Tag: free

Credit Card for Free Trial

Many of us are better off not believing in a free trial offer that demands a credit card number. The free trial may well cost money. I’m not thinking of out-and-out fraud, although I’m sure that does happen.

I’m thinking mainly of the case in which we forget to cancel the service, even though we don’t use it. This most recently happened to me with eMusic.

There’s also the case in which the firm, in error, charges the card when it shouldn’t. Something similar to this happened to me with Zipcar. A couple of phone calls fixed the problem, until it recurred a few months later.

So, when my new MP3 player (on which, more soon) came with a free trial of Audible.com, and the trial required a credit card number, I decided not to spend the time – and, perhaps, money – using the free trial.

Blogging a Book

Joe Wickert, publishing executive and blogger, pointed out today that many authors and publishers are still concerned about potential cannibalization when book content is also available for free online, but that such concern is excessive. He drew on evidence from a recent NY Times article: Turning Free Web Work Into Real Book Sales.

Joe started blogging at the insistence of Shel Israel and Robert Scoble, as a condition of Wiley publishing their book Naked Conversations. That book was written on the blog of the same name (or rather, on the blog that used to bear that name).

His post was timely for me, since I intend to write a book next year, or at least, to write a book proposal in the early part of next year. It reminded me that the book should have its very own blog, and soon. The book in question will be about management, but it’ll be interesting and otherwise readable.

Also timely was an entry in the WordPress.com forum from Mark, Support Maven at Automattic. Advertising your own book is allowed at WordPress.com. It’s one of the few cases in which advertising is allowed on WordPress.com blogs. So that’s the likely site of my book blog.