Back in January, local author Scott Berkun purchased a positive review of his book The Myths of Innovation in our Strangercrombie auction. It was different than most other Strangercrombie-bought book reviews, in that Berkun isn't self-published—he's published through O’Reilly media, which is a giant business and how-to publisher—and his titles are already selling well. I enjoyed the book a lot, though it's probably something I never would have picked up if it weren't for Strangercrombie. Berkun investigated the misconceptions and truths of innovation and put forth some ways to train yourself into being more creative. If you're going to read one of those business advice books—Jesus, C.E.O., anyone?—you should read one that is actually useful.

For the next day or so, Berkun is making an e-book version of his new essay collection, Mindfire, available for free right here. There's no unfortunate Adobe DRMing to work around—you can download the book as a PDF, epub, or Kindle-friendly .mobi document—and you just have to join Berkun's e-mail list to get the download. (You can quit the list whenever you want.) Tomorrow, Berkun is hosting a party to celebrate the release of the book at Sole Repair. (Tickets were free—it's "sold out," but you can join the wait list right here.) He's the kind of author who doesn't get a lot of attention in arts-centric newspapers like The Stranger, but if you're the kind of person who's addicted to reading business advice books (and any bookseller or librarian can tell you that there are lots of folks out there just like you) you should be aware of Berkun.

(Via Matt Staggs on Twitter.)