Clarissa Johal: Thoughtful Thursday - Giving it Away for #Free? You May Want to Rethink That

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Thoughtful Thursday - Giving it Away for #Free? You May Want to Rethink That

Who doesn't love free? You can peruse Twitter at any given time of day and see a stream of #free reads offered by authors who are trying to make a living. Some give away #1 in a series to entice readers, some give away prizes with the idea that free prizes = new readers, and some make all their books free just for the exposure.



There's a price however. Too much #free devalues our work. It gets lost in a plethora of free and lowers expectations. Authors can't make a living. Personally, it takes me a year to write a book--that's working 12 hours a day and oftentimes 6 days a week, so you can see how "free" becomes problematic.

Kristen Lamb discusses more in detail here:

A Culture Addicted to FREE---How FREE is Poisoning the Internet & Killing the Creatives
 via

2 comments:

Rhea Rhodan said...

The sad truth.

Heather R. Holden said...

So true, unfortunately. Making a living as a writer/artist/etc. is already hard enough on its own. Now that free offerings are such a norm...the struggles are just so much more prevalent. :/
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