While I agree with you, it's worth pointing out that the author (viebel) has no say in how the publisher distributes free samples. It is simply a given, they do

While I agree with you, it's worth pointing out that the author (viebel) has no say in how the publisher distributes free samples. It is simply a given, they don't ask, and the only thing that the author can do about it is to publish with someone else. When you self publish, that aspect is easier. You simply do what you think is best, listen to the audience, and make it better whenever possible. Now I'll shamelessly put a link to samples of my Clojure book here. It is not competing with the OP's Clojure book, since mine is about Deep Learning and high performance computing. I simply put several chapters as PDFs for free, and if you like it, you can subscribe to the whole book (still a WIP, so you get drafts as they are written). https://aiprobook.com/deep-learning-for-programmers/#download https://aiprobook.com/deep-learning-for-programmers/#downloa... Of course, this requires manual maintenance, something that I can do, but is too much hassle for big publishers that have to deal with many books and even more readers at the same time.