http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/books/23kindle.html?pagewanted=1&ref=global-home

          Give something away free and if it is good enough, people will want more.  This is such an easy concept that we see all over the place.  A month free trial period of tv channels, free lipstick samples, free song downloads…this list could go on a long time.  When I came across this article talking about the benefits to an author/publisher for giving away a book, it definately made complete sense. 

          One fundamental part of the arguement was that reading one book will lead to buying others.  Sure you can say that maybe the person wouldn’t like the book and therefore not spend money but I think that in most cases that wouldn’t be true.  Why would you download a book that you weren’t into at all in the first place?  Personally, I tend to get stuck on different authors until I have read all their works or quite a few of them.  This idea works even better when you take series into consideration. If the story and characters lure you in, you will want more.

          I really do think this is a great idea but one flaw is that this  would not work well with brand new authors.  If you only have one book out there is going to be nothing else for people to buy.  I’m making an assumption here but if you are a digital book reading kind of person, you probably wouldn’t go buy the physical book after downloading a free digital copy. 

          Overall though, I think this is a very interesting story because it highlights how digital can help the physical world.   It was something that I hadn’t really considered before.  I think if I was an author in the position to do something like this, I would.   Actually I would be more inclined to do something like dollar downloads and giving all the money to the humane society.   Someone should get all over that idea. Please steal that one from me.