It’s here.
The article I’ve been so excited to see published. David Wiley and I wrote this article and  I am grateful to The Journal of Electronic Publishing for publishing it. Although there is much to be done in the area of how giving away digital copies influence print sales I think this article makes a [...]

Not sure that anyone will want to read this; however, if you’re researching the influence of free digital books on print sales the review of literature may be helpful to you. Below is a version of the first two chapters of my dissertation. I’ve had to take out a few parts because some of the [...]

This past year I wrote a book about how to get more of the true meaning of Christmas in our lives at Christmas time. Unfortunately, the way things worked out it was not published this year; however, the publisher has graciously made a free electronic copy of it available (site registration required). Even better they [...]

As the download project at http://deseretbook.com/free is winding down, I’m please to report that over 100,000 books have been downloaded. I expect soon to have more information on the sales of these books so that we can measure whether the free downloads had any impact on sales.
In a future study it would be very interesting [...]

An update to this blog post. In the first six weeks of tracking book downloads, 30,000 books have been downloaded from http://deseretbook.com/free. It’s too early to tell much more; however it appears that this number is surprisingly high. More to come.

Deseret Book has released free digital versions of 8 books. Check out http://deseretbook.com/free. Part of what we are trying to study is how “free digital downloads” affect “physical print sales.” I’ll keep you posted.

I really like Chris Anderson’s books Free and The Long Tail. For me there is a small paradox between the two that I have been wanting to write about for some time. Let’s look at this from the perspective of a book publisher.
This publisher has read The Long Tail and is aware that there is [...]

My advisor David Wiley is a guest blogger at the Chronicle this month and posted today about some of our research.  You can read the article here.

I recently finished the book Innovation Happens Elsewhere by Ron Goldman and Richard Gabriel (available as a free download at http://www.dreamsongs.com/IHE/). (Got to love people willing to share digital versions of their books).
The book is about using open source and getting smart people outside of your organization to help do your work. I’m just going [...]

One of the books that has really affected my thinking is Free Culture. In this book the author (Lawrence Lessig) points out that books have two lives He says,
“Here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit of creative property goes through different ‘lives.’ In its first life, if the [page 113] [...]