More Writers Offering Books For Free Online

from the expanding-audience dept

It appears that it's not only musicians recognizing the power of free publicity from putting their content for free online. While this article ignores the success of more recent authors to release books online (Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, etc...) in conjunction with their hardcopy release (as well as a number of authors now experimenting with releasing chapters of their books in progress), it appears that a more mainstream novelist, Matthew Reilly, is now releasing his latest novel online for free. He's releasing it in sections, rather than as a single download, but his theory is that it will help get him a bigger audience from readers who previously didn't know about him, or who were unlikely to find his books in bookstores. He hopes that it will encourage people to go out and buy his other books (this is his sixth book, and some of his earlier novels were apparently "best sellers"). Also, his publishing company will publish a hardcopy of this book later this year, after it's already completely free online. Apparently, the idea was entirely his, but his publishing company thinks it's a great idea - though, it may have helped that Reilly sold them the publishing rights for a $1 to get rid of the risk. It doesn't seem like my usual reading material, but if you're interested in what he describes as a "Tom Clancy-Michael Crichton" hybrid, you can download the first two sections of his book at the Hover Car Racer website.