Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Free E-Books from HarperCollins

Free electronic books from HarperCollins. That's pretty amazing. I will definitely be checking this out.

I am not sure if it will increase their sales but it is definitely something that needed to start happening awhile ago. And I believe with the availability of Kindle, more people will become interested in reading e-books.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web

In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site, including a novel by Paulo Coelho and a cookbook by the Food Network star Robert Irvine.

Starting Monday, readers who log on to www.harpercollins.com will be able to see the entire contents of “The Witch of Portobello” by Mr. Coelho; “Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy” by Mr. Irvine; “I Dream in Blue: Life, Death and the New York Giants” by Roger Director; “The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose” by Mark Halperin; and “Warriors: Into the Wild” the first volume in a children’s series by Erin Hunter.

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3 comments:

Paula said...

Hello,

well – what people don’t know is that Harper Collins only launched this free online reading site after the bestselling author Paulo Coelho revealed his pirate coelho blog to the world during the DLD conference in Munich last January.
I read the interveiw he gave for Newsweek and can't help to join the dots:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/108715
I doubt Harper Collins would have made such a move without this author's pressure.
Thumbs up for Pirate Coelho!

Anna M. said...

Hi aart - thanks for the heads up. I did not know that. That should be very interesting to see how that turns out.

Anna M. said...

@Paula - wow! That is amazing! Definitely "Go Paulo Coelho!" Don't you also think that publishing needs to keep up with the changes that are happening with things like blogs and wikis and author's who are publishing things online? I am not sure what that means with how much money the pubishing companies make or how much authors make but the book world is certainly facing some major changes and challenges.
Thanks for the link!