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Or, more to the point, in which Cory Doctorow explains, very clearly and lucidly, that he Gets It. So clearly and lucidly, in fact, that in addition to linking to his new book Little Brother (which he is offering as a free download), I've taken the liberty of reproducing his entire explanation here. I'm pretty certain he'd approve.
Why do you give away your books?
Giving away ebooks gives me artistic, moral and commercial satisfaction. The commercial question is the one that comes up most often: how can you give away free ebooks and still make money?
For me — for pretty much every writer — the big problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity (thanks to Tim O’Reilly for this great aphorism). Of all the people who failed to buy this book today, the majority did so because they never heard of it, not because someone gave them a free copy. Mega-hit best-sellers in science fiction sell half a million copies — in a world where 175,000 attend the San Diego Comic Con alone, you’ve got to figure that most of the people who “like science fiction” (and related geeky stuff like comics, games, Linux, and so on) just don’t really buy books. I’m more interested in getting more of that wider audience into the tent than making sure that everyone who’s in the tent bought a ticket to be there.
Ebooks are verbs, not nouns. You copy them, it’s in their nature. And many of those copies have a destination, a person they’re intended for, a hand-wrought transfer from one person to another, embodying a personal recommendation between two people who trust each other enough to share bits. That’s the kind of thing that authors (should) dream of, the proverbial sealing of the deal. By making my books available for free pass-along, I make it easy for people who love them to help other people love them.
What’s more, I don’t see ebooks as substitute for paper books for most people. It’s not that the screens aren’t good enough, either: if you’re anything like me, you already spend every hour you can get in front of the screen, reading text. But the more computer-literate you are, the less likely you are to be reading long-form works on those screens — that’s because computer-literate people do more things with their computers. We run IM and email and we use the browser in a million diverse ways. We have games running in the background, and endless opportunities to tinker with our music libraries. The more you do with your computer, the more likely it is that you’ll be interrupted after five to seven minutes to do something else. That makes the computer extremely poorly suited to reading long-form works off of, unless you have the iron self-discipline of a monk.
The good news (for writers) is that this means that ebooks on computers are more likely to be an enticement to buy the printed book (which is, after all, cheap, easily had, and easy to use) than a substitute for it. You can probably read just enough of the book off the screen to realize you want to be reading it on paper.
So ebooks sell print books. Every writer I’ve heard of who’s tried giving away ebooks to promote paper books has come back to do it again. That’s the commercial case for doing free ebooks.
Now, onto the artistic case. It’s the twenty-first century. Copying stuff is never, ever going to get any harder than it is today (or if it does, it’ll be because civilization has collapsed, at which point we’ll have other problems). Hard drives aren’t going to get bulkier, more expensive, or less capacious. Networks won’t get slower or harder to access. If you’re not making art with the intention of having it copied, you’re not really making art for the twenty-first century. There’s something charming about making work you don’t want to be copied, in the same way that it’s nice to go to a Pioneer Village and see the olde-timey blacksmith shoeing a horse at his traditional forge. But it’s hardly, you know, contemporary. I’m a science fiction writer. It’s my job to write about the future (on a good day) or at least the present. Art that’s not supposed to be copied is from the past.
Finally, let’s look at the moral case. Copying stuff is natural. It’s how we learn (copying our parents and the people around us). My first story, written when I was six, was an excited re-telling of Star Wars, which I’d just seen in the theater. Now that the Internet — the world’s most efficient copying machine — is pretty much everywhere, our copying instinct is just going to play out more and more. There’s no way I can stop my readers, and if I tried, I’d be a hypocrite: when I was 17, I was making mix-tapes, photocopying stories, and generally copying in every way I could imagine. If the Internet had been around then, I’d have been using it to copy as much as I possibly could.
There’s no way to stop it, and the people who try end up doing more harm than piracy ever did. The record industry’s ridiculous holy war against file-sharers (more than 20,000 music fans sued and counting!) exemplifies the absurdity of trying to get the food-coloring out of the swimming pool. If the choice is between allowing copying or being a frothing bully lashing out at anything he can reach, I choose the former.
Oh yeah ... he accepts donations, too. Say "Thank you" to the man. :)
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Charlie Stross, on the other hand, has run some parallel release experiments that seem to show electronic give-aways have improved his print sales.
Very few people make a living by writing fiction.
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for future work, you could insist that the is model be used. even if you self-publish. amazon makes that pretty easy, automatic audience (kindle); and other formats as well. the music industry is seeing a shakeup with artists giving away free albums, not selling out to the man anymore, and are actually making more money by selling direct. customers that want a higher quality format are paying for it too. oh, i've read a couple places that even clicking on and buying via "the amazon link" method you see? nets some authors more money in kickback, than their publisher gives them per sale. hah.
currently, tor is giving away, on a weekly basis, cover and other art files, and free, whole books in multiple formats, to introduce series, and new authors, and ...
a very good (imho) book _infected_, was recently given away for a period of time. it's good enough, that i'll want a paper copy (with the illustrations).
neil gaiman as well. he's on the bandwagon, and is heavily pressing his publishers to experiment. they released American Gods as a free to read for a month online book, naturally people downloaded it anyway; soon an official downloadable copy should occur.
i have and a use an Amazon Kindle. amazing device. won't replace paper for a long time (ever), but man, i sure do read a lot more.
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The "Kindle" editions of my work on Amazon follow this pricing model.
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if you self-publish, you get all the money. such a deal :>
then the govt gets theirs twice or more so.
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When initially released, electronic versions of my title THE SUMMER COUNTRY were priced the same as a trade paperback, $14.00.
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If they were priced reasonably compared to the print editions, I probably would buy ebooks at least occasionally.
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You're mistaken
I never said anything of the kind, nor would I, because I do not regard it as such.
Re: You're mistaken
Re: You're mistaken
* Giving away free ebooks sells more printed books
AND
* Having a higher profile (because of free ebooks and more printed book sales) makes me more money overall by creating lots of other opportunities for me
But if the books were a loss-leader, my publishers would be giant suckers for footing the bill on them. Giving away the ebooks sells more printed books, and that's why both my publisher and I are happy to do it.
Re: You're mistaken
Well, I'm glad I didn't make it up out of faulty neurons.
I apologize for spreading the error.
Re: You're mistaken
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This is an interesting assertion. I must think on it. (Of course, the first thing that pops into my brain is "well, what about sculpture?")
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I'm not much of an artist. I can write, but that's about it. I certainly don't make a living from my art. So it's kind of hard for me to evaluate the truthiness of Doctrow's statement. But it's rolling around in my head in interesting ways.
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By way of example
Re: By way of example
Re: By way of example
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/s/jeff-sutton/
The culmination of a life's work
5.68 linear feet
http://dsc.calstate.edu/1666?r=cam
Re: By way of example
Re: By way of example