For some reason, the e-book community looks at Cory Doctorow’s use of free electronic versions of his books as loss leaders for his p-book versions as a success story.
As far as I can see, the fact that this actually works is proof that e-books are a failure. After all, if we were all regularly reading them, then giving away the electronic version would just be mean that Cory wasn’t getting paid. Since no one can make money of e-books anyway, of course you can give them away.