"Unfree Speech" is an important academic work. It sold well enough to trigger the release of a paperback version in 2003. More importantly, "Unfree Speech" paved the way for later works. Before "Unfree Speech", most books on campaign finance focused on sources of campaign funding and the creation of ideal regulatory regimes. "Unfree Speech" was a forerunner for a number of scholarly books published in the early 2000s that were more skeptical of campaign finance reform and its underlying assumptions, including John Samples' "The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform," "Money, Power, and Elections" by Rodney Smith, Melvin Urofsky's "Money and Free Speech," and Ray LaRaja's "Small Change."