Giving Books Away

On his blog this morning, Mark Batterson expresses why, as an author, he thinks You Cannot Give Away Too Many Books. In talking about his first book, he says, "Those hundreds of copies given away translated into thousands of books purchased..."

From the reader perspective, I wholly agree. If an author is confident enough about his book to give some away and it's a good book, people will recommend the book. From the reader side of things I try to do the same thing within my limited budget. If I find a book that I think will help people I'll certainly recommend it, but I try to go a step farther and give it to them. Currently I have a stack of "multiple copy books." That I intend to give away as I come across people that would benefit from reading them. Publishers, E-bay, Amazon and other sites often make it easy to buy multiple copies fairly cheap.

Of course, there's a push back in me as well. I've noticed that our culture has a tendency to devalue things that are free - the assumption is that there is no value in it. Batterson could be taking a huge loss with no benefit when he begins giving away copies of his next book. The books I give away thinking they could add great value to a life could wind up under the couch. But, that's a risk that I'm willing to take.