Keywords

open educational resources, e-books, open access, open culture, e-commerce

Abstract

Digital technologies now enable books and other digital resources to be openly available to those with access to the Internet. This study examined the financial viability of a religious publisher that put free digital versions of eight of its print books on the Internet. The cost to put these eight books online was $940. Over a 10-week period, these books were downloaded 102,256 times and sales of these books increased 26%. Online sales increased at a much higher rate. Comparisons with historical book sales and sales of comparable titles indicate that that this increase may have been connected to the free books being available. There was a modest correlation between book downloads and print sales.

Original Publication Citation

John Hilton III and David Wiley. “Free E-Books and Print Sales.” The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 14 (1). (2011).