Brandon Sanderson

This guy is the author who was picked to finish off the Wheel of Time series since Robert Jordan died (amyloidosis took him out).

Anyhow, the reason I'm posting is because he's just published a book that is also available as a free download. It's called Warbreaker, and I haven't read it yet.

I think it's awesome that he offers the book for free, and was still able to get a publishing deal out of it.

As a guy he seems awesome. I wrote him a while back about some random stuff relating to his books and he replied within a few days with a longish e-mail that made it clear that he read my message. He's super involved with his readers and still finds time to write his ass off. He's a solid writer, and has some fairly interesting magic systems (it's all epic fantasy, so if you don't like that genre then it's not for you). He shows his morality by having scantily clad women running around instead of full on naked ones.

I actually pirated every book he's written, read a bunch of them, and one weekend I went to a bookstore and bought copies of every book of his that they had in stock (they didn't have them all, but whatever). Why? Because I wanted to support an author who is both "in tune" with the new way of doing things (internet, making digital copies available for free since they end up pirated anyhow) and also a genuinely nice "geek" who actually interacts with his readers.

Anyhow, the book is available for purchase via most outlets if you like that sort of thing, don't like reading on a computer or digital device, or like to support ideas like the ones that this guy represents. He'll get pretty rich no matter what you do (there's no way that he's not going to get some cut of his WoT contributions, and those will sell like mad), but I personally like to vote with my dollars and "invest" them in ideas and ways of doing things that I think are awesome. Feel free to google for him to find his blog or whatever. I think he has a twitter too.