Cory Doctorow has a good piece in Forbes on making his entire bibliography available for free.
Indeed. His novels and short story collections are all available on his website. I’ve only read his debut novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and found it both clumsy and filled with captivating ideas.
Being an old-fashioned reader, I’m not much of a reader from screen, so the rest of the books I will be picking up one by one – though not locally as the bookstores in Helsinki seem utterly unable to stock his books.
However, Doctorow is by no means the only author who has thrown down the gauntlet of attracting more readers by giving the books away for free.
Charles Stross‘ Accelerando has been available since last summer. And its downloadability has not been a disadvantage for its sales. It’s a novel that takes the future on a ride, and never lets up on the gas, hence the name. What begins as a conventional study of near future quickly turns completely unrecognizable.
The newest arrival on the scene is Peter Watts’ Blindsight, just out in hardback format, as well as available on his website.