where I can find them legible?

Image from this article: http://web2.socialcomputingmagazine.com/the_long_tail_a_motive_force_for_web_20_makes_its_official_d.htm

[Andrew]

I bet most of those million-plus downloads are never read. Few have the patience to plow through a long PDF file on their computer and even fewer have ebook readers. Most likely you get some sampling, and anyone who is really inspired will buy the real book, as the Amazon stats suggest. Or pay to see the author talk somewhere.

[Chris Clarke]

Is it the 'free' effect or the 'Oprah' effect?

[Paul Statt]

Paul F. deLespinasse, a professor emeritus of political science and computer science at Adrian College, wrote last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education (which is not free online!) about making textbooks free online. This might work.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i23/23a03802.htm

[Patrick Ross]

I'm happy for the author and her publisher here. But let's not forget this was a choice they made, and knowing they were connected with Oprah, it was probably an easy one. Your mention of Google's copying program here has no relevance, because 1) the rights-holder is not the one making the decision, and 2) this is one book (like Radiohead was one album) and thus isn't comparable to the market being flooded with free downloads.

[Jones]

This is Really interesting! http://www.spymac.com/details/?2343566

[Carol]

Love your book, love your blog. I had to laugh at the idea of publishers and authors being afraid "free" books might hurt sales. Books have been free for years, just go to the library. I rarely buy books anymore but when I do it's because I got it for "free" at the library and decided I had to have my own copy.
Carol

[Don MacLennan]

I liked the inference made by another poster, to the effect that people will use "free" on a very temporal basis to decide whether or not to own a product by paying for it. Today my concept of "owning" a book is to buy a paper copy, given the form factor and/or cost of e-books. That equation for consumers is constantly shifting, of course, as technology evolves.

[Paul]

The problem with that graph of Amazon rank and time for the book is that there are serious ceiling issues. Rank does not denote 'sales'. And the argument revolves around did sales get affected by the 'free' offer. You could max out your rank on Amazon but still sell LESS of the book than you would have if you didn't give away a free version.

I'm not completely dismissing the idea that the free offer didn't help, just that you can't really tell a lot about it's success from that info. Any book promoted on Oprah (whether a free one was given away or not) is going to get a significant jump in sales and Amazon rank.

[David]

My friend Arthur Drooker was recently featured on a morning network show (not Oprah) and his book of photography American Ruins (not free) had a huge spike in Amazon sales rank immediately afterward. I guess in the example mentioned above it's hard to tell how much effect, if any, the free aspect had, given the power of the Oprah Effect.

[Jon]

"Any book promoted on Oprah (whether a free one was given away or not) is going to get a significant jump in sales and Amazon rank."

That's a pretty narrow assessment. I think what you're missing is that this book's sales were fine before Oprah, and despite the free version being promoted on Oprah (where theoretically more people have incentive to download for free versus buy) they still went out and bought it. Why? because your average soccer mom isn't going to run through her printer's ink cartons trying to print out a an entire book. Ink Cartridge = $25, book = $14

In some ways 'Free' as a loss leader encouraged sales by giving a few million women a book they can't put on a bookshelf, take to the gym, hairdresser or bedroom. Sure some women were satisfied with the download, but I don't see the majority of Oprah's market being too savvy enough to be satisfied with an e-book only.

[JoseF]

I´m I wrong?
The chart shows "inverted scale" !
The sales dropped to Zero!

[Chris Anderson]

Jose,

That's sales rank, not sales. #1 is the biggest seller, etc...

[zach @ pennywise]

err. . . if you're going to blog about something, know what the graph says. . .

the sidebar says "inverted scale". That means that 0 is close to the x-axis and sales INCREASE as you go downward.

Then again, I'm probably being too harsh--It's a marketing technique for duping consumers who don't look closely enough. Wait a minute! You were the one who MADE this graph!!!! What the--! Did you buy stock in this book or something?

[Chris Anderson]

Zach,

You're an idiot. It says "Sales Rank", not "Sales". Rank #1 is the most sales, and the higher the rank, the lower the sales (just as I reminded the knucklehead in the comment right before yours). You should try thinking before you post. Or, if you really don't understand sale rank, just don't post at all.

Chris

[kabin]

thanks...
Kabin
Konteyner