Is this new?

[notthatamanda]

Today I came across a trad published author who had a free preview of a new book on Amazon, with no mention of when the actual book would be published.  It looked like a book, but it was free, not in KU, it took me a couple of seconds to figure out it was a preview.  I haven't seen free previews like this before, but maybe they've been doing that a while and I just never noticed.  Just curious if anyone has seen this before. Thanks, Amanda

[missingalaska]

They've had this for many years.  I remember downloading a sample of a Stephen King novel many years ago, for example.

[RPatton]

The Free Preview is relatively common. Last year, one of my freebies was hanging out next to Dan Brown's preview on Google Play and I was way too excited about that. The previews serve two purposes, gathering emails for the publisher and generating word of mouth buzz.

For an indie they could definitely work, but I think they would work better for a bigger name with a large platform who can drive that word of mouth buzz. And they'd probably do better wide too.

[angela]

They're great for gathering 1-star reviews, from what I've seen. Not that it matters, because those disappear when the file gets unpublished.

[notthatamanda]

Thanks everybody.  I'm just mulling over the pros of this versus a preorder, not that Amazon would necessarily let an indie do it, but I mull, I'm a muller, sorry.  The trads post preorders six months in advance, presumably with the look inside available.  What is the benefit of this?  Just a place at the end where you can submit your email to be notified when the book is to be released?

[Bill Hiatt]

Gathering emails is no small thing, but that's probably not the only motivation.

I haven't tried a pre-order, but the anecdotes I've heard suggests it works better for authors with large fan bases. If there are a fair number of people clamoring for the next book, a pre-order might be a mechanism for generating more buzz.

The way Amazon does pre-orders, with the sales recorded when someone pre-orders instead of on release day, doesn't give a book as much of big jump when it's released, but it does enable it to build a ranking before release day, whatever that may be worth these days. I would assume it also enable also-boughts to populate, which probably helps as well.

[She-la-te-da]

I've seen it around for a long while, usually paid but sometimes free for a short while. They'll show up on the top 100 free list. I know they're trad pub, for the most part, but I've seen indie names. My worry is that Amazon says no bad customer experience, and with enough complaints our account could be in trouble.