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## iwfwil (Feb 20, 2014)

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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

I didn't even know this was a thing, but this is super-interesting! Thanks so much for sharing.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

This is certainly a fascinating experiment and a valuable peek into the mindset of book buyers. Thanks for doing this and posting the results.


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

Megan - where we are from we have a saying - "you have to have the bottle to have a go."

When someone backs off or backs down, we say - "his bottle crashed."  

We have five foot tall men that would fight Mike Tyson and expect to win - and that's because they have bottle. 

As soon as you pressed the PWYW buttton you showed you had bottle - where I'm from you are a hero. Keep at it - with your mental attitude it's only a question of time before you break through.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2014)

Fascinating. I might have to give this a try myself.


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## Melody Simmons (Jul 8, 2012)

Mmmm...I wonder what will happen if they have this at Amazon on a large scale?  Will it always remain say an 80/20 percentage between those who do not pay and those who do, or will those who pay eventually realise many others do not and then also stop, or will more readers start thinking it is worth paying and more people start paying?  Will Amazon encourage people to pay by offering some sort of reward ranking system as they do with reviewers?  I do have a feeling an 80/20 percentage will prevail because that is the Pareto principle after all.


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## Gina Black (Mar 15, 2011)

I just set my solo book to do that just to see what happens. I'll probably put it back after New Years, but it seems like an interesting experiment.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2014)

Well, I just took the plunge. All of my books are now PWYW on Smashwords, and will be through the end of January. It'll be interesting to see how this changes things, but considering how little I actually sell on the Smashwords store, it won't take much to convince me that this is the way to go.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Awesome! Thanks for posting the link, Megan!


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

I don't know if I like this system. We already have a system that is a version of "Pay _what_ you want for it" -- but it's more like "pay _if_ you want it -- aka if you feel it's worth it".

It's called a market and has been around for a long time. It means that the seller puts a price on a good based on a number of factors such as cost of inputs and labour and profit and the buyer decides whether they like that price. If they do like the price, they pay it. If they don't, they go somewhere else and buy something else. The market tells sellers whether their price is right because if they price too high, they will fail to sell their goods. If they price too low, eventually, they will sell out all their goods and may not have enough in the end to be able to keep producing goods. The opportunity to make a profit off sales of their products is the incentive that keeps producers producing and putting their goods for sale on the market. If you never make a profit and can't afford to live and keep producing goods, you will stop and then where is the market? The buyer will have no chance to buy that good.

It sounds to me that the OP wants it both ways. She wants the book, and values it, and values the author, but not at that price. Fair enough. Don't buy it. That is your choice and your right and you are free to do so. The seller has priced it based on his or her own perception of its value and the costs of producing it and being able to keep producing books. Eventually, she will learn whether the market aka buyers feel the good is worth the price she has set.

The way Smashwords has it, it's the reverse - the buyer decides what to pay for a good. That price may or may not take into account the actual cost of producing that product, and the cost of maintaining the producer and providing a profit. There is no incentive for producers to keep producing if they can't recoup their costs and make a profit. Of course, if the producer is a hobbyist and is doing this for fun, they may not care and be happy to take any money for their hobby, but for those of us who make a living at being producers of books, I would think taking whatever a buyer feels like paying is way too precarious to support a business or make a living.

The market system has shown itself to be the most efficient and productive system humans have so far come up with. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

YMMV.

ETA: All my books are priced at $4.99 for full length novels (80K+), @2.99 for novellas (20 - 45K) and $0.99 for short stories (5K - 20K). I put my books on sale occasionally for 99c. I give some away. I think that my eBook of 125K words is worth the price of a Grande Starbucks Decaf Mocha. It gives my readers hours of entertainment and they can enjoy it over and over again if they want. So $4.99 isn't too expensive in my view. I might sell more at $2.99, $1.99 and $0.99 but I am in this for the long haul and am trying to build a career. So far, my pricing scheme has led to a quarter of a million in revenues in 2 years of sales so the market is telling me my prices are not out of line with what buyers are willing to pay. I'm not pointing that out to brag, but to provide some data to illustrate what I mean. If my prices were outlandish, readers would not have bought my books and I highly doubt I would have made as much money.


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

Sela said:


> If it ain't broke, don't fix it.


I don't see this as a fix to a broken system. It may not even be an improvement. Rather, I see it as an alternative; it may very well be an improvement in some cases.

The Smashwords pricing Channel page gives this option for pricing only in its store and says its retailer partners will continue to charge whatever set price you indicate. There's no mention of how this affects royalties in subscription services, such as Scribd and Oyster. Will the retailer price be used? This is the only thing holding me back from experimenting with it.


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2014)

The thing about ebooks is that the marginal cost is zero. So even if a reader grabs all my books for free, I'm not really losing anything, and if they decide to pay something, I come out ahead. As for recouping what it cost to produce the book, the first rule of economics is to ignore sunk costs. If I net more money at PWYW than I do at a fixed price, it's a win.



Saul Tanpepper said:


> The Smashwords pricing Channel page gives this option for pricing only in its store and says its retailer partners will continue to charge whatever set price you indicate. There's no mention of how this affects royalties in subscription services, such as Scribd and Oyster. Will the retailer price be used? This is the only thing holding me back from experimenting with it.


There's only one way to find out.


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

Joe Vasicek said:


> Well, I just took the plunge. All of my books are now PWYW on Smashwords, and will be through the end of January. It'll be interesting to see how this changes things, but considering how little I actually sell on the Smashwords store, it won't take much to convince me that this is the way to go.


Well done, Joe and good luck.


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

MeganBryce said:


> EC, I've never heard that expression before and I had to look it up (man, I love the Urban Dictionary... don't know what I'd do without it) and thanks. I know messing with pricing is scary because I'm constantly battling my stomach when I want to change my prices. I've tried every price from free and now PWYW, all the way up to 9.99 and been scared stupid every time, and every time I've had the same results. Units go up or down but income is fairly consistent... I'm just surprised that this was true for PWYW as well.
> 
> Joe- I have never had more fun selling books. Every email notice I received was like unwrapping a present. Most of the time, there was nothing inside but every once in a while there would be $1, $2... $6!
> 
> I'm sure that feeling will go away but it's been great fun.


Oooh serendipity - Heather stays four miles away from my family home - in fact I can see her village from there> I'm pretty sure that I know her.


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## thewitt (Dec 5, 2014)

What does Amazon do as far as price matching when you use the reader sets the price option at Smashwords?


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## Guest (Dec 27, 2014)

thewitt said:


> What does Amazon do as far as price matching when you use the reader sets the price option at Smashwords?


I've never had Amazon price match even when a Smashwords book is free. I don't think the site is on their radar.

Even if it is, only one way to find out!


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## thewitt (Dec 5, 2014)

I'm going to experiment with it and see how revenue changes. Smashwords is a pretty good site for me now, so we will see what happens.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

MeganBryce said:


> I agree, and this is the way it's always been (...except in countries where bartering is the norm), but does it have to be this way? I mean, _I want it_. (And go ahead and imagine I'm a six year-old whining. It'll be pretty close to what it looked like, along with a full-out tantrum at the end.)
> 
> I actually agree with this. I don't think everyone would want to put the floor at zero even if I do. At Smashwords, as it is right now, I put in my suggested price (which is the price that gets shipped to the distributed retailers so no worries about this affecting the other sites) and when a reader buys a book, they can erase that price and put in whatever they want. I think it would be awesome if I could put in both my suggested price and my _minimum_ price. That way it would be a range of prices instead of a take-it-or-leave-it price.
> 
> ...


Fair enough. It might be a strategy that a new author could use to attract attention to their work, like 99c lost leaders and permafrees, but I don't think it's a strategy that will lead to a healthier marketplace. I think Amazon is already putting a floor and ceiling on books ($2.99 - $9.99) that makes sense for sales and is good for readers as well. They have SCADS of data and have set those prices for a reason -- probably based on what maximizes the most profit for everyone involved and sells a WHACKLOAD of books to an expanding readership. I know Smashwords is trying hard to be relevant and compete with Amazon and I respect Mark Coker for what he has accomplished, but I really disagree with this approach as a long-term strategy for authors who want to be professional. In the end, each author has to decide what their goals are -- sell a few books, or make a living at writing. The tactics you use to accomplish that goal will vary as a result.


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## Dom (Mar 15, 2014)

Sounds like a great way to get traction on a small site.

What I would prefer is if you could set a minimum price. Seriously, just set it to 10 cents or something. That way, people figure it's as good as free, but they make peace with losing some money. Then, if they're paying 10, why not pay 20 or 25? (some people would feel weird about picking the minimum). Sure it might halve or quarter your "Free" sales, but might make more money and convince people to not free-seek.


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## BillSmithBooksDotCom (Nov 4, 2012)

I'm glad that Smashwords offers that option -- it gives readers a chance to offer something and even come back later to toss something into the "tip jar" after they have read a book.

Gumroad also offers this option, but you can also set a minimum price. 

If you choose "$0+" readers can take the book for free (but at least you get their email address and they have the option to opt-in to promo mailings). 

But if you wanted to have a minimum price of $1, you could set the price at "$1+" -- readers have the option to pay more to the author if they want, which is kind of cool. 

Sure, most people won't pay more...but some who really may enjoy your work may choose to do so.


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2014)

Well, I'm already getting some downloads, which is more than I can say before.


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## Michael Buckley (Jun 24, 2013)

Thanks for the great post, very interesting results.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Does Smashwords have a minimum word count requirement? I'm wondering if PWYW might be a good option for publishing short stories to build readership, rather than doing a permafree.


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## JonnyG (Jan 24, 2014)

It looks like Gumroad could be a good option, but you could also try Ebay which also have minimum amount, make an offer, and buy now at full price options. I don't know if anyone has established an author platform in Ebay, but I like the idea. I may even try it


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

BillSmithBooksDotCom said:


> I'm glad that Smashwords offers that option -- it gives readers a chance to offer something and even come back later to toss something into the "tip jar" after they have read a book.


Unfortunately Reader Sets Price cannot be used on a Try Before You Buy basis. Once you pay your chosen price you cannot buy another copy and so you cannot pay the author / publisher extra unless you buy a different book from them.



vlmain said:


> Does Smashwords have a minimum word count requirement?


On Smashwords I have a 1600 word short story (the story itself is just 1200 words).


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Mercia McMahon said:


> Unfortunately Reader Sets Price cannot be used on a Try Before You Buy basis. Once you pay your chosen price you cannot buy another copy and so you cannot pay the author / publisher extra unless you buy a different book from them.


That's good to know. Thanks.



Mercia McMahon said:


> On Smashwords I have a 1600 word short story (the story itself is just 1200 words).


Do you find there is a decent market for short stories there?


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## Saul Tanpepper (Feb 16, 2012)

MeganBryce said:


> Actually, I just went and did this at Smashwords. When you click on a book that you've already bought, it now says "Buy Another Copy" (this was for a "reader sets price" book) so you _can_ tip the author. Great!
> 
> I do this at Amazon too but I have to delete the book from my Amazon account first (not just on the kindle) and then I can buy the book again. I've done this for books I got free and loved (for the ones that aren't permafree).


Wow, that's above and beyond! That's awesome. On behalf of the community of authors, thank you.


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2014)

Yeah, it looks like the 10:1 free to paid ratio is about right. Just got my first paying Smashwords customer, $.99 on a book that's currently $3.99. It might look like a loss, but if I sold one book per day at $.99 on Smashword's PWYW model, then I'd still come out ahead (assuming that PWYW on Smashwords isn't cannibalizing sales from elsewhere).


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## Lady Vine (Nov 11, 2012)

Domino Finn said:


> Sounds like a great way to get traction on a small site.
> 
> What I would prefer is if you could set a minimum price. Seriously, just set it to 10 cents or something. That way, people figure it's as good as free, but they make peace with losing some money. Then, if they're paying 10, why not pay 20 or 25? (some people would feel weird about picking the minimum). Sure it might halve or quarter your "Free" sales, but might make more money and convince people to not free-seek.


This actually works. I tried this on Play a couple of times, using a book that was permafree everywhere else. I set the price to something small, and I noticed that the sell-through on that was higher at times than it was when the book was free. And because the book was really cheap, people were snapping it up.


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

MeganBryce said:


> Actually, I just went and did this at Smashwords. When you click on a book that you've already bought, it now says "Buy Another Copy" (this was for a "reader sets price" book) so you _can_ tip the author. Great!


Thanks for that I had avoided Reader Sets Price because I thought that you had to delete a bought copy in order to buy another one.



vlmain said:


> Do you find there is a decent market for short stories there?


I don't think too many people find the Smashwords Store a decent market for anything. Even Smashwords warn authors to expect most of their sales to happen through the retailers that they distribute to. I have not promoted my short story and just had about 250 downloads in 12 months. But then a very story about domestic violence in Nazi Germany is not what everyone is looking for.


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## Michael McClung (Feb 12, 2014)

I think PWYW will probably be most effective for romance and erotica titles, where readers are voracious and very supportive of authors whose work they really like.


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## Guest (Jan 7, 2015)

So it's been about a week, and already I'm seeing some very interesting results. The only two places where I've announced that all my books are PWYW are here (KBoards) and Wattpad, and in just the first week of January, I've made almost four times my monthly average from Smashwords last year. Here is the data:

SMASHWORDS STATS 2014

MONTH	FREE	PAID	REVENUE
Jan	30	3	$8.55
Feb	0	6	$10.74
Mar	0	3	$9.56
Apr	0	4	$12.38
May	0	2	$1.98
Jun	0	0	$0
Jul	6	3	$4.88
Aug	0	1	$0.56
Sep	0	3	$11.85
Oct	0	0	$0
Nov	0	2	$9.47
Dec	19	4	$9.87

"Free" means a book that was either downloaded for free via coupon or PWYW (Smashwords doesn't track permafree downloads). "Paid" means books that were paid for. "Revenue" is in USD.

About half of the revenue from December was actually from PWYW sales, since I made the switch around December 28th.

Here are the stats for January so far:

Jan	9	8	$22.98

Not bestseller numbers by any means, but not insignificant either. If things continue at this rate (or even just a fraction of it), I may keep my books at PWYW on Smashwords indefinitely.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Thanks for the update, Joe. Do you have both shorts and full length available, and if so, is one performing better than the other?


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## Guest (Jan 7, 2015)

vlmain said:


> Thanks for the update, Joe. Do you have both shorts and full length available, and if so, is one performing better than the other?


All of my books on Smashwords are PWYW: shorts, novellas, novels, box sets-everything. The box sets and novels are performing best, both in terms of free downloads, and in terms of people paying for them.


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## vlmain (Aug 10, 2011)

Joe Vasicek said:


> All of my books on Smashwords are PWYW: shorts, novellas, novels, box sets--everything. The box sets and novels are performing best, both in terms of free downloads, and in terms of people paying for them.


That's great, thanks for the info.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

I can't remember the podcast that said this (feel free to link it if you remember will you?) but using Patreon I think the uptake was 10-15% (meaning only 10% of people will pay) the rest will just watch for free. Those stats "seem" to mimic Mark's data over at Smashwords. Sounds like 85% of us are free(down)loaders, must be genetic


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## Flopstick (Jul 19, 2011)

How does Amazon react to PWYW elsewhere, with regard to price-matching etc?


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## Marie Long (Jan 11, 2014)

This is such an interesting thread! I may have to try this. It's amazing to see that people are willing to still pay even when they don't have to. That just goes to show you that there really are some good-hearted, honest people out there.


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## Gina Black (Mar 15, 2011)

So far I have only had a handful of free downloads and no one has paid...


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

Joe Vasicek said:


> Smashwords doesn't track permafree downloads


Yes they do. The following short story was never set to Reader Sets the Price.



Mercia McMahon said:


> I have not promoted my short story and just had about 250 downloads in 12 months. But then a very story about domestic violence in Nazi Germany is not what everyone is looking for.


The sales and payments page also tells you about permafree downloads at other retailers.


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## Guest (Jan 7, 2015)

Mercia McMahon said:


> Yes they do. The following short story was never set to Reader Sets the Price.


Not in the spreadsheet for the sales and payment report. They track perma-free downloads at other sites, but not at Smashwords itself.


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## Guest (Jan 7, 2015)

Interesting development: I've noticed that three of my paid sales at PWYW were made through an affiliate. However, it looks like the affiliate only got the standard 11%, even though I've juiced all my books to 35% via the Smashwords affiliate dashboard.


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## meh (Apr 18, 2013)

Never heard of anyone using this feature before!  Eh, I'll try it out with one book. Sales have been slow on one of my pen names as I work on the next book. Might as well play around.

Thanks!


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

On a slightly different note. I'm selling my late husband's collection of books. A buyer chose some books I hadn't got round to pricing. I had an idea what I wanted for them, but two were first editions and I said I would check prices and get back to him. I looked them up on eBay and sent him the links. I knew I'd never get anywhere near the eBay prices so I asked him to make me an offer. What he offered me was about 3 times what I would have asked  .


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## Carradee (Aug 21, 2010)

MeganBryce said:


> I wonder what format Smashwords readers prefer to use.


I prefer PDF.


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2015)

I see this thread has been revived. Here were my numbers for January 2015:

Freeloads: 111
Paid sales: 13
Revenue: $35.15

No advertising, except here and marginally on Wattpad. Starting this month, I'm going to try to use Wattpad to draw more attention to my books on Smashwords, since Wattpad readers on the whole don't seem to carry over much on the other platforms. But if I can successfully encourage them to leave a review or post a like for a price-optional copy of something they've already read, that would be pretty awesome.

So yeah, considering how I sold less than $80 worth of books on Smashwords for all of 2014, I'd say the RSP experiment has been a success so far. The novelty has worn off somewhat, but I am still getting enough paid sales to make it worthwhile.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

This is interesting. I might try this.

Recently my sales at Smashwords have been quite surprising. I unlocked a pocket of fans in France and they've all been buying through Smashwords.

I would suggest that the reason people go to Smashwords is because they want PDF. I have no clue why people would want to read in PDF but apparently they do. Therefore, it is absolutely no use to upload EPUB to Smashwords because it won't convert it to all the weird formats that people go to Smashwords for, therefore defeating the purpose of going to Smashwords in the first place.


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## Daizie (Mar 27, 2013)

Joe Vasicek said:


> I see this thread has been revived. Here were my numbers for January 2015:
> 
> Freeloads: 111
> Paid sales: 13
> ...


That's a good idea. Pairing Wattpad with Smashwords.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I do not accept VerticalScope's Terms Of Service on Kboards, and have asked for my account to be deleted, along with all of my posts.

If you are here as a result of a Google search, _*leave now*_. The owners of this site are interested only in your possible ad revenue.


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2015)

Russell Phillips said:


> I've only just seen this thread, but thought I'd add a few thoughts.
> 
> The One Book Shelf sites have a Pay-What-You-Want option. They run several sites, but Drive Thru Fiction is most likely to be of interest.
> 
> You probably won't get many sales at Drive Thru Fuction, but on the other hand, the front page has a link to all books priced at "Pay What You Want". At the time of writing, there are only 69 of them, so there's not much competition for customers that like that option.


I saw that and set all my books on DTF to pay-what-you-want about a week ago. Got a few freeloads from it, but no paid sales so far.


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## GoneToWriterSanctum (Sep 13, 2014)

I do not accept VerticalScope's Terms Of Service on Kboards, and have asked for my account to be deleted, along with all of my posts.

If you are here as a result of a Google search, _*leave now*_. The owners of this site are interested only in your possible ad revenue.


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

Interesting thing with PWYW on DTF: the reader can pay you AFTER the fact. So they might get the book free, like it, then give you what amounts to a tip for a good story. I've gotten $3+ sometimes on books that normally are 99 cent or permafree.


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