A few authors have had semi-high profile experiments with releasing their books both in traditional printed version, available for cash and in non-traditional electronic version, available for free and licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Over at the Chocolate and Vodka blog, Suw Charman has a lengthy essay on this develpment and in particular the flurry of activity surrounding Larry Lessig’s book Free Culture which after a release under a liberal Creative Commons license was translated, recorded and wiki-fied.
Comic creators who work on the web have similar opportunities to explore these non-traditional strategies. Can giving away webcomics lead to success?
Don’t the vast majority of us, in essence, “give our work away”? It doesn’t cost anyone anything out of pocket to read most webcomics, and the popularity we generate on the web can be parleyed into into merchandising sales of print comics, t-shirts, other assorted crap.
Some webcomic authors already licensed their works under CC licenses.
Empty Words and Reasoned Cognition are the only ones I can think of right now.
I’m still deciding if I should do the same thing with mine or not. Meanwhile, the illustrations on my blog are already available under said licenses.