The New York Times computer columnist, David Pogue, also writes books on software. He recently published an article complaining that he had given the PDF of one of his books to a few blind people as an act of generosity, and the PDF then appeared all over the internet link here. His column produced a deluge of comment, both favorable and not link here. Commenters suggested making the book for sale in downloadable form and others in free form, arguing that might actually increase sales of the hard copy. Another suggested a test using one of his older texts. Pogue has now agreed to such a test, selling a downloadable PDF, though not the free version.

The free downloadable form of publication is one that readers of this blog will find familiar, since two of its authors have published texts in that form, the most recent of which is available here . We will report the outcome of Pogue's experiment as it becomes available. A lot of us still like to have hard-copy reference books in hand as well as an online copy as we work on our computers so it will be an interesting experiment.