Tag Archives: free ride

Starting today and going forward, the only way you can get one of my books free is to pirate it or go to a library.  But it’s not about greed.  It’s about commitment.

I didn’t charge for my first few books because I wasn’t confident in their quality.  Putting them up for free made it easy for me.  If people didn’t like it, I could say to myself, “Well, at least they didn’t get ripped off.”

The problem is that if a book stinks, the reader is still ripped off even if the book is free.  If a person sees your book cover, becomes intrigued, gets hyped with anticipation, downloads the thing, and invests the reading time, he or she has been ripped off by an inferior product even if it was free.

Putting some of my books up for no charge wasn’t giving the reader a free ride — it was giving myself a free ride.  If I charge for my books it’s a message to myself that says, “Mitchell, you owe the public a superior product, one that’s worth the reader’s investment of time and money.”

I took a step back and realized that my stuff is good — really good — and that I should stand behind it unequivocally.  And from now on I am.

As they used to say back in the ’70s, “Ass, cash, or grass — nobody rides for free.”  Especially me.

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