It looks from my casual observations like the difference between pirated and not pirated (as opposed to plagiarized and not plagiarized, which is a different matter) isn’t whether something is in the public domain, but whether it is freely available. As long as it is easy to get a work for free from the author’s preferred distribution method, there’s little to no incentive to get it with more hassle from a different distribution method. So putting his prior works in the public domain probably isn’t getting this author many bonus points, compared to an author who retains copyright or Creative Commons licensing but still makes the work freely readable.
There is no way that he addressed every possible concern to the satisfaction of his audience while charging money for his book. Money is a concern, and while his book might be inexpensive, adopting a general policy of buying inexpensive books when someone asks nicely isn’t, and making many individual decisions about when to buy them and when not to isn’t either. To an audience accustomed to getting reading material for free, a demand that they shell out money for a new book feels like extortion, and that provokes negative affect indeed. So it does not surprise me that—with the sort of audience he would have cultivated by making his prior works freely available—he’d encounter backlash when attempting to extract cash from them.
His approach might work as a business model in the sense that he’s selling books. But of course he is not meeting with “total understanding”.
It looks from my casual observations like the difference between pirated and not pirated (as opposed to plagiarized and not plagiarized, which is a different matter) isn’t whether something is in the public domain, but whether it is freely available. As long as it is easy to get a work for free from the author’s preferred distribution method, there’s little to no incentive to get it with more hassle from a different distribution method. So putting his prior works in the public domain probably isn’t getting this author many bonus points, compared to an author who retains copyright or Creative Commons licensing but still makes the work freely readable.
There is no way that he addressed every possible concern to the satisfaction of his audience while charging money for his book. Money is a concern, and while his book might be inexpensive, adopting a general policy of buying inexpensive books when someone asks nicely isn’t, and making many individual decisions about when to buy them and when not to isn’t either. To an audience accustomed to getting reading material for free, a demand that they shell out money for a new book feels like extortion, and that provokes negative affect indeed. So it does not surprise me that—with the sort of audience he would have cultivated by making his prior works freely available—he’d encounter backlash when attempting to extract cash from them.
His approach might work as a business model in the sense that he’s selling books. But of course he is not meeting with “total understanding”.