The books are
governed by Creative Commons licenses that permit their unlimited
noncommercial redistribution, which means that you're welcome to share
them with anyone you think will want to see them. In the words of Woody
Guthrie:
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for
a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our
permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a
dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it,
that's all we wanted to do."
Why do I do this? There are three reasons:
* Short Term
In the short term, I'm generating more sales of my printed books. Sure,
giving away ebooks displaces the occasional sale, when a downloader
reads the book and decides not to buy it. But it's far more common for a
reader to download the book, read some or all of it, and decide to buy
the print edition. Like I said in my essay, Ebooks Neither E Nor Books,
(http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt), digital and print
editions are intensely complimentary, so acquiring one increases your
need for the other. I've given away more than half a million digital
copies of my award-winning first novel, Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom, and that sucker has blown through *five* print editions
(yee-HAW!), so I'm not worried that giving away books is hurting my
sales.
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