Sci-fi writer and blogger Cory Doctorow has an article in Forbes about why he gives away free electronic versions of his books:
The thing about an e-book is that it’s a social object. It wants to be copied from friend to friend, beamed from a Palm device, pasted into a mailing list. It begs to be converted to witty signatures at the bottom of e-mails. It is so fluid and intangible that it can spread itself over your whole life. Nothing sells books like a personal recommendation–when I worked in a bookstore, the sweetest words we could hear were “My friend suggested I pick up….” The friend had made the sale for us, we just had to consummate it. In an age of online friendship, e-books trump dead trees for word of mouth.
Now, science fiction may be more prone to generating buzz than ethnographic manuscripts, but I think its safe to say someone is much more likely to order your book for their course if they got a chance to read it online first.
Also worth checking out: The draft syllabus for a course Cory is teaching at USC, dealing with issues of intellectual property and technology.
Tags: Economic Issues1 Comment
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Some of these points transfer to academic contexts very well. In fact, the often-cited statistic is that those authors whose work is openly accessible are more often cited/quoted, which translates into broader academic recognition and a better PTR dossier.
However, academic authors are more constrained than authors writing popular books. Which is the crux of our particular problem, IMHO.