Author Peter Watts writes through BoingBoing:
I’ve set my latest novel free under the usual Creative Commons license: you can get Blindsight (Tor, October) by going to my backlist and clicking the relevant thumbnail. I’ve also produced seven alternative dust-jackets for the same title, using (with the artist’s permission) artwork submitted to Tor but not used for their official Blindsight cover. You can get those here. (And take a look here for an impressionistic, documentary-style taste of the novel itself.)
I do this only partly to add data to the ongoing get-rich-by-giving-your-stuff-away experiment. The other reason is that a lot of people seem to be having trouble actually finding the book in brick-and-mortar stores; distribution has been spotty despite advance raves, subsequent praise, and (I’m led to understand) significant buzz. Smaller stores report being backordered for weeks; one of the continent’s two biggest book retailers isn’t carrying it at all (although individual store owners have evidently been special-ordering it). And all the buzz in the world is worth jack-shit if the product isn’t readily available.
So check it out and go wild. And when your eyes start to fall out from phosphor burn, consider buying an old-fashioned paper version. There should be enough to go around before long: I’m told Blindsight’s going into second printing.
Link to read the book online for free (via BoingBoing)