On the Premise that Giving Books Away for Free on the Internet Boosts Book Sales
I’ve heard a lot of arguments about whether or not giving books away on the internet will lead to greater book sales.
Let’s simplify it to some math.
Let the number of people who know about a book be called 
Let the percentage of people who buy the book who know about it be called 
Then your total books sales 
is equal to
right? I’m leaving out multiple copies to the same person… whatever.
So, basically, a lot of people are saying, “hey, if you give the book away for free on the internet, then a lot of people will know about it!”, which is probably right, and would increase K.
Other people are saying, “if you give a book away for free, why would people pay for it?”, which would be a decrease in b.
So the big question is whether the % increase in K makes up for the % decrease in b, if K increases at all. Maybe b actually increases if you put the book online. Who knows?
The thing is, most of the people who want to give it away are authors, not publishers. And really, authors, while they like their 8 or 10% royalty, they like even more the idea that there will be a huge K. And publishers, while they care (deeply) about the reputation of their press, they also care (deeply) about the size of S. So, the authors and the publishers are rather split on this point, so it seems.
And even if S rises when books are available for free in the experience of a few authors, perhaps because of the notoriety they achieve because of their singularity, the same may not be true if every author does so.
Yeah, that’s actually all I really have on the topic.
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