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Hoping to emulate the success of Paolo Coelho with his books after releasing them as free digital downloads, Wired managing editor Leander Kahney and his publisher Bill Pollock of No Starch Press have posted two Apple-oriented books on The Pirate Bay. Full electronic versions of the two books, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, have been seeded via torrent on Pirate Bay and are now available for download.

“We want to see if giving away copies of the books will have any effect on sales.”, says Kahney.

Bill and Leander have taken a huge risk here by pirating their own wares, but then again, the chances of failure could also be equal to the chances of success. Seems like they really got inspired by the story of Paolo Coelho, who, after releasing Russian translations of his book via torrent, felt his book sales skyrocket from 1,000 a year to over 1,000,000.

There’s no way to know for sure where this bold move will lead, but anyone who believes in the notion that the future of business is free would say that Leander Kahney and Bill Pollock are off to a good start.

Download [The Cult of Mac] Download [The Cult of iPod] Read [No Starch Press] Via [Torrent Freak]

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