PDF'd Up
When a Free Download Isn't Free
An author hoping to spur sales of his book is facing a gigantic bill after an online publishing experiment went horribly awry.
Last week, writer Glenn Fleishman offered his book, Real World Adobe GoLive 6, as a 23MB free download.
But instead of the few hundred downloads Fleishman expected, the book was downloaded about 10,000 times in just 36 hours. And because he's charged incrementally for bandwidth, Fleishman estimates he could be billed $15,000 at the end of the month -- possibly a lot more.