I recently started reading the blog of the author (MCM) of The Pig and the Box (see my post from last week). He sells that title as a printed book, and as an ebook, but he also makes it available for free to download as a PDF from his website. Today he blogged about why his book is free, and it reminded me an awful lot of the conversation I had via email 3 years ago with author Simon Ings.
MCM (do catalogers hate it when authors don't go by last, first?) outlines not only his reasoning behind making this title free, but also talks about the experimentation he'll have with several of his upcoming projects. 1) The free version will be missing some of the inside humour, and 2) a book that will be delivered in a serialized release, unless you want to buy the whole thing right now.
Go check out the post, and buy some of his stuff - this kind of experimentation needs to be rewarded! Oh, and his new show, Rollbots, is cool too.