Neil Gaiman Book "American Gods" Free Online

Denial93 writes "Geek favorite author Neil Gaiman has just made his multi-award-winning bestselling novel 'American Gods' available online for free. It's a trial by the publisher, and runs for one month. Gaiman writes in his blog: 'If it works, and people read it, then a) we may be able to put up another book and b) sooner or later they'll simply let us give away the book in electronic form....' It's an excellent book and much deserving of the many prestigious awards it has been getting."

It's a hell of a book

[jollyreaper]

The kind of stuff he does here, if other people did it the reaction would be "Gee, isn't he full of himself, 'look, ma, I'm writing real good!'" It would come of as affected and hackish. But the reality-bending stuff he does in here, it's just real weird good. Been a fan of his since Sandman. He has a way of turning reality sideways, making you suddenly aware of the audience before you and the stage machinery behind -- that literally happens in a few places. Strange, chewy brain candy.

I would also highly recommend Good Omens, a collaboration between himself and Terry Pratchett. How to describe it? "Imagine if Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote their version of the Omen and Rosemary's Baby, the Christian Apocalypse before Left Behind became so cheesy-popular. Yes, it's exactly like that. Go read it."

American Gods and Neverwhere

[Speare]

As far as Gaiman's books go, I found Neverwhere to be much more satisfying read than American Gods. The latter felt more like a cross between the old "Sam & Max" PC game, and the second Dirk Gently story, Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, from Douglas Adams, and not as polished or tight (or funny) as either one.

Re:I got "American Gods" in hardcover back when...

[Anonymous Coward]

I got most of my Greco-Roman Mythology from reading AD&D's Deities and Demigods in the 1980's. Its crazy how much myth and lore I picked up from that book. As well as Native American mythos, Indian religions, and other world cultures. It is kind of scary.

SUMMARY

[scuba_steve_1]

Lunch is not free. Authors and publishers have mortgages too.

The book is available online for reading online only - not for download - and the online version looks like a series of highly compressed JPEG images given the "noise" surrounding the text. You would have to be fairly frugal to read the entire book on that site...and that is most likely by design. Read a chapter or two and then buy the book if you like it...and like your eyes.

Re:It's a hell of a book

[halycon404]

Yes, anything with Death is good. But my favorite.. is Neverwhere.

As for what they are testing... The idea goes like this.. if more people are aware of an authors work.. more people will in turn buy that authors work. The reason for this is because while a lot of people may not buy Unknown Author A's book, they are more than willing to take it for free to see if they like it and then buy more by that author if they did. Unfortunately, choosing someone like Niel Gaiman for the test case sorta fouls the entire experiment. If I want to see if something like this actually works.. I'd choose one of my lesser known authors who has a back catalog of 3-4 books I can tie into it. Not an author who's had his books turned into TV Shows and Movies. The Baen Free Library is a much better test of this model.. and for them it works well. But.. they also built an entire business model around it. Instead of just sorta dabbling, they made it a major effort. Get the book for free, but there are also easy to find, yet not huge eyesore links, to other works by the author. The percent amount of their catalog which is available for purchase in e-book format to buy directly from them, the publisher, dwarfs every other publishing house I know of. Their pricing scheme actually makes some sense, because all books are discounted heavily from their actual paper books, where most e-retailers charging the same or very close for an electronic copy instead of a print copy. Its also all DRM free.

Can't download

[adona1]

As more than a few people have pointed out, you can't download it. According to his blog, Neil is aware of this and is attempting to get the publisher to actually place a pdf/lit etc version on there for downloading. Those who read his blog would also know that there was a poll last week to choose which book of his would be available. Unfortunately, Good Omens wasn't an option, probably because of the dual copyright.

I have to say, I find it hard to see how he ever gets any books written - he's one of the more prolific bloggers I've come across :)