More evidence... Giving away your books for free sells more copies

After reading Cory Doctorow's book 'Little Brother' (see the link from boingboing), I was convinced by his argument that there is both virtue and profit in giving away one's books. So, as you may recall, I put all my books on the web for free download.

I am pleased to report that since I've been giving away my books for free there have been two extremely valuable reactions. First, more people are reading what I write, and so I have had some wonderful conversations, been challenged, inspired, and met many likeminded people. Second, I have sold many more copies of my books than I thought I would.

But, here's more evidence that giving your books away for free increases circulation and sales.

Neil Gaiman and his publisher have published the results of their free online release of his novel American Gods earlier this year -- the conclusion? Giving away ebooks for free sold books: The Indies [ie. independent booksellers -- Neil] are the only sales channel where we have confidence that incremental sales were driven by this promotion. In the Bookscan data reported for Independents we see a marked increase in weekly sales across all of Neil’s books, not just American Gods during the time of the contest and promotion. Following the promotion, sales returned to pre-promotion levels.