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Just wait till the markets open tomorrow. NASDAQ down 600-800 points (at least). Nobody sane is going to purchase US-made networking gear for a very long time.

Nah, this won't budge the markets, mainly because this info was released some time ago - and it wasn't limited to router hardware.

The only reason this is being re-reported is to promote Greenwalds's book.

How do I buy DRM free books from Tor? Every few months I try again and I feel stupid because I can't figure out how to do it.

They have a "looking for Tor books?" module which takes you to http://us.macmillan.com/TorFor....

Then I end up on a page like http://us.macmillan.com/thehum... which just gives me a list of normal retailers, like Amazon, Kobo, etc to choose from - with no evidence that I'm getting a DRM-free version.

I just want an epub, like what Baen deliver - is that possible?

Is it possible to buy

How do I buy DRM free books from Tor? Every few months I try again and I feel stupid because I can't figure out how to do it.

They have a "looking for Tor books?" module which takes you to http://us.macmillan.com/TorFor....

Then I end up on a page like http://us.macmillan.com/thehum... which just gives me a list of normal retailers, like Amazon, Kobo, etc to choose from - with no evidence that I'm getting a DRM-free version.

I just want an epub, like what Baen deliver - is that possible?

Is it possible to buy

Cherie Priest wrote a SciFi book that sounds a lot like this: http://us.macmillan.com/boneshaker/CheriePriest

Tor and Forge are DRM free as a matter of policy.

I can't figure out the world of e-book publishing. I'm generally happy to buy the Hugo Award winners (and even nominees) figuring that half the work in finding at least some good SF has been done for me, but I can't just go to the publisher's website and buy the fucking book directly from them in an ePub version.

I find this especially weird for Tor given that they seem to understand DRM sucks and they made a big noise about all their ebooks going DRM free.

But on their buy page (which I found from this article in the Tor blog after doing a Google search for the name) only lets me pick from a bunch of ebook retailers like Amazon, B&N, Google Books... and I know at least some of those won't be available as options for me because I'm here in Australia and not in the USA (Google Books for example is not available to us here).

Further, most of the other options are for specific devices - I happen to have a Kobo, but when I follow the link for that, it takes me to the Kobo search page - either the book is not available there at all, or it's not available for my region. I've tried buying "DRM free" ebooks from Amazon and could not figure out how to do it easily without a Kindle (you don't seem to ever got prompted to download a file; I assume it is all back-end device specific magic tied to your account...?)

In short - I just want to download an ePub file. I know many many users don't want to have to do this, but it is seriously the absolute simplest form of distribution you could come up with - just let me download a .epub file directly in my browser so I can do whatever the hell I want with it!

http://us.macmillan.com/TorForge.aspx The DRM-free books will be rolled out over the next few months.

What are you going to get? There's so much to read and so little time, I'd appreciate some suggestions and opinions from my fellow slashdotters.

I am an avid fan of two of their series and they are painfully well known. Obviously, Ender's Game and the whole series and parallel bean or 'shadow' series that comes with that.

Another, longer series that is quite good (though certainly not without tedious faults) is the late Robert Jordan's incomplete Wheel of Time series starting with Eye of the World. The series is still being finished by another fantasy author (Sanderson) through Tor.

What are you going to get? There's so much to read and so little time, I'd appreciate some suggestions and opinions from my fellow slashdotters.

I am an avid fan of two of their series and they are painfully well known. Obviously, Ender's Game and the whole series and parallel bean or 'shadow' series that comes with that.

Another, longer series that is quite good (though certainly not without tedious faults) is the late Robert Jordan's incomplete Wheel of Time series starting with Eye of the World. The series is still being finished by another fantasy author (Sanderson) through Tor.

What are you going to get? There's so much to read and so little time, I'd appreciate some suggestions and opinions from my fellow slashdotters.

I am an avid fan of two of their series and they are painfully well known. Obviously, Ender's Game and the whole series and parallel bean or 'shadow' series that comes with that.

Another, longer series that is quite good (though certainly not without tedious faults) is the late Robert Jordan's incomplete Wheel of Time series starting with Eye of the World. The series is still being finished by another fantasy author (Sanderson) through Tor.

Only one book in the AWARD WINNERS section:
http://us.macmillan.com/torforge/categories/General/torforge/Awardwinners/all/title

Plus they seem to be the ones behind those classics of American literature, the Halo series.

I'm confused with the random selection in the summary of the two examples. I looked up more nerdish books and was met with many examples of the exact same price: Kobo's Eye of the World vs BoB Eye of the World. Both $6.99. Makes me wonder if the prices aren't dictated by the publisher. I'm also confused how BoB calls itself "the Largest Independent eBookstore" as they're clearly hosting major publishers' works. I'm guessing the McCarthy book cited in the summary is going through different copyright fee channels with the distribution. Either way, I have yet to be impressed with any electronic publisher's prices and I don't think I ever will because when I visit publishers' websites like O'Reilly or Tor (Macmillan sub), the eBooks are often sold at or near the regular book price. So this tells me that our problem isn't the distribution site like Amazon or Kobo but instead the publishers who disagree with me on a fundamental level that a soft copy of a book's worth compared to a physical dead tree version. Until then, I'm staying old school. Go ahead and laugh at my room full of books, at least I own something and not an ethereal "right" on an electronic device locked down by some draconian DRM.

Yes, and you'll quite likely find that the price Macmillan wants to charge will drop as the paperbacks come out.

orly? That book's been out for a year. The paperback is out. And they still want as much for the ebook as for the hard cover version.

You know, Amazon committed an act of extreme douchebaggery in pulling all of Macmillian's books without warning, and without really telling anyone why they were doing it. I've been reading about it on a the blogs of some of my favorite authors, and from their perspective it was basically inexcusable - they screwed over the most vulnerable people that could have been involved. So, when I was reading Brandon Sanderson's blog and saw a link directly to a Macmillian listing, I clicked on it out of curiosity and saw Amazon's point.

Macmillian wants twenty six motherfucking dollars for the ebook edition of a book that's already in mass-market paperback.

What.

No.

It's an ebook. It's a bunch of bits. It's less bits than that video of a silly cat. It's twenty silly-cat images. Where the fuck does Macmillian get off charging as much as the hardcover for the bitwise equivalent of twenty cats who want a cheeseburger? And I don't even get a physical anything? This is absolutely absurd. eBooks should cost less than a physical copy, not as much as a high-quality, well bound hard cover.

What Amazon did was retarded and counter-productive. Which sucks, because they had a very good point - ebooks should cost less, not more.

More to the point, why are e-books MORE expensive than printed ones. From the small sample of books I've looked at, Macmillan's books shows that ebooks are often priced up around the hard cover recommended retail price, let alone the hard cover street price, and certainly not near the paperback price even when a book has been out in paperback for months or years. Here's an example of a two year old book: Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber. When I can get the paperback for $8, why is the DRM'd ebook $14?

If Macmillan were to price their ebooks at the street price of the current edition being sold then I'd be happy for them to set whatever price they want for the book. They'd still make more money than the printed edition since they have none of the physical distribution costs. But while they have this crazy pricing scheme I just cannot support them. They clearly wish that ebooks didn't exist and want to price them out of the market so that they can stick with their comfortable printed world.

riiiight, because they are going to charge $14.99 for an eBook that has a 4 year old discount paperback out..:eyeroll:

Actually, that is exactly what they are doing.

By visiting TORForge, of course...

Wow. Wow. the_womble (580291) may be on to something here. Looks like they are competing with you. Are you sure you didn't use any copyrighted material? (I am thinking pictures.) Damn, publishers must be getting really twitchy. I want to know how this turns out for you.

The drugs produced from those crops in Afghanistan don't make it to the west. Drugs (even the heroin from poppies) in the west come from South American countries.

This is from Gretchen Peters, author of Seeds of Terror . I saw her doing questions and answers on BookTV so you might be able to catch that, if not read the entire book. Her research is very interesting.