I mentioned Flint’s Law on this blog a couple weeks back (here). Today I came across another piece of evidence that proves it. Here’s an excerpt from a blog post by Nathan Henrion:
One of our free titles was the #1 download on Amazon for the entire month of February. The subsequent sales of books 2 and 3 in the series increased by a rate of 20 to 1. For this series, digital sales are approaching 20% of the total product sales distribution and growing. With the visibility of the digital sales on Amazon, we have seen a substantial increase in print sales to the brick and mortar book chains. In this one instance, digital is driving print sales.
Is this even news anymore?
Update: I went back to add links to some of the news stories that mention this, and guess what: the several sites that inspired me to write this were in fact taking the exact same position, and had done so repeatedly. I’m late to the party here.
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Fellow Nate-ite
The post was more of a comment to Mr. Anderson (which he asked me to post in order for him to share it with his peeps) and less about “hey, look at us! Aren’t we innovative!” Now it seems to have spread a bit.
Reading through your posts though on Flint’s law, I would agree with your stance 99%. That 1% in reserve is because I have seen where a free offer did in fact hurt an well established author. The mass reviews were horrible…a book maybe best left in obscurity or small niche and not for mass consumption…that may have damaged the author going forward. We will have to wait and see. I think there may be some other variables at play here besides free…quality of text and edit for example…that have to be there.
For that reason alone, and yes, only a single anecdote…I would state it “Flint’s Theory”…but would still follow the premise.
Cheers!