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Cory Doctorow Makes Money By Selling Nothing

kidmercury | 07 December, 2005 18:51

The laws of economics do not change. When marginal cost equals zero, on a long enough time frame, price too will equal zero. And so, if you plan on distributing many copies of a good whose marginal cost equals zero over a long period of time, you need to reconstruct your business model so that what you're distributing is an advertisement for something else.

Doing this can make you a lot of money.

Just ask Cory Doctorow:

I’m generating more sales of my printed books. Sure, giving away ebooks displaces the occasional sale but it’s far more common for a reader to download the book, read some or all of it, and decide to buy the print edition. I’ve given away more than half a million digital copies of my award-winning first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and that sucker has blown through five print editions (yee-HAW!), so I’m not worried that giving away books is hurting my sales.


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