Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
It occurs to me, reading this thread, that we don't actually know that anyone has downloaded Steve's books, only that at least one person has uploaded two of them. (I don't know where in "the darknet" the books are, either-- torrents, usenet, IRC, etc.)
Beyond that, Steve, I think it would be a great idea to host a torrent of your own of the first three chapters of each of your books, with a note in each about where to purchase the rest of the content. I think this would be good for three reasons. One is that it would probably get you some free visibility to potential readers. Another is that it would likely swamp the existing darknet uploads, because someone getting your torrent could get "all" your titles (albeit only the first three chapters), rather than getting one or two only. The third is that it would promote your reputation as a cool, tech-savvy author who knows how to use the latest social tools to his advantage.  If you really want to go whole-hog in this direction, you can offer the same excerpts via IRC with a bot, and periodically post to usenet, I suppose. After all, you already offer these excerpts online. This would just be additional channels of distribution.
Just a suggestion.... |
To be completely honest, I don't think it'd be very successful to offer the first few chapters of all of Steve's books in a torrent. It might work in a feed, but in a torrent I'm pretty sure it'd mostly frustrates potential readers. To avoid people grabbing them over the internet with a "f#@$k him" attitude, you must avoid frustrating them.
At the very least you'd need to be very explicit as to what it is exactly you offer. But the thing is, there is an endless stream (as torrents
) of
complete books. Why would anyone bother to
read the first few chapters of books from an unknown author (no offense Steve) to decide if you want to buy and read them.
Not to be overly pessimistic, but I'm afraid such an attempt is doomed to failure.
What I think may work - even though I expect Steve to be adamantely against the very idea - would be to "publish" a couple of books under creative commons on as many websites as possible. This would increase his exposure and may generate significant increase in sales.
Of course this is based on my personal conviction the worst that can happen to an author is obscurity, and I have no hard number to back that up.