The Brazilian best sellers' author Paulo Coelho decided to give away all is books in electronic form in the Internet.
He created the blog "
Pirate Coelho where he lists links to all is books.
(Read the
news in the Brazilian Ministry of Culture (in Portuguese).)
Coelho has already sold about 90.000.000 paper books and he now claims that giving away ebooks raises the number of p-copies sold.
Is philosophy is "we give them for free in
E, people read some pages in their pc, they like what they read, they go and buy a p-copy since ebook reading devices are not quite popular yet".
If other major authors follow his example, I can see a future when you can get all ebooks for free and writers only publish on paper deluxe limited editions of their books, selling them at high prices for special collectors (like if the paper copies where paintings sold in auctions).