More Free Books!

Did I call it, or did I call it? Via Editorial Ass, MJ Rose is giving away a copy of her book, The Reincarnationist, for free, for the next ten days.

This is a book that has been on my radar back when Miss Snark was still live and mentioned it was a book she wished she had.

MJ's reasoning for giving away her book?

My book is free because my husband always asks me to bring home cookies from Sant Ambrose whenever I go into New York City. It's because I wear one of the L'Oeuvre Noire perfumes by Kilian. And it's because we both use L'Occitane Verbena Shower Gel. And what all those things have in common is at one point in my life as a consumer - or his - we sampled them.

...trying something for free is the best way of discovering it. And free doesn't mean sampling a quarter of a cookie - it means the whole cookie. ... It doesn't mean reading the first five pages of my book online - it means reading my whole book for free as a way of discovering me as an author.

And interestingly enough, she kinda answered my discussion question from a few posts ago:

Back in 1999 and 2000 a few of us... a very few of us... Douglas Clegg, Seth Godin and I... offered free electronic copies of our books in an effort to reach an audience we otherwise wouldn't have reached and to test out a new marketing concept for books. Despite the industry screaming we were crazy, it worked. We each wound up selling many more copies of the books that we gave away than anyone expected and for each of us the experiment was a success. Back then many thought it an audacious move and even though we proved free books led to increased books sales it's been hard for me to convince any of my publishers to try it again. Until now. I guess it's an idea whose time has come, or I've gotten more persuasive, or the VP I asked at my publishing house recently got a nice sample of a new moisturizer at the department store and understood the idea ... but whatever the reason, I'm thrilled.