Free Downloads?
Our reasons for providing free downloads are simple.
We are an international publisher. The majority of LGBT people in the world cannot afford the price of our books.
A significant percentage of LGBT people within North America cannot afford the cost of our books, or they are forced to make hard choices, for example, between art and dental work.
Queers with disabilities, especially in the U.S., are significantly impacted by discrimination when it comes to employment. Our free downloads directly benefits those readers.
People with visual impairments and certain cognitive impairments (dyslexia, for example) cannot read a book. They use some screen reader. With every book that is not readily available in electronic download, we increase the divide between these groups.
In our experience, people who download the PDF won’t buy the book. Yes, there are a few who probably could afford it and don’t purchase books, but we don’t waste our life’s energy worrying about a few jerks.
Free downloads create new customers for us. New customers means greater attendance at events where one of our authors is presenting. Presenters see higher numbers and get excited…and ask our author back.
Poverty, for us, is not a lifetime sentence to living without the arts. Book distribution, in addition to being an economic concern, is also a moral concern.
The fear that people will download the book and not buy it drove usto distraction for awhile. Even as we uploaded the PDF of Self-Organizing Men, we thought what the heck are we doing? We chose, and continue to choose, to place people over profits, abundance over fear.
The universe has stepped up to reward our efforts with a smashing success in Australia. 60 books sold in two months while the free download was available to folks in Australia.
In the end, besides generating options for the poor, we generate tremendous good will and karma in the universe. This is some of the best free marketing on the planet. It helps us sleep better at night knowing that our business is making every attempt to water the seeds of all people’s happiness, not just the few hundred english-speaking, economically well-off people in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. We still have much work to do. As we are electronically based, we still reach only a minority of the world’s population. But better to start here, where we are at.
