If it's not on the internet it doesn't exist...

A friend recently asked me if making my books available for free download (see:

http://www.spirituality.org.za/2008/04/copies-of-my-three-most-recent-books.html for the downloads) is harming my book sales? The answer is NO, in fact awareness of my work, and easy, free, access to it has driven sales up! In some ways it is a bit like free advertising. People download the PDF of a book, send it on to a friend, but when they want to give a copy as a gift, or own a copy for their shelf they buy paper copies! Many of you (my loving readers!) have already done so!

Of course the other side of the coin is that I own the rights to my own works (not the projects that I have done in partnership with others). I have a 'day job' that pays the bills and so sales are not the most important part in the publishing equation for me. As I have said a few times, it is far more important to me that my stuff get out there, used, and understood than it is for me to have a few extra Rand (or dollars from Amazon) in my pocket.

Today I also came to realise that if my works are not freely available on the internet, they don't truly 'exist'. What do I mean? Well, most ordinary persons (not eggheads like me, or scholars like Wessel and Pete) do their basic faxt finding and research on google, not in libraries! So, that's one more good reason to give my work away! Please download and share it to you heart's content!