A while back I noticed the announcement on boing boing about a book by John Scalzi being offered as a free downloadable PDF. I had not come round to reading it, but as I had finished Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett (thanks, Dries, it was awesome), I needed something else to read. So I fired up preview and started reading Old Man’s War. It was very good, well-paced and to the point.
Much to my delight I noticed the paperback version being sold in a shop in the Seattle Tacoma airport. I immediately bought it, and I definitely plan on buying the follow up books (Ghost Brigades and The Last Colony). So, yes, the concept of offering something for free does work (I am a sucker for paper books), and it gets you new readers. So … start making those cool books available online and people who might otherwise skip them, will buy them.