Excerpts at the end of ebooks

[Eric Christopherson]

Ignored? Annoying? Or a nice little bonus?

[I. J. Parker]

I have done this, but like you, I'm beginning to wonder.  I see the big publishers doing it, but that doesn't mean much. My feeling is that the excerpt is too far ahead of release time, and your fans will buy the next book anyway.

[John McFetridge]

Back when my publisher issued a hardrcover and then a year later a paperback they would add an excerpt of the new hardcover but it didn't do anything for sales (well, nothing ever has ;). In that case I think there's much overlap between the hardcover and paperback markets.

It might be different for e-books, but I do think that it would be best if the book being excerpted was available.

[Jack Getze]

I never read them because of what IJ said: Too far in the future to finish the story.

[Dana King]

I'm with IJ and Jack. I never read them. The only benefit they serve is to make the book look longer than it is, so I'm not quite as aware of how close it is while I'm reading.

[David DeLee]

In the old print only days, as a reader I generally ignored them, only because if I read them and then found the sampled book way down the road and started to skim through it, I'd think I'd already read it. I have a swiss-cheese brain that way.

In today's e-pub work, as an author, I always put them in, but not necessarily of a work to be released soon, but instead I include another already released work with a clickable link to the buy page.

I have no data that supports it works, (though Amazon's "Customer's who bought this" page often show my related work being purchased, so...) but I know it doesn't hurt.

[Jude Hardin]

I never read excerpts at the end of books. It might be better to include some cover-flap copy of the next title you're trying to promote.

[I. J. Parker]

That makes sense.

[Linton Robinson]

I don't see the problem.  Nor do they bother me in printed books.  They aren't compulsive, and sometimes can be a good discovery of something to pick up on.  I have trouble seeing anything negative to pin on this practice.

As opposed to the incomplete ebooks put out by some authors, such as Connelly, where you download an ebook that is only 69 percent complete and you have to buy the "real" ebook to finish the story.  That's obnoxious.

I put excerpts in my own ebooks, as sell as mentionss (let's call them "ads", all right?) for other books I think might appeal to my readers.

[Debbie Bennett]

I hate them. I hate reading an ebook and I'm only at 90%, turn the page and it's the end. What? I feel cheated. If I want to read something else by that author, I'm quite capable of googling. A simple url is all that is needed at the end of a book, IMHO.

[Martyn V. Halm]

From what I gathered on different fora, I found that generally most writers and readers dislike 'extra' material at the end of a paid e-book. With my free short stories I include the first chapter of the first book, but not with the paid e-books anymore. Instead, I have an 'also available in this series' page, with all the books listed, together with their pitches, so that people know what's available and know what the other books are about. They can find their way from there. If someone buys the first book and likes it, they'll be sharp enough to find the whole series at their retailer.

[Susan]

I think they can be effective provided that they are short. As others have said, if they run too long, you risk alienating the reader. I actually think they're more effective in print books than ebooks. With ebooks it might be better to just add book covers of other books, especially if it's a series as mine is, and links to the book page on your website (NOT amazon sales page) which can have all sorts of goodies, video trailers, reviews and a short synopsis. 

[Linton Robinson]

Well, this is interesting, but I guess I just don't see where all the hatred comes from.

It's a free chapter that can be read, sanned or ignored.

I REALLY have trouble getting why it's better to do in a print book, where you're paying fot the extra paper, than in a ebook, where it's free to add all the stuff you want.