An author hoping to spur sales of his book is facing a gigantic bill after an online publishing experiment went horribly awry.

Last week, writer Glenn Fleishman offered his book, Real World Adobe GoLive 6, as a free download.

But instead of the few hundred downloads Fleishman expected, the book was downloaded about 10,000 times in just 36 hours. And because he's charged incrementally for bandwidth, Fleishman estimates he could be billed $15,000 at the end of the month -- possibly a lot more.

"It's a financial catastrophe," said Fleishman. "I'm a working stiff with a mortgage ... I never suspected the penalty would be so high for giving something away.... It's like living in Singapore and getting 15 years in jail for chewing gum."

The book, released over a year ago and co-authored with Jeff Carlson, hadn't been selling well in hard copy, and as a software manual it was nearing the end of its shelf life.

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