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Can giving away electronic versions of print titles boost print sales? For years, a handful of authors, notably Cory Doctorow and Eric Flint , have been arguing that it can. With the exception of SF/fantasy publisher Baen, which pioneered the Baen Free Library in 2000, and romance publisher Harlequin, which has been using free ebooks as a sales incentive since 2006, commercial publishers have been cautious about this approach to book promotion. Recently, however, a spate of ebook giveaways suggests things may be changing. - In February, as a promotion for a new website, Tor began offering free electronic versions of its frontlist print titles via its newsletter. (As with most of the giveaways, each free ebook is available only for a limited time.) - Also in February, HarperCollins began providing free e-versions of selected titles on its website. - Again in February, Random House provided a free download of Charles Bock's Beautiful Children , and allowed Oprah Winfrey to offe...

This week I got a question about a contest advertised by FieldReport , "a community of readers and writers devoted to sharing — and rewarding — great true-life stories." The contest has been widely advertised on blogs, jobs boards, and writing forums. Here's a sample announcement : FieldReport Award for True-Life Stories $40,000 in total prizes awarded July 1 FieldReport is a new web site that awards huge cash prizes for the best in personal writing. This call for submissions is for FieldReport’s pre-launch beta period. The reading period for the contest is May 1, 2008 through June 30, 2008, but you should submit by mid June to have the best chance of winning. Prizes are awarded July 1, 2008. To enter, go to www.fieldreport.com and type in the password “truelife” (the word, not the quotes). To submit, each participant must create an account and rank other pieces on the site. All submissions must be true (nonfiction) stories that actually happened to the author. First priz...

This week, a call for submissions in a SFWA-sponsored contest was posted on Craigslist and FLiXER , promising large cash prizes and publication. Writers take warning: this contest is a fake. Here's the pitch: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. is currently accepting science fiction story submissions of no more than 3000 words. All genres of science fiction accepted. Winners will get published in a Random House book titled "Asimovs of the Future." The cash prizes for winners are as follows: 1st Place: $10,000 2nd Place: $5,000 3rd Place: $2,000 10 Honorary Mentions: $1000 All winners and honorary mentions will get published. A percentage of the royalties for the book will also be included as part of the prize. The exact percentage has yet to be determined. A check for $10 must accompany each entry, made out to "Science Fiction Writers of America." The mailing address is a "submissions center" in San Diego. I can only imagine the ...

In my last post about Airleaf (a now-defunct vanity publisher and "marketing" service currently being sued by the Indiana Attorney General for nonperformance, among other things), I noted that Airleaf has spawned several additional publishing enterprises, including Jones Harvest Publishing , an Airleaf lookalike started last year by Airleaf founder and former staffer Brien Jones. In her latest Airleaf Victims Update (current victim tally: 450), tireless anti-Airleaf crusader Bonnie Kaye highlights the complaints she has been receiving about Jones Harvest: In the past six months, I personally have received nine different horror stories about Jones Harvest Publishing primarily from senior citizens who invested thousands of dollars into an Airleaf-type dream and in all but one case, after they invested and lost thousands of dollars at Airleaf...The authors who have become Jones Harvest victims all have the same story about broken promises including time delays, failure to see ...

Over the past few months, the blogosphere has been abuzz over Amazon's recent policy change requiring POD-based publishers and self-publishing services to either use its BookSurge subsidiary for printing if they want their books to be orderable from Amazon's US website, or, as a less convenient alternative, to sell their books via Amazon's Advantage program. I blogged about the policy change in March. To date, the change affects only Amazon USA. BookSurge isn't available in the UK, and Amazon UK hasn't implemented any similar policy. Amazon UK has, however, been flexing its muscle in other ways--and in the preoccupation with BookSurge, these have so far gotten little blogger attention. In late March and early April, Publishing News and the Times reported a possible Amazon UK move against UK publishers selling books directly on their websites. Apparently angry over the fact that some of the publishers were attempting to undercut Amazon by offering discounts, Amazo...