To Be Free

This article in Publishers Weekly (May 18, 2009) -- Rip My Book, Please -- is an interview with Chris Anderson, auhtor of Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Anderson makes some interesting points about the benefits of giving away content -- for FREE!!! -- online as a way to stimulate sales.  In an excerpt from the book, he quotes Tim O'Reilly, a publisher:

"...the enemy of the author is not piracy, but obscurity."

Neil Gaiman's offers of free downloading of a couple of his books for a limited time to promote them, resulting in increased sales of all his books, is also mentioned. There's some real food for thought here re: the changing economics of publishing online that could change the publishing industry for the next few decades. I might have to read the book. Maybe on the Kindle I'll be getting. :)