Cory Doctrow, who also runs the Boing Boing weblog, has just released his second book – Eastern Standard Tribe. I haven’t finished reading his first book (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) yet, but I will say that I like what I’ve read so far.
Not only are Cory’s books available to buy in stores, he has also released them for free download from his website. Although this seems like it would be economic suicide for an author, he has in fact been selling books “hand over fist”.
Cory has also written a page called What’s this site?, where he explains his reasons for releasing his books for free. This page and the discussion that follows provide a great insight into the mind of an author who really “gets it” when it comes to modern distribution of artistic work.
As always, here’s a nice quote to convince you that you really should go read this now:
There are 70 million Americans engaged in file-sharing today, violating a copyright law that hasn’t kept pace with technology… No author is going to turn those downloaders into customers by calling them thieves. By contrast, the author who figures out how to capitalize on that activity will find himself sitting pretty
It will be interesting to see how that quote holds up 5-10 years from now…