I was walking through Borders the other day and I overheard an old lady asking one of the employees if they had a book in stock called "Shit My Dad Says". (It was little strange to hear an older woman asking a bookstore clerk for the title.) I had heard of the idea before: guy on Twitter in his early 30's lives with his parents, and starts sharing the stuff that his grumpy old dad says. It started out as a pretty big hit in social media, and eventually, the content was released as a book.

There are other Internet sensations that became books. icanhascheezeburger (a.k.a. LOLCats) is another example. And then there's Awkward Family Photos. The interesting thing about these books is that their contents are available online. And for free. So why on earth do people buy books containing stuff they could get on the Internet without paying for them?

The answer is simple, but a lot of people struggle with it, and it's worth exploring if you're ever planning to write a book. The creators of these books used a website to build an audience first. Then, and only after there was an audience, did the book get published. People buy the paper version once they fall in love with the idea of the book.

In essence, the ideas came first, and the hard copy of the book itself is memorabilia.

There's a few reasons why so many people own all the Harry Potter books...they're fun (or easy) to read; a human compulsion to keep a collection complete (you have to own them all); keeping up with the Joneses (people buy bestsellers because they're bestsellers, and so the cycle continues). But sitting on a person's bookshelf, the books themselves represent more to the person than the words they contain. They're closer to the proverbial snow globe you buy on vacation, whose role is closer to remembrance than utility.

If you see it this way, then giving away your writing on a blog or as free Amazon Kindle books starts to make much more sense.