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Update 3/4: According to Random House during the 72 hours that the book was available to download for free they received:
– just under 30,000 pageviews,
-20,000 unique visitors
-just under 15,000 copies of the book were downloaded.
Download results from Amazon and the other publishing partners who participated are not yet available.
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Just days after throwing open their digital doors and committing to DRM-free audiobooks Random House has announced that they will be opening the digital door for printed books as well. The newly released and heavily hyped debut novel by Charles Bock, “Beautiful Children,” will be available for free via a PDF download.
The catch is you got 2 days to do it. The book will be available for free through midnight Friday. Though the limited download window makes it feel more like a publicity stunt than a commitment Random House should still be given tons of credit for taking the leap. This is not some backlist title or fading frontlist title that they are experimenting with, this is one of their hottest books, and a recent addition to the New York Times bestseller list.
Random House has been testing and tracking DRM free audio downloads since last fall at eMusic.com and “have not yet found a single instance of the eMusic watermarked titles being distributed illegally.” So beginning March 1st DRM is finished at Random House. Maybe if all goes well with the “Beautiful Children” experiment beginning April 1st all their content will be available for free download.
Random House has also got Amazon on board for the experiment so the book is available to be downloaded there as well. And as Cory Doctorow points out in his piece on the news maybe this will influence Amazon to disband the DRM cloud that hangs over the audio downloads at newly purchased Audible.com
Download the book here
C. Max Magee has an interview with the books’ publicist on The Millions
Random House letter to their publishing partners regarding the new DRM-free policy. (pdf)