The world of book publishing has grown considerably since the advent of the Internet era.
You know, I’m thinking about the many new forms of publication:
- online magazines
- blogs
- e-books (epub, lit, etc.)
- HTML books
- print-on-demand books
To add to that list, several new publishing channels made their appearance in recent years, but I do wonder:
Why does nobody talk about .torrent distribution as an online publishing channel?
The question is peculiar.
It would only take readers a minute on a torrent search engine to find perfectly legal books (PDF, HTML, EPUB, whatever format available) they’d like to read.
Megan Lisa Jones is an author who knows how to exploit the possibilities that torrent search websites offer her, and I wish more authors followed her example.
She published her novel Captive in a ‘Bittorrent Edition’ (hash: c106173c44ace99f57fcb83561aefd6eae8a6f7a) that would make other publishing channels green with envy.
According to an interview for WestsideToday.com on April 26th, 2011, Megan’s book reached the goodness of 417,575 downloads.
Is that a joke? I fear not. I’m quite excited by it instead! 🙂
I know I have made a resolution of publishing a reduced version my own short story collections for free via torrent once I have the bundle ready.
I still plan to sell copies, but I want readers on a tiny budget to enjoy them, too. At least the readers who struggle day to day with low finances.
What’s different about .Torrent book distribution
Don’t think about pirates. For a moment, please, just focus on legal use of P2P technologies, okay?
There’s a reason why people go to torrent search engines to find what they love.
First, it’s easy to do a search, and to find what they’re looking for.
Second, most creative common, open-source, and free redistributable resources are shared via torrent— why not books?
It makes complete sense. For broader distribution, free and open-source books should be available for download via torrent, not just from websites, blogs and e-magazines.
Also, it saves these parties a lot of bandwidth, which can never be bad!
Some personal thoughts on .Torrent book publishing
I believe torrents are the future of Internet publishing and book distribution.
Certainly, it will not be the ‘only’ future, but one of the many, and definitely one that puts an author in the condition to reach (at least, potentially) every single potential reader worldwide.
Regular readership may never reach such numbers.
So now I ask you, my dear readers: what do you think about the possibilities of .Torrent book publishing?
I know some of you participated with me in last year’s (and 2010’s) NaNoWriMo, that you enjoy publishing stories online on your blogs as HTML pages or PDFs, or through services like Goodreads.com.
Do you think .torrent networks may help to make the difference? 🙂
I’d say the whole thing is worth at least a try.
It costs nothing, you won’t lose anything, and we all have so much to gain.
Got feedback? Leave a comment below!
