As noted by Chris Anderson, author Charles Sheehan-Miles is starting the New Year as he means to go on by giving away electronic versions of his new novel, Republic: A Novel of America’s Future. So far, it’s available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF, a Mobipocket/Amazon Kindle version, in HTML, and Rich Text Format, and all under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works licence (which means anyone can download it, read it, or distribute it).

Why?

I’m hoping that within the next few years, I’ll be making enough money from book sales that I’ll be able to write full time. Isn’t giving the book away somewhat counterproductive to that goal?

I don’t think so. Here’s why: the biggest challenge most authors face isn’t online piracy. It’s not people out there diabolically copying their works and distributing them for free. In fact most authors (including yours truly) suffer from a different problem entirely — no one has ever heard of them. After all, literally hundreds of thousands of new titles come out every year, and only a few hundred writers in the entire United States (if that many) actually live off their books full time. So, by giving away the book, I hope more people actually read it.

And Chris points out:

Tim O’Reilly was the first to say that the enemy of authors isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity. For the vast majority of authors, being read is actually reward enough. How to turn that recognition into a living is a whole other process, and not necessarily one that depends on the traditional book industry to deliver. Good thing, too, since it so rarely does.

But perhaps giving away books might help with that whole making a living thing too? Charles says:

Will giving it away cut sales and make me a poorer person? I don’t think so. There’s plenty of evidence out there that giving away the book will actually boost sales. If you don’t believe me, check out Eric Flint’s column in Jim Baen’s Universe, which actually runs the numbers and takes down some of the myths associated with Digital Rights Management, publishing, encryption, and copyright fanaticism.

And indeed, Eric’s column is well worth exploring as he takes some popular misconceptions and blows them out of the water with some real figures. I particularly like his disembowelling of the concept of “online piracy”.

It’s a good start to the year, and I hope it encourages others to consider that giving stuff away may not be so daft after all.