That fits with Cory Doctorow's experience of offering freebies - they work like free advertising, an dthe fans go on to buy the book later.
One angle that will merit more study is this:
Quote:
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In addition, we did not study how free books affect the sales of other titles by an author. For example, all the books released by Random House were the first books in a series. Future analysis needs to be done to determine whether sales of other books by an author (e.g., later books in a series) are influenced by making one of an author’s works freely available
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If the free book creates a fan, that fan may go on to buy the rest of the author's material.
(This fits with my experience: In a pirate context, a pirated back-catalog has made me fans of several artists in various media, and I then go on to buy their future stuff)