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Books 2.0: Neil Gaiman goes free
Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has the news that author Neil Gaiman has gotten approval from his publisher to offer one of his books online for free — perhaps inspired by the story of Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, who started pirating his own books and noticed that sales of actual physical copies of his books began to take off as a result. Other authors who have experimented with a similar approach include Charles Sheehan-Miles and economist David Levine. Of course, Cory — who is also a science-fiction author — has also offered some of his own works online for free.
Rafat Ali at PaidContent has news of a couple of other publisher experiments as well, including a move by Random House to sell individual chapters online, and a move by Harper Collins to release digital versions of some books online (including a book by Paulo Coelho), although as Rafat points out the digital copies are crippleware.
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If nothing else, this will be a fascinating experiment. There aren't a lot of authors who could afford to do this, though. Maybe Stephen King could - he experimented with micropayments (?) for an online book a couple of years ago.
Yes, as I recall he provided chapters on a pay-as-you-go basis, but
gave it up partway through because not enough people were paying for
them.
At the same time, at some point I thought King said he made over $400 K (which was at least $500K Canadian back then) from sales to date. Perhaps it wasn't what he was accustomed to making. :)
It will be interesting to see if Gaiman and co. attempt to monetize after the fact.
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http://www.paulocoelhoblog.com
I've started as a fan and now I'm collaborating with him and thought that you would like to enter his universe.
Check the blog.
if you want, or subscribe to his newsletter
http://www.warriorofthelight.com/engl/index.html
You'll see a community of warriors of light sharing ideas, dreams and most importantly following their personal legend.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
At the beginning of his struggle, the Warrior says: "I have dreams."
(Manual of the Warrior of Light)
Have a nice day!
Aart