Free Books are Worth What You Pay for Them

Following up on last week’s blog post, one of the ways I evaluate a Kindle book is by the price, by which I mean that I rarely download a free book. There are exceptions, such as classics that are in the public domain and some Amazon “First Reads” selections, but mostly my experience has been that free books are worth what you pay for them.

I subscribe to a service called BookBub, which notifies me of daily e-book deals. The prices for a Kindle version range from $2.99 to free. It often lists books by authors I am familiar with and enjoy, and I’m happy to pay for them.

On the other hand, the free books are by unfamiliar authors or, once or twice, by authors I have read and vowed never to read again. Sometimes they are even touted as having “over 5000 five-star Goodreads ratings.” I’m convinced that those authors join a network of writers who agree to give five-star ratings to each other’s books without even reading them.

Still, there have been times in the past when I was suckered into “buying” a free book, such as the one in the photo at the top of this page. After all, what did I have to lose? A lot, as it turns out.

I’m a busy woman who already has a long reading list. Any time spent on a bad book is time I can’t spend on a good one. And although I’m much better than I used to be, something in me still balks at putting a book down before I’ve finished it. (That’s the subject of next week’s blog post.) So I don’t usually buy free books.

As I said, there are exceptions. Classics that are in the public domain are often turned into e-books as a public service, so you can find novels by Charles Dickens and Jane Austin for free. Some of versions are better than others (e.g., fewer transcription errors), but the content is there.

The other exception is Amazon First Reads. This is a benefit available to Prime members that provides early access to books that will be released to the public the following month. Members who have signed up for the benefit usually get one free book out of about eight choices each month, although occasionally Amazon ups it to two free books. There are some months where none of the books sounds interesting, so I don’t take any. If something does sound interesting, I wait until a number of people have read it and posted reviews, and I decide then. Sometimes I download a book, start reading it, and decide it wasn’t worth the price, but many of them are. And at least I know that a traditional publisher has vetted it.

Most of the time, however, a free book is worth what you pay for it.