Cory Doctorow, he of BoingBoing among other ventures, has put Little Brother, his latest book online and once again shows some very smart publishing practices.

• The book can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons
  license. Many people won’t want to download and print a book themselves
  so lots will buy it anyway.  This is like the ultimate dust jacket
  sales pitch.
• He invites readers to convert the files to other formats and send
  them to him to host on his site.  So he basically gets his audience to
  participate in the publishing process and he gets other people to do
  the work of converting his work to various formats and then provide
  links to readers for those formats.
• He invites readers to re-mix his work.
  Lots of people enjoy putting their own spin on stories and Cory
  embraces and encourages this.  Again, he’s engaging his audience and
  creating an interactive experience.  Even better he invites them to use
  multi-media to do it, so people can write their own stuff or create
  unique audio or video based on the story.
   

If you’re looking for smart ways to succeed in publishing I highly
recommend watching Cory and his ilk as they work their magic.  And keep
in mind that important ingredients in his recipe are interactivity,
multi-media, and user generated content.