Can Giving Books Away Pay Off? No Starch Press Publisher Bill Pollock on his decision to offer two of his key titles as free downloads.

Extra: Have you gotten any feedback yet from people in the industry?
Pollock: … The word is just getting out. I haven’t heard anything from friends of mine. What I expect to hear from some authors is, “I’d like you to try that with my book.” There will probably be a couple that are particularly concerned. …

Extra: What are your long-term goals for this experiment? How long before you expect to see a reward from this, or before you decide that it just didn’t work?
Pollock: We’ll have a sense in three months. I’m going to watch it for now [and] see what it does. … We’re definitely thinking of doing more stuff like this, but the challenge is to figure out a business model that can take this into account and monetize it. … If you’ve got customers who support you, you’re going to find customers that want to keep you around. People will support you, especially if you give them a great product. You’ll see the sales. Quality sells.