Created to document the writing of American Gods, Neil's online journal is seven years old this month. To celebrate, HarperCollins is giving away a free, downloadable copy of American Gods.
You can get your copy here.
As a bookseller, I'm thrilled that both Neil and Harper are making this offer. Publishing (and reading!) continue to be non-growth enterprises, in need of as much new energy, good will, foresight and publicity as can be had. Putting great written matieral like American Gods in the hands of young readers can only be good for the future of the written word.
Cory Doctorow, as ever, has an interesting take (and one I agree with). From Boingboing.net:
"However, I think that Harper Collins got this one wrong. They've put the text of American Gods up in a wrapper that loads pictures of the pages from the printed book, one page at a time, with no facility for offline reading. The whole thing runs incredibly slowly and is unbelievably painful to use. I think we can be pretty sure that no one will read this version instead of buying the printed book -- but that's only because practically no one is going to read this version, period.
The fact is that the full text of American Gods has been online for years, and can be located with a single Google query. I managed to download the entire text of the book in less time than it took me to get the Harper Collins edition to load the first page of Chapter One (literally!). The "security" that Harper Collins has bought with its clunky, kudgey experiment is nonexistent: pirates will just go get the pirate edition. "
For anyone paying attention, this is a marketing vehicle and it's usage is on the rise. Need further proof? Check out Random House's free download offer for the ultra-trendy Beautiful Children (the offer is now expired). Last question - will the retailers (Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc) get involved before they've become irrelevant in the relationship between artist and consumer?