Book Buyers Would Prefer Free Books With Advertising
12 October 2012
From Digital Book World:
According to a recent survey, nearly half of U.S. book buyers would prefer free e-books supported by advertising than to pay even $0.99 for an e-book.
The survey was conducted among 5,000 people in the U.S. and UK by eBookPlus, a company that calls itself a “pioneer” in the “sponsored e-book market.”
According to the survey, in the U.S.:
– 45.7% of readers prefer free e-books with advertising (a 15-second pre-roll at the beginning of chapters)
– 20.8% prefer to pay $0.99 for an e-book without advertising
– 9.1% would pay up to $2.99 for a version without advertising
– 10.3% would pay up to $19.90 for a version without advertising
– 14.1% would prefer to download a pirated version
Link to the rest at Digital Book World
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The article shares no info on how this poll was conducted. Just like political polls that hide the facts behind the numbers, I can only shake my head and consider it mere propaganda. By the way, who really thinks such advertisement would be effective? I believe a certain major online company (starts with a “face” and ends with a “book”) is facing serious questions about that same issue. Maybe we should start each chapter with an invite to play Publisherville…
Wait…I don’t go anywhere near Facebook games, and I would totally play Publisherville. I know some people at Zynga–I’m going to get them on this.
…45% of people surveyed are crazy. I want to get to the next chapter RIGHT NOW, not after fifteen seconds of ad.
If I wanted ads, I’d watch TV.
45.7% of people surveyed would probably eat tainted puffer fish if it were free.
Unfortunately true.
But then there would be 45.7% fewer…ahem…foolish individuals in the world.
“The survey was conducted among 5,000 people in the U.S. and UK by eBookPlus, a company that calls itself a “pioneer” in the “sponsored e-book market.” ”
They seem to have a vested interest in the outcome of such a survey, then.
I would pay dearly *not* to have to watch a 15 second ad at the beginning of each chapter. Seriously? Each chapter? Can you imagine anything more disruptive to the flow of a story or the experience of a book?
I don’t really think this needs to be taken seriously.
Amen.
In fact, Amazon, which gives a discount for Kindles that show advertising, is still apparently selling lots of Kindles that do not show advertising. I have one myself.
How convenient that a company selling ad-supported ebooks found that most people would prefer that model. Personally, I would rather chew off my own arm than watch advertisements inside of my books. I was horrified by the initial lack of ad-free Kindles with the latest releases. I would have definitely switched to Nook if Amazon hadn’t backpedaled on that idea.
Whoops! Didn’t read your comment before I wrote mine.
Ditto on the lack of information on how the survey was conducted. Also there’s the issue of what kind of “readers” were in the poll, and how were these different kinds spread across the various price ranges?
By that, I mean that some “readers” read very little — I often hear descriptions of people who read only one or two books a year when their favorite author puts something out. Are they the ones who want free with advertising? If so, then I think we can pretty much ignore it, because they represent such a tiny percentage of the books purchased/read in a given year.
Or are they more like me, the people who read 30-50 books a year? Or perhaps more like my wife, who typically reads 200+ books a year. If it’s these people who want free with advertising, then that’s a revelation.
But even then, a lot depends on how the question was asked. “Would you prefer to pay only $2.99 for your e-books?” gets a very different answer from “Would you be unwilling to buy the latest from your favorite author if it were priced over $9.99?”
There are books I wouldn’t take free even without advertising, while there are books I would pay $40 for.
Big gap between $2.99 and $19.99. Ignores some very popular price points.
I’m with Genevieve and Ben. Ads inside a book? Good grief!
Alright. I’m running a promo right now with readers and 84 ebooks and they are only reading the sample and rating it. Guess what? Books that have ADVERTISING for the author’s OTHER BOOKS are the beginning are getting negative comments and marks.
Most of us stream or DVR tv now to miss ads. No one ever says “let me have more ads.”
And I would like a pony.
In all seriousness, hooking onto in-book advertisements simply adds another layer of gatekeeping. What if your main character hates Coke? Or thinks Volvos are boxy, yet good? Also, would such a service basically require a web connection (and therefore the possibility of building in a sort of back-end DRM scheme)? I applaud the out of the box thinking, but perhaps this one is better left alone.
It depends on the advertising.
For instance, when I replace my Kindle, I would certainly consider the ad-sponsored models, because the ads are not intrusive. I MUCH prefer to watch free Hulu with ads than pay a monthly subscription.
I don’t want to see “interruption” ads in my books though. I wouldn’t be at all interested in trying to read a book with flashing ads taking up half the screen space.
While the story is likely dishonest about it’s data, I can completely believe that a fair survey would find a large section of readers willing to put up with at least some kind of advertising.
15 seconds per chapter?!
That would triple the time it takes to read a James Patterson novel!
Flawed survey, flawed idea, I pray it gets zero traction.
This is worse than product placement if you ask me. Anything that pulls me out of the story is a thumbs down for me.
Randall FTW:
PG, I think this thread is over…
So, no matter how the wording of the question was biased, less than half of the respondents were willing to give adspace in a book a try.
When I was young and broke, I had time but no money. I was willing to do a lot of time-intensive things, like 14-hour layovers on three-leg flights before hopping a city bus to a friend of a friend’s couch, in order to get where I want.
Now I am older, a bit more worn, and have money but not time. Road trips of greater than two days in length must be scheduled at least five months in advance. These days my flights are direct, car rental scheduled and hotels booked a month before I leave.
When I was young and broke, I would have taken ads in front of each chapter to get my hands on a free copy of my favorite author’s books. Now, I’ll sign up for Magnatune’s subscription service, even if I don’t download anything for months, just so I don’t have to waste streaming music time with five-second ads for said service.
If they’re talking advertisements like on Hulu, then forget it! I hate the ones on Hulu and even the HuluPlus has them–maybe not in the middle, but at the beginning.
Ads inside books! Good grief! Worst idea–ever! (I can’t write anymore about it, because I don’t have enough exclamation points!)
Just a question, have you ever read a magazine or newspaper? Or for that matter, a blog?
Not that I’m advocating for it, but an ad in a footer on a page, or between chapters, is something we’ve dealt with before, and nobody complains if it isn’t intrusive. (I.e., blinking, attention grabbing pictures, more than a small proportion of the screen or otherwise forces you to pay attention.)
For instance, in the morning, I look at news sites on my iPod Touch. Google news is fine. I might see ads on that page, but I can browse them just like the headlines I’m not interested. Yahoo News? I HATE it! They have this little pop up that floats over the page as you browse, and the only way to dismiss it is to hit it in the exact right place when it’s not moving (in a kind of perfectly timed double-click) — and if you miss, the rest of the page is all links so you end up looking at some slow loading news story you weren’t interested in.
That’s intrusive. So are ugly pictures of dead animals, or skin problems, or cancer. And so are “landmine” ads.
But a couple of lines at the bottom of the page, or between chapters? That’s no more bothersome than a navigation bar. I don’t mind or care — as long as it really is not infringing on my reading.
/Just a question, have you ever read a magazine or newspaper? Or for that matter, a blog?
Have you?
Magazine and newspaper ads sit there quietly and you can ignore them. You can turn the page.
What this company is talking about is a 15-second commercial interrupting the entire reading process at the beginning of each chapter. You want to talk about intrusive? That’s intrusive.
The very worst thing a writer can do in a work of fiction is, as they say, ‘bounce the reader out of the story’. A commercial is guaranteed to bounce the reader out of the story, and very few readers will put up with that except out of dire necessity.
I’ll believe this kind of data if it is based on an actual market test and not a survey. People who have never had the experience of reading books with 15-second commercials in them have no right to an opinion on whether they would accept them.
I will return any book that has a 15 second interruption in it. Time elapsed: beginning story to first ad. I do not appreciate being bounced out of the story for any reason–do it on purpose and why should I come back? Few authors are that fascinating–I would return Stephen King for this sort of nonsense.
It would be interesting to know the age groups and genres this was based on. I wouldn’t be surprised if the survey participants were selected from a specific reading audience. Did this survey include fiction and non-fiction?
Readers aged between 18 to 30, who prefer romance, fantasy, and thrillers will respond very differently to those aged 30+ who enjoy the niche-type genres such as historical and literary.
I’m fed up with print magazines because of all the advertising. I’m fed up watching free video online, because of all the advertising. I have a PAID subscription to Netflix, which I absolutely appreciate!
I would much rather pay up to $4.99 for an ebook WITHOUT advertising.
I’ve read magazines, newspapers and blogs. I always used to find magazines inconvinent because I needed to read around the ads, and due to the “continued (burried) on page 173″ where you had to hunt for the final snippet of story in with the ads. Now I read everything on the internet, I use adblock, and I don’t see any advertisments at all.
For TV’s and movies I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime, but ditched cable and won’t subscribe to HuluPlus because they insist on showing ads even for a service they want me to pay for.
I take a hard line against advertising because it always creeps in a little at a time, wherever it can find an opening, letting people think that it’s no big deal and something easily ignorable *at first*, before expanding to fill a good 40-50% of whatever medium it finds it’s way into.
The idea *now* is not for some text at the bottom of the page, or beginning of a chapter, but for 15-*seconds* of advertising at the beginning of each chapter. That’s not text you can glance past, that’s getting stuck watching a comercial, and you can bet that it’s only going to get more intrusive, and after a while, it’ll be for discounted books too, and finally, full price books.
So, I hope that this whole idea dies fast. I certainly won’t touch it. Not for anything I write and not for anything I read.
If history is any guide, some company is going to start putting out books, with ads, at full price, then claim they they are working on evidence that people like ads.
Depends on the ads. I have a sub to Vanity Fair and probably spend as much time looking at the ads as anything. They look stunning on the screen on my Fire.
I have no idea where this data came from. But when ebooks begin to contain advertising for anything other than other books the author wrote, in the back matter, that’s the day I’ll smash my kindle and go back to reading print books. I don’t need or want that %$!&.
“Can you imagine anything more disruptive to the flow of a story or the experience of a book?”
Sure. Subways, troop carriers, airports, gyms, classrooms, hospitals, blowing sand…
Fantasy thinking of authors abounds; been there too.
Embracing without FACTS about how where when why how, reminds me of how people didnt mind that there would be a toll road a mile away, thinking oh, that’s cool, no problem, there are roads all over the place, it’s ok. We’re already used to ROADS. Except public right of ways, and condemnation of lands adjacent were big surprises to them for they did not think like the state thought. They were thinking about what they were already used to. And got instead, MASSIVE intrusion about which it was too late to protest or defeat. I think the film Independence Day was based on the same effusive defense as some thought being invaded was some kind of cool Rapture. Fatuous. Deadly.
A company doing a survey and finding in huge favor for what they already sell or want to, doesnt sound like they have the reader in mind. Sounds like they’ve got Mammon on the brain. And in this case, the sample group is pathetically small. The US has over 200 million readers. Not to mention what the ‘research’ design was, and what controls were put in place and whether there was a control group at all. We’re not as dumb as we used to be. Or, at least not as dumb as often (speaking for myself only).
Many businesses think reader and money equally. Not money only. I’ll stick with the former.
A sample group of 5000 is statistically valid — IF the survey was properly conducted. This one wasn’t. The question, as asked, compared a known with an unknown. It’s as if Pepsi were to do a taste test and ask: ‘Which do you like better, this glass of Coke here, or a wonderful new flavour of Pepsi that we’re not going to let you taste?’
Just another way for the obnoxious corporate culture to bring more attention to themselves. Sort of like gnats swarming your face when all you want to do is eat ice cream.