After our item earlier this week on books that come in free online editions, we got a letter from author and publishing insider Mia Amato. "It's definitely worth writing and producing an ebook, which can be sold online through the many ebook distributors out there," Amato told us. "The format is quite suitable for short-form fiction (which can sell for as little as 49 cents) and for shorter nonfiction—with the caveat that the subject should be something of interest to, say, a minimum of 5,000 strangers not related to the author. The ebook thus replaces the 19th-century 'monograph' for material that is not quite vanity publishing but not strong enough to sustain even paperback printing costs."

But, Amato cautions, she's serious about the selling aspect...and about keeping online and print publications distinct from one another. "I've never seen, in nearly ten years in e-publishing, that any book sold better because its first chapter, or its entirety, was given away for free online," she explains. "The web marketplace is a value-driven marketplace; anybody who can search does not pay for what can be obtained for free."

Science-fiction author Charlie Stross counters that last argument in a recent blog post on "the 'piss-poor' ebook market, suggesting (as many on his side of the fence on this issue do) that "there's a lot of evidence from research into music file sharing that people who use 'pirate' ebooks actually buy more of the real thing." He has quite a bit more to say on the subject, starting with the allegation that "we don't really know what an ebook is worth to the readers, because the market that could give us meaningful feedback on pricing has been strangled in the crib." It's worth following through to the end; trust me.

I hope I made the right move, then, making my experiment with the Tao Te Ching a free download. I had more than 17,000 people download it last year, which if it were a book would be awesome; the question is whether or not those 17,000 readers would be enough to persuade any publishers that they could reach several thousand more who don't have mad Google skills...