Eh, just makes me think the guy is such an amateur that he's desperate just to get people to read his book, he must be vanity published since no level headed publisher would allow him to do something like this. Pretty much a huge warning sign saying "this book is a stinker".
Actually, DOWN AND OUT was one of the most well-reviewed, best-selling sf/f novels by a new author of its year. People are STILL talking about it at the cons and on the blogs.
Research has shown that a web presence of a novel doesn't really impact paper sales. People like to hold books, and libraries make most books very accessible to people who don't want to spend money on them. The end result is that you can publish books or stories for free on the internet and the publicity can outweigh any lost sales.
Scott Card has been publishing all of his short stories (which he also publishes in anthologies in paper form) for free on the web for some time. And, Baen (one of the biggest sf/f publishers) maintains a free library of downloadable books.
So, Sprig, the truth is that this is neither a crap book, a poorly selling book, nor a self-published book. You can make fun of him if you wish, but his marketing campaign made him one of the TO READ writers of 2003. DOWN AND OUT still maintains a sales rank on Amazon better than ELANTRIS. (The new book isn't doing quite as well, I hear--though it did get a starred review in PW.)
