Online Publishing

[legalmoose]

A good blog entry on how Baen Books has leveraged free downloads of their books into increased sales of both e-books and paper titles.

Now if only the music industry as a whole would wake up to such examples and see how they could use P2P sharing and free giveaways to increase sales rather than increasing animosity through their assinine "damn the customers, all lawsuits ahead" policy, we'd be getting somewhere...

[original link courtesy Writing On Your Palm]

Comments

Two things:

[deejayqueue.livejournal.com]

1.) i think the reason that the book became so popular in print was because books are tangible things, and in many cases, collectible things. Personal libraries are things to be sought after, even in paperback, so when someone reads something they like, they're likely to go buy it so they can put it on the shelf.

2.) the RIAA are a bunch of dicks. Britney doesn't need a new porsche and if people (in this case amateur DJs, i.e. ME) want to download the remix of My Perogative then let 'em. The people who complain "My rights are being violated! You're taking my royalties!" need to chill. Everyone knows that rock stars don't make squat off royalties, pennies on the sale, if that. It's touring and touring and oh yeah, touring that generates cash flow for artists. how else can you explain why Yanni is so successful? So, if a tour is to be successful, a large fan base is necessary, right? What better way to establish a huge following than to have a song so widely distributed via p2p and file sharing? Look at Dave Matthews, he's probably making a zillion dollars and they haven't put out an album in years. because every one of his shows is taped and posted on line and that's how he got his reputation. Noinch.