The Senate Select Committee report on torture by the US is available free in PDF form, but Techdirt.com reports that it's selling rather briskly in a $2.99 Kindle version anyway. You can read PDFs on a Kindle but many people may not know that, or can't be bothered to figure out how to get a PDF onto their device.
The article recalls what happened when Norton published the 9/11 Commission Report, which also was in the public domain and downloadable free. They agreed to keep the price low--$10 for a book that ran over 500 pages--and had to pay extra for rush printing and distribution. Sounds like a formula for losing money, right? Well, in the end they made a profit of $600,000, which they donated to charity.
A paper-based version of the torture report will also be coming out shortly from at least one publisher.
As for the content...what a sad and shameful story, and not one that can be whitewashed with protestations that "that's not who we are." We are what we do, not what we say.
