One of the things you hear all the time about book theft is the refrain, 'But if I like the book I just pirated I will go out and buy one of your titles afterwards.'

You get this anecdotally so often it gets deeply tedious. Being of a practical nature I have to ask myself, 'Why would someone do this? If you can steal book one in a series, and the rest are available on the torrents... what sudden shift in morality makes you want to start paying when you don't have to?'

But that's anecdotal too. So let's look at an author who's set down some facts about how free -- in this case legally free -- ebooks translate into print sales.

<a href="http://www.keirthomas.com/Keir_Thomas_professional_website/Blog/Entries/2011/3/18_So_youre_thinking_of_self-publishing_an_I.T._book.html" target="_blank"><!--more-->Keir Thomas documents it all very fully in this post. </a>He <a href="http://ubuntupocketguide.com/index_main.html" target="_blank">wrote a pocket guide to Ubuntu</a> and placed the pdf version online for free <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440478295?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=beginningubun-20&amp;link_code=as3&amp;camp=211189&amp;creative=373489&amp;creativeASIN=1440478295" target="_blank">with a link to Amazon</a> where it's for sale for $12.99 as a print book. It looks like an excellent book I must say -- the reviews on Amazon are very flattering indeed, and Keir is clearly very experienced in this field.

He says...
<blockquote>I’ve lost count how many people have downloaded the eBook but the last time I audited the figures, which was around six months after the book’s release, it’d seen around 500,000 downloads. I suspect that number has doubled since then. I encourage people to redistribute the PDF, including via BitTorrent, so auditing is practically impossible.</blockquote>
So how easily did those ebook giveaways turn into income through the print version?
<blockquote>Since going on sale at the start of 2009, the book has made me $9,000. Bearing in mind the book took three months to produce, that’s a salary of $3,000 per month, although costs such as hosting have to be deducted, and I also spent quite a few days marketing the book once published.

I’ve had worse salaries in my life, and I’m very grateful, but I know total royalties would probably have been higher had I gone through the traditional route of working with a mainstream publisher.

I estimate I have to give away 446 copies of the eBook for every sale of the print edition.</blockquote>
His verdict...
<blockquote>The book’s been a success in terms of providing a free educational resource for the Ubuntu community, and I’m very proud of this achievement. But as a commercial endeavour, I wouldn’t recommend anybody take a self-publishing route.

If you want to earn money from writing, write magazine journalism. If you really want to write a book, get signed to a publisher. If you want an adventure then try self-publishing. Just don’t expect to do much more than cover your costs, though.</blockquote>
This is, in today's terms, a slightly unusual venture in that involves self-published print (where the selling price is relatively high) not ebooks. Keir is <a href="http://www.keirthomas.com/Keir_Thomas_professional_website/kindle_books.html" target="_blank">now trying the 99 cent Kindle model</a> for some newer books, without the giveaway editions, which makes sense. I'll be interested to know what he thinks of that system after a while.