Putting free, unencrypted copies on the web increases book sales,

April 29, 2002 7:29 AM

Putting free, unencrypted copies on the web increases book sales, according to science fiction writer Eric Flint.
posted by myl (6 comments total)

This does make sense for books that are otherwise unknown, in which case their sales will be negligible without some sort of publicity.

The interesting question, I think, is how publishing free versions on the web would affect better-known titles and authors, who would actually have some readers whose sales they might lose to the free versions.

It's cool to see this guy's data, though.
posted by mattpfeff at 9:41 AM on April 29, 2002

Thanks for pointing out this article to our attention ; it's quite interesting. I suggest you also give a look at
other articles from same author and other ones regarding copyright issues.
posted by elpapacito at 9:47 AM on April 29, 2002

Great post. He made an interesting point about CDs being too expensive to 'experiment' with. It will be interesting to see if musicians take these figures up with record sompanies and whether they get anywhere with it.
posted by keithl at 10:34 AM on April 29, 2002

It is also worth noting that, for any authors who are not already extremely well-known, the readers they get by posting their work online may be worth more than the money they would get by charging for it.
posted by Rebis at 11:41 AM on April 29, 2002

very cool i'll have to check some of these freE-books out!
posted by dreamling at 12:02 PM on April 29, 2002

I really liked the section on Thomas Macaulay and copyright from the main page of the library that elpapacito linked to. Some nice writing on copyright, even if it is from 160 years ago.
posted by bragadocchio at 4:38 PM on April 29, 2002