Smart Publishing

Cory Doctorow, he of BoingBoing among other ventures, has put Little Brother, his latest book online and once again shows some very smart publishing practices.

• The book can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons license. Many people won't want to download and print a book themselves so lots will buy it anyway.  This is like the ultimate dust jacket sales pitch.
• He invites readers to convert the files to other formats and send them to him to host on his site.  So he basically gets his audience to participate in the publishing process and he gets other people to do the work of converting his work to various formats and then provide links to readers for those formats.
• He invites readers to re-mix his work. Lots of people enjoy putting their own spin on stories and Cory embraces and encourages this.  Again, he's engaging his audience and creating an interactive experience.  Even better he invites them to use multi-media to do it, so people can write their own stuff or create unique audio or video based on the story.
   

If you're looking for smart ways to succeed in publishing I highly recommend watching Cory and his ilk as they work their magic.  And keep in mind that important ingredients in his recipe are interactivity, multi-media, and user generated content.