User:Sj/Log/free texts and self-publishing

Lulu has some delightful collections of books. Some authors publish entire series of free texts on their own; others see using the channel for self-publishing as an art form in itself. My favorite author is currently cedric du zob -- his abstracts and book summaries alone are worth a read, and I fear that actually reading any of his work might ruin my fine first impressions.

Sites such as Lulu and Flickr, whose primary purposes are not to highlight free works - but in these cases to provide tools for meaningful self-publishing, or a social sites for storing and sharing photos - have been remarkably successful at attracting collections of free works, all the same. This jibes with my feeling that a focus on freedom is at best of temporary interest, as it is the natural state of sharing and creativity which only seems imperiled while we have a culture that teaches that sharing should only be done with care, or that the way to succeed is to carefully control the use of ideas, and imagines high barriers to creation and distribution.