Free books online?

Posted by Dirk Avery at 10:33 am under Copyright, Technology.

I recently downloaded Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children for free. The 434-page novel is a 2 MB PDF. Everything looks to be high-quality. It was published by Random House. You can even buy the book at Amazon (here). It’s currently #7 on Amazon’s US-fiction bestsellers list. My question is why would Bock, and better yet Random House, offer the book for free online? The answer to both these questions, courtesy the AP:

“I want people to read the book,” Bock said in a statement issued Tuesday by the Random House Publishing Group. “If that means giving it away for free online, great.”

“The book really struck a chord with readers as bookstore sales have demonstrated,” Avideh Bashirrad, deputy director of marketing for Random House, said in a statement. “We believe it has even more potential readers out there, and the best way to reach them is online, with this unrestricted access.”

Publishers have worried about Internet piracy and whether online text could hurt traditional sales. But lately the trend has been to make more books available on the Internet and hope that interest in all formats will be increased.

What this makes very clear is the ease with which information could be distributed if we were all living in the 21st century. Big books downloaded in a matter of minutes with every bit as much information as a book you’d take the time and effort to find and buy at a book retailer. Amazing. Or is it?

Update: I’m very impressed with the refreshing copyright notice you are required to accept pre-download: