Something that finally hit home over the trip was that I lots of people, personally, who now read ebooks. A lot of them are close family and friends.
I realized that I didn’t want them to have to pay for ebooks. They’ve done enough in my life, one way or another, that I can’t really ever repay them. So I’m working on setting up a list, getting their preferred formats…
Of course, these are also the people who are getting stuck with my annoying questions and requests for help, etc., so it’s not like “free” is really the operative word here. And I’m not done; I have to go through my contacts list and check everyone’s names twice, to see if they’ve been naughty or nice. But I have a nice start to it.
It’s weird how strongly I feel about it. On the one hand, sure, I have a spot every week where people can download my stories for free on the weekends, but I know they’re not all using it. And then some of them will go along and buy a big block of them, and I know very well it’s someone close to me. So July may be low in sales 🙂
But it’s worth it.
I’m not a doctor, or a mechanic, or a lawyer, or IT or anything that could easily benefit the people around me; this is what I have. I’m proud to finally be able to share something. I think it’s a Midwestern thing.
Having perks to share is nice! I always knew I’d give my family and friends free copies of my books when the time came, but now you’ve got me thinking: What if their cup of tea isn’t necessarily the kind of stuff I write?
Then again, one of my goals is to be an editor at a publishing company, so I guess I could always hook them up with books they would definitely like. 😀
I have addressed that problem by (slowly) working through the people I know and writing stories that they might like. Doing commissions, kind of.