Paulo Coelho, well known author of The Alchemist, has taken a novel (ha ha) approach to the “Scarcity vs Scale” discussion. He’s created The Pirate Coelho, a jumping off point to a Box.net storage account with PDF’s of some of his books.
There’s a description of what and why on TorrentFreak and a video of Coelho talking about how the web has challenged traditional publishig.
The figures are hard to argue with:
“…how uploading the Russian translation of “The Alchemist” made his sales in Russia go from around 1,000 per year to 100,000, then a million and more…”
Interesting stuff. He looks good with a pirate eye patch, too 
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My 
ebookguru
January 29, 2008
The idea of increasing sales by giving books away makes sense actually – the more people who enjoy the work, the more people you have recommending it.
Mike
January 30, 2008
It’s true. But at the same time, understandably hard for publishers with fairly traditional money-making models to come to terms with…