Joe Quirk is a bestselling novelist and bestselling science writer. Rather than go the conventional route with his latest novel Exult, he turned to Scribd, where you can download Exult and his first novel, The Ultimate Rush, for $2.00 each.

Exult is the story of a thrilling sport that, in the author’s experts hands, becomes a metaphor for all that is ecstatic and tragic in life. “Is a full life worth an early death?” asks Quirk. “Jack Ostruck loves hang gliding, but when someone he loves dies in a crash, the grieving mother demands that Jack come to the funeral and explain why flying is worth her child’s death.” The novel has moved the likes of Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner, to sing its praises.

Because Scribd is a new venture and a controversial work in progress (read what Kill Zone had to say about it), we asked Joe to blog about his experience and that of two author friends of his who similarly cast their lot with him. You can watch a video of the three on YouTube, read a guest editorial in Publishers Weekly by one of the three, Kemble Scott, and read Joe’s own comments below.

RC
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I’ve fantasized about Scribd.com since 1996, well before its founders reached puberty, when I wrote an essay about the coming “Revolution in Publishing” that no publisher would publish. I had to wait to publish my first novel, which gave me the opportunity to provoke an argument with my publisher during my first book tour. I held up my hardcover book and declared to my horrorstruck editor, publicist, and assistants that soon we won’t need this hunk of tree pulp any more. I announced that the substance of a novel is not in the book but the words, which were easily digitized, and the next generation will be about about as sentimental about the smells and textures of books as we were about the smells and textures of LPs.

Read Joe Quirk’s statement in its entirety.