I am Kyle's self-indulgence

For the last few days Neil Gaiman has been writing on his journal about the benefits of giving books away for free online. The first major post was here, in which he wrote:

This is how people found new authors for more than a century. Someone says, "I've read this. It's good. I think you'd like it. Here, you can borrow it." Someone takes the book away, reads it, and goes, Ah, I have a new author.

Libraries are good things: you shouldn't have to pay for every book you read.

I'm one of those authors who is fortunate enough to make my living from the things I've written. If I thought that giving books away would make it so that I could no longer make my living from writing and be forced to go out and get a real job -- or that other authors would be less likely to be able to make a living -- I wouldn't do it.

And then in a follow-up post in response to a concerned bookseller's e-mail he wrote:

The books you sell have "pass-along" rates. They get bought by one person. Then they get passed along to other people. The other people find an author they like, or they don't.

When they do, some of them may come in to your book store and buy some paperback backlist titles, or buy the book they read and liked so that they can read it again. You want this to happen.

Just as a bookseller who regards a library as the enemy, because people can go there and read -- for free! -- what he sells, is missing that the library is creating a pool of people who like and take pleasure in books, will be his customer base, and are out there spreading the word about authors and books they like to other people, some of whom will simply go out and buy it.

Pretty cool stuff.

By the way, this whole discussion was prompted by Neil getting Harper Collins to put the full text of American Gods online for free. I've read nearly all of Gaiman's writings and I think this is his best prose work. So if you haven't already read it, go to the free online version and check it out.