Monday, July 28, 2008

Give It Away...

People sometimes ask me why I give away the PDF of The Simplicity Cycle for free. Well, there are several reasons, many of which I've previously mentioned. And as I was reading the latest issue of Wired, the following quote from George Church jumped out at me. I think it explains it quite well:

"... your biggest problem in life not going to be hiding your stuff so nobody steals it. It's going to be getting anybody to ever use it. Start hiding it and that decreases the probability to almost zero."

I don't expect to make a million bucks with the book. I just wanted to understand something about design, and I hope my little diagram helps other people too. I just want to see people use it.

(and it's been downloaded 800 times now - whoo hoo!)

2 comments:

Kate Lord Brown said...

I think it is great that you give free downloads of the PDF. It is so true - people who hide their work and assume that there is a scarcity of ideas always run dry. (Like the kid at school who always shielded his work from prying eyes ...) I've always find if you are generous with your work and time, even better ideas come along to fill the fresh space.

Unknown said...

Hey, thanks Kate!

I must admit, I wouldn't mind if a few people paid for the printed copy, but I'm really happy that 800+ people have downloaded it...