Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In addition to the paperback book (which will be available for preorder soon!) we’ll be releasing the e-book and the audio book online for free! As soon as the book is published on Amazon, we’ll post one chapter in the blog each week, in both text and MP3 format. We’ll have a discussion with y’all about the topic of the chapter and answer any questions you have. Then, when all the chapters have been posted, we’ll wrap them all up in a nice PDF that anyone can download.

As a sneak preview, you can listen to Chapter 1 of the audiobook here! (8:36)

We’re releasing the entire book, in all its forms, under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike License (by-nc-sa). This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as they credit the authors and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Some people have said that it’s bad business to give away the entire e-book and audiobook for free. They’ve suggested giving away just certain chapters as a teaser and selling the rest. We’re not worried, though. People still like to have paper copies of books that they can hold in their hands and carry around with them, so we’re not worried about it hurting sales of the paperback. And anyway, the usual way of handling copyright is far too restrictive; it’s important to us that people to have free and easy access to good stuff about communication.

When it comes to giving e-book versions of paper books away for free, we’re in good company. Cory Doctorow thinks it’s a cool idea, and he releases all his books as free downloads. Neil Gaiman released his best-seller American Gods as a free e-book (temporarily), and sales quadrupled. If you know of others, big names or small, please leave a comment. I’m accumulating a list. (:

We’re very excited about sharing the book with you, in all its myriad forms. We’ll let you know when it’s available for preorder!