Not everyone will read Dreams From my Father before they vote in November. But what if they could?
What if people who simply aren't inclined to buy the book, or who simply aren't readers, received the audiobook for free?
It's possible now, through BitTorrent, where anyone inclined to download it already can. But I'm interested in what people think about sharing the link to promote Obama's candidacy.
A few points:
If the link is shared with people who are not inclined to purchase the book, a vote or more may be gained, but no money, even in potential sales, is lost.
The Obama campaign already spends hundreds of millions of dollars to spread their message. And even if a potential sale could be lost, it would cost nothing to the campaign itself. At a time when Obama is spending all the money his campaign can in order to get votes, and clearly values votes right now more than personal monetary profit, it's my belief that a new voter would be more valued than the potential of an unrealized book sale. Basically, this is cheap advertising. But of course, the campaign can't promote audiobook sharing.
People who read the book are more likely to:
▶ vote for Obama.
▶ promote Obama to friends.
▶ promote Obama's book to friends.
▶ read, even buy, Obama's next book, The Audacity of Hope.
▶ buy Obama campaign gear.
▶ volunteer for Obama.
▶ donate to Obama.
For comparison, An Inconvenient Truth was another socially important work whose message was actively spread on BitTorrent by people who had an interest in promoting its cause. People who were not interested enough to buy a ticket, or who would have to drive many miles to get to one of the few theaters showing it, ended up downloading it. And many of those people became part of a word-of-mouth campaign that helped An Inconvenient Truth become #1 in per-theater gross and break into the top 10 while still only being played on 77 screens across the country.
Of course, there's already another instrument for free community book-sharing: the library. But the number of reservations on the book at my library is so large that, by my calculations, any new request is unlikely to be fulfilled until early next year. Also, any regular library visitor with any interest in the book can already request it, but getting others to pay a visit to their library is much more difficult than getting them to click a link or two, especially when they haven't been to a library since middle school and couldn't even tell you how to get a card.
For those who are not even sure what BitTorrent is, here's a quick primer. You need a program like the ever-popular uTorrent, which is really just a tiny (200k) file downloader. Downloaded files come from other computer users, in tiny pieces (bits) from each user, so no one user has to bear the burden of sending you the entire file. To find the files, there are websites such as CompleTorrent, which is just a custom Google search of other torrent search sites. When you click "download" from these sites, you're really just downloading a tiny file that helps uTorrent find what you want. Then uTorrent downloads what you want to your hard drive.
And a nice thing about audiobooks is that they're great for anyone who isn't a regular reader, as they can be casually listened to during a commute or while going to bed. And, really, who doesn't like to close their eyes and have a story read to them before bed?
Your thoughts?