"Teaser" Freebies

[etexlady]

Anyone else annoyed at the publisher's new tactic of offering a number of chapters from a book for free?  It seems you can download a part of the book but if you want to finish reading it, you have to buy the rest.  Recently the site I use to track book price drops notified me that one I had been tracking for nearly nine months had gone free so I went immediately to Amazon to buy.  I'm glad I read the small print though since it was one of the teasers...the price of the whole book had not changed.  Very annoying!

[Elk]

This is something separate from the free sample you can download for your Kindle?

Can you link to an example?

[tiggeerrific]

I think its great because sometimes before buying a book I will download the sample.Saves lots of money if you dont like it

[kindlegrl81]

Some authors (James Patterson has done it a lot lately) will put their book up for free but in the fine print it will say it is not the whole book but just a % of the book.  Kinda like the samples but you usually get about 1/8-1/4 of the book instead of the first couple chapters.

I would have no problem with this practice, except a lot of the authors are sneaky about it and don't put preview in the title, so you get excited about getting the book and then realize you don't really got all of it.

Rick Riordan has done it on the last couple of books he has released but his title says "free preview" right on it.

[Me and My Kindle]

The joke's on them. I skip from one book to the next, reading dozens of books at the same time, so my progress on any one book is usually really slow. So if you give me several chapters for free, that'll last a long time -- maybe even long enough for my attention to wander away permanently from the "teaser" freebie...!

I was annoyed by something similar in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The mystery wraps up, to a very complete and satisfying conclusion. But it's like the publisher then insisted on extending the story past its natural stopping point.  Stieg Larsson had actually delivered all there manuscripts to the publisher at the same time, so I've always wondered if they did this on purpose. The story seems to continue into the first chapter of the second book in the series -- just to the point where there's a cliff-hanger ending!

[history_lover]

This is something separate from the free sample you can download for your Kindle?

Can you link to an example?

I think the OP is talking about the limited time freebies which sometimes feature a free "preview" of a book (the first few chapters), usually one which hasn't been released yet. Because they appear along side the limited time freebies, which are usually full length books, it can sometimes be a bit confusing and disappointing.

Example: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Your-Spirit-Special-ebook/dp/B004XGZ7CI/ref=sr_1_92?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1305910321&sr=1-92

That one is pretty obvious about being only a preview but sometimes they are not so obvious.

[Atunah]

Actually I have seen them just within the last few days. They aren't attached to a full novel, they are just Teasers. Nothing else. I don't get the point. If I want a sample, I'll just get a sample.

I see after checking some, that lots are from Amazon publishing, Encore, Crossing, Thomas Mercer. I looked at one of them and the book isn't out until September. It says first 3 chapters, unedited.
Imagine you like the teaser and then you don't get to one click right away  

So they are Pre release teasers. At least those that I saw recently.

[NapCat]

Let's not confuse these "teasers" with the wonderful Amazon feature of "Free Sample". 
To me, that is like picking up a book and flipping through a few pages.  Great feature !

[India Drummond]

Let's not confuse these "teasers" with the wonderful Amazon feature of "Free Sample". 
To me, that is like picking up a book and flipping through a few pages.  Great feature !

Agreed! The sample chapter feature is what has really turned me on to so many fantastic authors that were previously unknown to me. I probably only buy one in four from samples I download, but I have gone from reading mostly bestsellers (when I was reading tree books I found in book-stores) to branching out to mid-list and debut authors. It has been a WONDERFUL experience. So many fresh voices out there, and indie authors seem more willing to tell a fresh story, rather than trying to repeat the success of a previous bestseller. (Probably because they don't have agents and publishers telling them to write what's hot?)

That being said, I would find it very annoying if I downloaded what I thought was a free book only to find out it was part of a book. Feels like bait-and-switch to me.

[JRTomlin]

Some authors (James Patterson has done it a lot lately) will put their book up for free but in the fine print it will say it is not the whole book but just a % of the book.  Kinda like the samples but you usually get about 1/8-1/4 of the book instead of the first couple chapters.

I would have no problem with this practice, except a lot of the authors are sneaky about it and don't put preview in the title, so you get excited about getting the book and then realize you don't really got all of it.

Rick Riordan has done it on the last couple of books he has released but his title says "free preview" right on it.

This is more than annoying. I consider it outright depective. When a potential reader downloads a sample, they know that's what they're getting. To try to pass off a sample as a novel and pretend a preview is a full work is just plain lying.

If it says "Free Preview" that's different. Otherwise, it's unconscionable. I haven't had it happen but then I don't exactly like Patterson.

[Geoffrey]

As others have mentioned, It's the ones that don't say they're a preview that bother me.   As a marketing tool I don't have a problem with the previews in and of themselves (even though I don't download them and rarely sample a book before buying) - in fact I can see benefits for both the publisher and casual readers.   But even if the intention isn't to be sneaky, not directly stating a preview isn't a preview gives the impression of under-handedness.