Last month, St. Martin's Press gave away two early novels by mystery writer Julia Spencer-Fleming and saw an uptick in the sales for her new book. That (and similar promotional efforts by other authors) has motivated former SMP editor and current full-time thriller writer Jason Pinter to provide free online access to his debut novel, The Mark, for a two-week period, starting this morning, as a way to help expand the audience for The Stolen, the book's second sequel.

One critical difference: While Spencer-Fleming's books were available as downloadable PDFs, Pinter and Mira have followed the approach taken by HarperCollins back in February, where you get to look at the book online, but you can't download it to your hard drive.