From Article: Giving It Away by Cory Doctorow
An author, Cory Doctorow, presently sells his books hard copy and also put them up online for people to view electronically wrote this article. The unique part of this is that the copy that is put online for electronic viewing is free. Many authors find this absurd; he is losing money because people are downloading his book for free rather then purchasing it at a bookstore. Doctorow sees nothing of the sort, the most worthwhile part of all this is that more people have the opportunity to read the book, many who would never have purchased the book at a bookstore anyways.
The way Doctorow see it is this, many people who download the book don't end up buying it, but those never would have in the first place. At this point he did lose sales but yet he still got people to read his book, something that should be more rewarding then money to an author. Some people that read the e-book would have purchased the book if it wasn't available online, but that's only a tiny amount of lost sales. But then the rest of the readers who view the book online, go and buy the printed book, these are gain sales, ones that were never expected in the first.
This is one author that sees the real point in putting his book online, exposure. So many more readers found this book simply because of the electronic version. The plus side of all this 'commotion' about posting this book online has given Doctorow many more opportunities then just the book. Doctorow was the recipient of the Fulbright Chair at USC, the offer to write this very high paying article in Forbes magazine, and many other things like to give speeches, write and teach.
Over all I think that many people could learn from this author, a little exposure could bring you a very long way.
To view article:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/cory-doctorow-copyright-tech-media_cz_cd_books06_1201doctorow.html