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The Jakarta Globe has a story about this ebook author today:

Can people who publish e-books really be considered authors? Can free-to-download e-books save the publishing industry? Do guys like Jed Revolutia belong in the same breath as John Grisham and Pramoedya Ananta Toer? 

Two years ago, Revolutia was a lecturer in Lampung who did a bit of blogging on the side. Today, he has more than 11,000 followers on Twitter and his third e-book has already surpassed more than 20,000 downloads. My Jakarta caught up with Revolutia to talk about the future of reading and why his nom de plume is one of his biggest selling points. …

Your e-book is available to download for free. How exactly is it that you make money then?

No one would buy an e-book if it wasn’t really important or necessary. But if it’s available for free, you download it, you read it, you like it, you keep it and share it with your friends. Word spreads fast. If you don’t like it, you just discard it. You have nothing to lose. But that doesn’t mean writers can’t make a profit. 

The problem came when I needed someone to design the e-book. I needed to pay the designer and of course I didn’t want to spend money without making some money myself. That’s when I came up with the crazy idea of selling some pages in my e-book for companies to advertise. E-advertisements in my e-book. I promised them 6,000 downloads in three months, and the e-book was downloaded by 9,000 people in two days and 12,000 people in less than a month. So everyone was happy [smiles].

More info in the article.

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