Comments

Take the sidebar poll! — 10 Comments

  1. Voted, but felt like clarifying…

    I knew it was on line, but didn't bother to look because I love the feel of a book in my hands. It was a no brainer purchase.

    Half way through, loving it. Anyone who said they couldn't follow the switches between characters can't be too bright. 😉

    Cheers, Lisa.

  2. Voted to clarify also. I bought it because Dymocks had an offer – buy this and get Trudi Canavan's 'Priestess of the White' for free. In checking out both books, I saw that this was online, and so forth. 🙂

  3. Believe it or not, none of the options apply! I knew it was online (from your blog). I went to look. I wanted to read it online, but since I couldn't save the PDF and you said it would only be up two weeks, I didn't start reading it because I knew there was a good chance I wouldn't be able to finish it before it was taken down. I was very disappointed, especially since I will have to wait until the book is available in England or the U.S. before I can order it online.

    I wish they had allowed us to save the PDF. I would have read it and still bought the book.

  4. Lisa, me too. I do almost all the reading of my own book online while writing it. I don't want to read other people's books that way too! Glad you are enjoying it. Hope you do too Katharine.

    Amy – never mind, not long now. Less than 6 months – in fact, closer to 5! I see Amazon.com is talking about Feb.23rd…

    I think the decision not to allow downloads was to stop the book from being pass around free forever.

  5. I read a bit of it online as I'm another reader who really doesn't enjoy book reading online. I read enough to know that I will be definitely buying it when it's out in the UK although it was on preorder anyway!

  6. None of the options applied to me, either. I did not know it was available online (as I've been slack about reading blogs for the past year (!) or so), but it wouldn't have made any difference since my copy arrived a few weeks ago.

    Having the first chapter or so available online is enough for me to make a purchasing decision for an author I haven't read before. It gives me an impression of their "voice" when writing, and whether they can weave a compelling story. That impression, combined with other readers' opinions and (rarely) critic's opinions, drive my purchasing decision.

    That's only for a new author, though. If I've enjoyed a book from a given writer, I'll almost always grab whatever they release next, avoiding sample champters or excerpts as I don't want to spoil the experience of reading the entire thing.

  7. I too knew it was online – but I'd already had a call from my bookshop to say my copy was in.

    I also prefer to read ebooks in a format I can read easily on my iPhone or Pocket PC – ie Stanza or Microsoft Reader. PDF's tend to be clunky and irritating to use on any size machine – and if I wasn't able to save it, then there would have been no point even trying to read it as I don't carry my laptop with me in the little time I have to read.

    That said, I am just about finished reading the book, and I don't want to stop. I also don't want it to finish…unless I can have the next one immediately 😉

    Which, of course, I can't.

  8. There was no category for "Read 500 pages online, then bought the book and finished it". So I hesitated between "Read a bit online then bought the book" and "Read it online then bought the book".

    I always intended to buy the book in any case, but if it was an author I was unfamiliar with, one or two chapters would have been enough to give me a taste. I'm still astonished that Voyager put the whole thing up, and wondering whether a few chapters wouldn't have served the intended purpose without the risk.

  9. I think Voyager Oz is actually experimenting with this book, to see what happens. I shall view my first lot of royalty statements (which I will get about March, but will only cover up to December) with interest.

    This book appears to have a very wide reader appeal, so I would expect to see it outsell the first book of the Mirage Makers by a large margin in a similar time frame – if it doesn't, then I will think it is because so many people read it on line and didn't buy it.

    If by Sept next year, I find that Book 2 outsells book 1 by a large margin, I'd say it was because people read book one online, didn't buy it, but loved it enough to buy book 2.

    The problem is, that all this online thingy is still relatively new. Will we end all end up so pirated, that booksellers and publishers go out of business and authors are a dying breed? After all, we writers cannot still earn money as musicians do, by performing live…

    Interesting times ahead!

Leave a Reply to Pip Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.