CROSSOVER DREAMS: TURNING FREE WEB CONTENT INTO REAL BOOK SALES

Three years ago “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” a children’s novel illustrated with cartoons, was published online, where anyone could read it free. To this day anyone still can, at Funbrain.com, an educational Web site.

Despite laments about youngsters spending too much time surfing the Web and not enough time reading, it turns out that many of them still want the format of old-fashioned paper stuck between two covers. Since an edited form of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” was published as a traditional book in April by Amulet, an imprint of Harry N. Abrams, it has sold 147,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 50 percent to 70 percent of retail sales. The book, written and drawn by Jeff Kinney, has spent 33 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. This Sunday, it will be No. 1 on the Children’s Chapter Books list.

That a book derived from free online content has sold so well may allay some fears that giving something away means nobody will want to pay for it. It also encourages publishers who increasingly scour the Internet for talent, hoping to capitalize on the audiences that a popular Web site can deliver.
“I think books are still things, thank goodness, that people want to own,” said Michael Jacobs, chief executive of Abrams. “The package of the book and the way it feels is something apart and separate from being able to read it online.”

Read the rest of this most interesting story that was carried in The New York Times overnight.