Where shall I send it? I'll even inscribe a hard copy for you. That's a $44.99 retail value.
More seriously, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. You could buy, or ask for a promotional copy of Guy Kawasaki's book about making books. It's about self-publishing, but his experiences with promoting and marketing books apply to any book where the publisher's marketing budget is very limited.
There are some other effects I can count on: That readers of HN are fairly likely to not bother to take something they won't use, because they value their own time. You are only a hypothetical pirate, and your question is hypothetical, too. In the real world, piracy behaves much like promotion.
But, you may be thinking, what about entertainment products?
It's been shown over and over that "pirates" are also top-ranked among paying customers. Is there a real-world case that piracy reduces revenue? If you get past the hypothetical cases, it's much harder to say so.
I don't disagree at all. I've given away copies of my own work, both in digital and physical formats.
I guess my question is, where do you draw the line? You said, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. Sure. But if you give them all away, what do you sell? (Assuming that you want to sell any at all.)
"Sure. But if you give them all away, what do you sell?"
The anecdotal evidence Guy Kawasaki bases his advice for self-publishers on is that giving away books is always good. My publishers have signing events at conferences and give away case-loads of my current book at these events. Amazon sales always spike afterward.
In practical terms, that tipping point seems to be very far out there.
More seriously, there is a lot of evidence that promotional copies sell books. You could buy, or ask for a promotional copy of Guy Kawasaki's book about making books. It's about self-publishing, but his experiences with promoting and marketing books apply to any book where the publisher's marketing budget is very limited.
There are some other effects I can count on: That readers of HN are fairly likely to not bother to take something they won't use, because they value their own time. You are only a hypothetical pirate, and your question is hypothetical, too. In the real world, piracy behaves much like promotion.
But, you may be thinking, what about entertainment products?
It's been shown over and over that "pirates" are also top-ranked among paying customers. Is there a real-world case that piracy reduces revenue? If you get past the hypothetical cases, it's much harder to say so.