Writing Free Books

Last month, did you snatch your copy of Suze Orman's Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny ($24.95 retail price for the hardcover)? I got mine, thanks to a Florida friend, Bonnie Boots. The book was available only for a day, but word-of-mouth spread across the 'net faster than fall flames in southern California. By day's end, more than a million electronic versions were downloaded.

According to the NY Times, HarperCollins is offering a limited selection of free downloadable books on its website, although I was unable to find such a listing to link.

Tara at ResearchBuzz offers tips on how to search for free books from university presses:

... try this search on Google or Yahoo along with your favorite keywords: “university press” free download site:edu .... You’ll get some irrelevant stuff, but you’ll also get pointers to small university presses which are making their books available online for free.

To get other general overviews of what’s available, try site:edu free book downloads “university press” oxford yale harvard.... try free books download “university press” inurl:2008 (The inurl: portion is because many blogs archive by date, and inurl:2008 is an easy way to find recent entries.)