David Haden has a new work out on H.P. Lovecraft through publisher Lulu.com. So far so good, standard publication paperback you can put on a shelf. The interesting bit for Copyfight is that Haden, through his D'Log blog, is also offering a free PDF download.

In exchange, he's asking people who take advantage of the free offer to provide some form of publicity - a tweet, a blog notice (*), a Facebook mention, etc. The natural assumption here is that if you're savvy enough to find, download, and read a PDF version of a book then you're likely connected to one or more social media and may well share interests there with other Lovecraft fans who will find this work of interest. It's kind of an interesting mix of grassroots, viral, and targeted marketing and I think it's rather clever.

(*) I should note for the record that I haven't gotten the PDF and likely won't; my interest in Lovecraft isn't enough to motivate me to read a scholarly work.