Eoin Purcell
Random House selling books by chapter according to the Wall Street Journal: (Gated and unlikely to change)
Random House will post “Made to Stick,” written by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, at http://www.randomhouse.com/madetostick. Customers will receive a digital link via email enabling them to download the chapter onto their computers. Random House expects that eventually users will be able to download chapters onto other devices, such as BlackBerries.
And Harper are giving the away for free
Starting Monday, readers who log on to http://www.harpercollins.com will be able to see the entire contents of “The Witch of Portobello” by Coelho; “Mission: Cook! My Life, My Recipes and Making the Impossible Easy” by Irvine; “I Dream in Blue: Life, Death and the New York Giants” by Roger Director; “The Undecided Voter’s Guide to the Next President: Who the Candidates Are, Where They Come from and How You Can Choose” by Mark Halperin; and “Warriors: Into the Wild” the first volume in a children’s series by Erin Hunter.
I wonder who’ll win this round?*
Eoin
*Hint, it might well be the free one!
Eoin Purcell's Blog 
I just hope writers are making every effort to get proper compensation for the digitization of their work and not sign away these rights without realizing their future importance.
Interesting post, I hadn’t heard of this chapter-by-chapter download…
Cliff,
Thanks for the comment.
I think most writers are savvy enough on this front now. On the other hand most rights contracts will deal with these rights in some way or other so there may be considerable variation across the industry on them.
In the case of giving them away for free: well that’s a different matter. If there is no revenue there is no payment (unless the site doing the giving is subscription or ad revenue based then you have a big issue!
Eoin
I’ll be loading my novel on my blog the end of March and giving readers the opportunity to peruse it or download it for free (as long as they don’t try to gain commercially from it or I rip their lungs out–who needs Creative Commons when your ancestors hale from Northern Ireland, generations of thugs and bully-boys?). I’ll also have a Paypal tip jar for those who wish to contribute what they can and help me invest in medication for me poor, arthritic fingers (a 470 page novel is no way to treat your sore digits). Thanks for your thoughts…