Re: Speaking of Jason Rudolph and Groovy...

Ed Burnette wrote:
> As an author, how does that work? Many people asked for a free copy of my GWT book (http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/ebgwt), or complained that it wasn't free (it's $8.50). What's my incentive for spending months working on something, putting it out there for free, and everybody says "thanks", takes it, and walks off? I could be wrong but I can't see many of the free downloads converting to sales.
>   
It probably varies by case, but I've heard tell of authors making free 
copies of their books available online and it actually spurred sales of 
the dead tree edition.
Bruce Eckel ( "Thinking in Java," "Thinking in C++," "Thinking in 
Patterns" ) makes PDFs of his books available on his website for free 
download... and I can't
speak for anybody else but I own 3 printed copies of the first two (1st 
ed and 2nd ed of "Thinking in C++" is why it's 3 and not 2). 

Similarly I've purchased paper copies of other books that are freely 
available, just because I prefer reading off paper to reading off a 
computer screen.  Not to mention
that a paper book is still more portable than any kind of portable 
computing device.

I don't know that it makes sense for all books to be released for free 
on the Internet, but doing that has worked for some authors.  Maybe it
would be an interesting experiment...  how about it, Ed, write a book 
and put it out there and see what happens? :-)



TTYL,


Phil

-- 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/philliprhodes

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