The title almost becomes a meta-comments for so many things…
Giving away books online for free has worked for many authors. The customers who download tend often even to buty the books. Most of the evidence is anecdotal but Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig & Yochai Benkler have done well by following this principle.
The publisher Faber is now trying this with a twist. It will let readers will let readers decide what to pay for to download a digital copy of Ben Wilson’s What Price Liberty?.The Guardian writes:
In the book, Wilson argues that the contemporary assault on civil liberties in the UK follows a decline in the importance and status of ideas of liberty in Britain’s national culture, and that it is only through an understanding of history that we can fashion a liberty fit for the 21st century.
The recommended price is £14.99 but you can download the pdf for free. Now I doubt that many will pay for the pdf but I don’t think that the free pdf will limit or decrease sales. The smart thing that Faber is doing is releasing the free ebook six weeks before the launch of the physical copy with the main aim “to stimulate debate for the issues at the centre of this book, as well as generating interest for the book itself”.
The annoying thing is that you cannot download the book until April 27 – so this news is not really news its more about something which will be news. Anyway the book sounds interesting so I will be keeping tabs on this. Even if I would have preferred to download directly – this is the generation of instant gratification and I just didn’t get any!