Back in 2008, Harper Collins and Neil Gaiman put his book American Gods up for free browsing for a month, which Gaiman wrote about on his website at the time to answer critics who said the promotion would hurt book sales. Now in an interview (video below) with the UK Open Rights Group, Gaiman gives some more insights into how the promotion went and what he thinks of piracy. Here are a few selected quotes, but the whole video’s great.
On letting people read American Gods for free: “And what happened was sales of my books through independent bookstores […] went up the following month 300%.” […]
“I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. I say, ‘Okay, do you have a favorite author?’ and they say yes. And I say, ‘Good. And what I want is for everyone who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book put up your hands.'” […]
“That’s really all this is. It’s people lending books.”
He’s so dreamy.
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/0Qkyt1wXNlI?fs=1&hl=en_US