Question- Is it more detrimental or beneficial to an author if their work is easily accessible without having to be bought?

Response- In the Reading, Kenneth Goldsmith often touched on the fact that in many areas, literature is not as easily accessible. This was one of the reasons for him creating ‘UbuWeb’, a site that distributes hard to find or out of print reading materials for free. This idea reminded of me the concept behind ‘Wattpad’, which is a website where users can access literary work written by other users, for free. This also includes more well known authors of today and lesser known writers in a myriad of genres.

Although I believe that the web is a great platform for getting one’s work noticed, I can’t help but contemplate how beneficial it actually is to distribute your own work for free. Having free excerpts is understandable, but an entire novel? Wouldn’t it lesson the value to leak your own work to an unfathomable population of people without them giving you any sort of reward for the work you put into it? There are definite benefits, and definite downsides, which is why i’m conflicted. My personal opinion is that it would be counterproductive to do so.