Harper Collins have put Neil Gaiman's American Gods novel online for people to read for free. Huzzah! A publishing company who are interested in finding out how online media can work *for* them, rather than getting all cross about Those Damn Pirates. Right?
Well, almost. Unfortunately, this particular title has been available as an illegal download for ages, and since this Harper Collins version restricts you to reading at your computer, rather than making it available as a download, it's unlikely to be read by very many people. Let's just hope that they don't use this as 'evidence' that there's no value in pursuing e-Books.
[via Boing Boing]
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This was actually a gift to celebrate his blog's 7th birthday and the result of a fan vote. I'm guessing they didn't realise it wasn't a download... He also encouraged them to choose books they'd recommend to people who hadn't read any of his work before.
Neil personally was gunning for Stardust or short stories, I chose Neverwhere... but the longest, most bizarre and most likely to be digested slowly over weeks won.
I don't think many people were happy with the non-downloadable version. If I wanted to read it, I'd get it on my e-book reader... I really don't have the time to read this huge novel on my computer.
I voted for a short stories collection, I don't remember which one. I think (like Neil said) that people voted for their favorite, not for the book they'd recommend to a newcomer. I doubt many people will be able to read a large number of pages from "American Gods" - enough to get a feel of the book and want to buy it. It took me quite a while to get into it, I rememeber (and still, I like the short stories more; actually I finished "Fragile Things" a couple of hours ago!)