Interesting piece. You know that I've long believed in giving away fiction - and quality fiction - but I'm still in search of a workable model for artists to earn a reasonable living. I've argued elsewhere, for example, that publishers should try setting up a sunbscription service with a free edreader thrown in - the European mobile business model. But there must be others.

And considering the years and years of work I've been putting into writing, I'm beginning to think a small income from it wouldn't be such a bad thing ...

Well, I took some copies of Asboville to a local coffee shop and left them on the side (with permission of course) then put up a sign telling people they were free to take a copy and that they could either keep it for nothing, pay the coffee shop owner whatever they fancied as a way of saying 'thanks' for stocking it or return it when they finished it like in a library. The owner tells me all the books are now gone and that some of the customers were well pleased with the deal.

It's a way of self-promoting even if it makes absolutely no financial sense whatsoever, or perhaps I'm at the forefront of market economic thinking and just don't realise it...

Hmmm, maybe not.