FreeContent

Books containing material available online for free, like the 9/11 Commission Report, are still managing to rack up good, and in some cases very impressive, sales. By Joanna Glasner.

[Via Wired News]

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I have comented as follows:

1) I believe that most books would suffer little loss in revenue if they were available on the WEB under a modified Creative Content license, e.g.

a) Viewing from the WEB free (With anchors and links so that the WEB version can be commented on (wiki'ed) and linked out to other material.

b) Personal printing -- "Shareware license", e.g. with an "Honor" payment of the royalties to the author/publisher of the amount that they normally will get, (e.g. a few $'s)

c) Mass printing (or for profit printing) Requires a royalty payment to the author/publisher.

My thought is that most "content" as opposed to "entertainment" books will make MORE money by being WEB available. some people may read them on line or print them without paying for them, but others will see them, want to purchase hard copies, and participate in the WEB discussions, and thus may purchase the Hard Copy to have an easer to read version.

2) There is a growing list of books that are published under "Roughly" this license, Lessig's Free Culture, Gilmore's We the Medium, etc.

a) I'd love to see a site that contains the Card Catolog of these WEB available books and

b) I'd like to know the experience of the authors/publishers as to whether the WEB avalability has added to their profits or not (with as much objective info as possible)

3) My proposal is that the US publications should be published under this For Profit license and that the royalties should be used to diectly help pay for the operation of our Government, e.g. reduce our Debt/Taxes.