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 contribution to the discussion. Special thanks to JEP for making this article available in advance of the full issue coming out.

The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales is available here.

I welcome comments, questions and suggestions. The basic idea of the article is as follows:

A vital question for those with a commercial stake in selling books is, “What happens to book sales if digital versions are given away?” We tracked 41 books for which we could identify the date when the free digital versions of the books were made available to determine whether the free version affected print sales. We analyzed book sales for the eight weeks before and after the free versions were available.  Books were placed into four categories; three of the four categories of books had increased sales after the free books were distributed.