Neil Gaiman keeps a regular blog. It’s great reading for his legions of fans and for authors who wonder about the value of the web. His blog celebrated its 7th birthday yesterday.

In that time, he posted more than 1 million words. Although that is a big time commitment, I would speculate the effort helped his writing as much as it slowed him down.

Now for the interesting part. To quote:

One thing we’ve decided to do, as a small celebratory birthday thing is, initially for a month, make a book of mine available online, free, gratis and for nothing.

Which book, though…? Ah, that’s up to you.

He is running a poll this week. The winning book with be “out there, online, for free.” I’ll post the link when the free book is available.

A free book is quite an offer. He’ll gain hundreds of new RSS subscribers as a consequence. He consistently recruits an audience who feels connected to him because of his blog and who are much more likely to purchase the new book, movie, or comic simply because of that connection.