What to do with one's content? How does one weigh the benefits of free versus paid?

New York Times technology writer David Pogue has a post today that tells how he is deciding what to do with electronic versions of his Missing Manuals series. Pogue asked his readers for their input on the e-publishing debate after two readers fraudulently claimed to be blind and asked for PDF copies of the pieces. The files ended up on piracy websites. "Suddenly, I knew how the record companies felt," he wrote. "And I didn’t much like the feeling."

This is the crux of the matter, really: nobody can do a valid test. Some authors (like Cory Doctorow) point to anecdotal evidence that free e-versions boost the sales of printed books; other authors (like Stephen King and Steven Poole, whose blog I quoted last week) declared their e-book experiments failures.

In the comments, Poole said Pogue's evaluation was "not strictly true" and that the experiment was a publicity success (though not a financial success). Poole added that free can work. "I actually agree with Doctorow that, right now, giving away ebooks to promote the sale of physical copies (as long as they still exist) is a good idea."

If there's a moral here, it's that one has no shortage of options. The suggestions Pogue received was diverse: offer books on Questia, provide to the legally blind at Benetech, make available through Amazon.com's Kindle, provide locked PDFs at wowio.com, publish on an ad-supported website, etc etc.

Similarly, artists and labels have at their disposal a number of ways to distribute and sell music. Just as authors will choose different strategies based upon their audience, songs should be distributed in ways that fit their intended audiences. There is no "one size fits all" strategy.

I see two main points here. First, artists and labels need to pick a strategy that emphasizes financial gain rather than worry about a "fair" model. Record labels and publishers are far too worried about a fair, per-unit return at the expense of encouraging more consumption. They are far too worried about how piracy is unfair. They need to think about ways to convert awareness into more revenue. Period. The second is to give the consumer an easy avenue to acquire the main product after the free sample has performed its duty. If the CD isn't in stores, the conversion rate will be dismal. If a direct relationship is not made with the consumer (e.g., getting an email address) conversions will underperform.