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Giving It Away - Forbes.com

creative commonsWe’re used to seeing books on, say, computer programming given away free online, as contributions to the Open Source movement, or as marketing to enhance the author’s stature (or Google rank) just before the publication of his next non-free book.

You don’t see many novelists giving away free electronic access to their works. Cory Doctorow is an exception. “I’ve been giving away my books ever since my first novel came out, and boy has it ever made me a bunch of money,” says Doctorow, in a Forbes special issue on the future of book publishing: Giving It Away - Forbes.com

I also put the entire electronic text of the novel on the Internet under a Creative Commons License that encouraged my readers to copy it far and wide. Within a day, there were 30,000 downloads from my site (and those downloaders were in turn free to make more copies).

–Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Chris Fehily, author of Visual Quickstart Guides on Python, SQL, Windows XP, and the Microsoft Windows Vista: Visual QuickStart Guide, sent me this story.

Posted by Richard Dooling on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 at 8:10 am.

3 Responses to “Giving It Away - Forbes.com”

Richard, have you considered Creative Commons licensing for any of your works? I wonder…

Left by John on January 12th, 2007

John,

I intend to publish my short story “Bush Pigs” under the Creative Commons license. I just need to make a nice PDF and then figure out the how-tos of the license. I would like to make the story available especially to Returned Peace Corps Volunteers. It’s a Grand Guignol take on the reverse culture shock that often attends an RPCV’s coming home after service in the Third World.

If that goes well, I’ll publish more.

Thanks,

Rick

Left by Richard Dooling on January 12th, 2007

Sounds good. Everyone loves a freebie!

I realize you have non-monetary reasons for releasing BUSH PIG in CC, but it would be nice if there was some way to track the efficacy (from a purely capitalist viewpoint) of using CC to increase sales. Doctorow points out that, short of going back in time and releasing his work only in the traditional manner, there’s just no way to be sure.

Good luck!

Left by John on January 22nd, 2007

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