Slashdot Mirror

Aww... when you said "three-headed dragon" I was hoping you were talking about Dahak.

(Link to legal free copies of the books, because they're awesome like that: http://baencd.thefifthimperium... No personal association)

Mounting evidence at Baen Books.

http://baen.ghostwheel.com/#RIAA

The more stuff they give away, the more money they make. Rest in peace, Jim Baen.

The set of CD images at that ghostwheel site is out of date this site has all of them.

Well, you can still get most of their old CD's here: http://ebooks.thefifthimperium.com/

On the pricing, if you like the sort of books they sell, you should check out baenebooks.com. Baen is a regular publisher of fantasy and sci-fi, mostly with a military bent, which has for over a decade sold all of their books in electronic as well as print form. Single e-books are normally $4-6, with no sales tax or shipping (obviously). They also have a monthly bundle for $18 which includes six full novels, 1-2 of them new releases (usually available a few weeks before the books show up in stores) and the remainder older titles. $3 per book is a great price. It's often even better than that, because Baen tends to republish a lot of their older popular series in "omnibus" editions, so a single title of a bundle may actually contain a full trilogy. I've purchased bundles that contained 11-12 novels.

Also, Baen provides all of the major electronic formats, with no DRM, and encourages sharing your books with friends and families where "sharing" means "giving them copies". Baen also keeps all of your purchases on file so you can easily re-download books as needed.

Finally, Baen also provides an extensive free library so you can try out many of their authors and series at no cost, doesn't object to people sharing on-line copies of the CDs they put in the backs of some of their hardcovers (containing dozens of novels each, plus high-quality copies of cover art and other goodies), and provides free access to the first few chapters of all of their books, so you can try any book before buying.

(Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Baen, other than having spent more money than I like to think about buying their books. My Baen library runs to nearly 500 titles.)

You can try to read a book. A real book. A fiction book.

Holy crap! I have never in my life done that before! I had no idea such a thing was even possible!

(Or, just maybe I load them onto my phone. And save the dead-tree stuff for bedside at home.)

You can also obtain the contents (and ISOs if you like) of the CDs off Joe Buckley's (If you read much from Baen, you're probably familiar with the name) site.

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

Any of the available series by David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, Eric Flint, Mercedes Lackey and probably a bunch of others I forgot to mention. Mostly Sci-Fi, adventure/fantasy and military leaning stuff.

As for other stuff...

Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep are good harder sci-fi novels.

Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule series is excellent fantasy adventure.

Brad Thor's Lions of Lucerne starts a good military series.

Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp series is also a good one.

So since I have had one of the early ebook devices (Sony prs) I have always had to look for ebook stores outside of the big 3 that are linked to the devices. Here are some of the ones where I shop:
no starch press
fictionwise
wowio - graphic novel ebooks
oreilly technical books
smashwords
Baen web scription
the ENTIRE Vorkosigan Saga

I was informed of the Baen Books website about 9-10 years ago. [here on /., actually]
The 'Baen_Library'[sub-folder' of my ''eBooks' folder] takes up around 15-16 GB's of my back-up drive. :-)

The Fifth Imperium website is about half of the aforementioned 15-16 GB's., the rest I've bought from the webscriptions site.[1]

As a side note, my 'eBooks' folder is about 21 GB's currently. It's size and contents change a lot.
I am an insatiable reader. Really.

[1]Real easy, and they do not spam your inbox, or anything else.
a. create account and log on info
      (non intrusive)
b. log in, set up your pref's and info
c. browse and purchase, read the first part of the book as 'sample chapters', or what ever.
d. The webscriptions site keeps track of the books you have purchased, so you can access those books to re-download from any PC you can log into the website from.

What's not to like?

My historic 'travel habits' were to pack my bags, go to the airport early, browse the bookstands, and buy a book or two fr the flight[s].

I now find myself looking exclusively for books by authors I have been exposed to from Baen Books.
(but, I don't travel air anymore because of the TSA BS., but was true for the past 5-6 years)

I know that I may sound like a Baen shill, but I am not...I am just that much of a fanboy. :-)

*credits to 'Guspaz (556486)' who started this thread.*

I checked out their site; not much selection and a VERY limited selection of "free" ebooks.

Baen frequently releases CDROMs with specific hardcovers that contain near-complete back catalogs of that author, which can then be redistributed freely.

Check out the Annotated Baen Free Listing or the Fifth Imperium.

Sorry here's the actual free link http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

Baen also includes in a number of their hardbound books a CD that usually contains, that book, a number of other books by the same author(most often any preceding books in the series) and quite often a number of other author's books all in many different ebook formats all without DRM. They also encourage you to distribute the CD by copying it to as many people as possible as long as you don't charge for it.

There are a couple of websites out there that also have archives of the CD. Baen is aware of these websites and has no problem with them.

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ is probably the best one out there.

There are also a number of free books on Baen's own website.

That story may be a little hard to find, unless you're a criminal who knows how to use torrents . . .

Not that hard to find

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/15-WhentheTideRisesCD/WhentheTideRisesCD/Grimmer%20Than%20Hell/0743435907__13.htm

Look for the Baen hard covers that include a CD. They don't charge any more for them and you get a digital copy of that book and many more on the CD. Now if only other publishers followed the example. Oh, and Baen doesn't believe in DRM for any of their books.

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

You can get a hardback AND get a digital copy of not only that book, but most of the other books by the same author, if you buy from Baen. Not for all of their authors, and not for all of their books, but certainly for Weber, Ringo, Flint and Steve White - see http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ for a full listing of the CDs.

They also have a very extensive free library with eBooks. Their eBooks are published free of DRM and in different formats. Seriously, I can't recommend them enough, in the face of what the larger publishers are doing. If you buy from anywhere - make it from them. Oh, did you know they also have a CD published with a selection from the Gutenberg site (as a coproduction with the site)? Really, great publishers in that respect.

In all fairness, one of the reasons there's such a low piracy rate on Baen's books is that they are free to distribute as long as you don't charge for them

Baen on their own website has many first books in series available: http://www.baen.com/library/

Also, they've released CD's of books in many of their hardcovers over the years, with a license that allows copying, including online. One site that has them available is http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

The only versions of their books that are electronically available and not allowed to be distributed are the ones purchased at http://www.webscription.net/

Further, most of the new releases by their flagship authors include an electronic, DRM-free, please-distribute-this CD copy bound inside the cover.

And, they wholeheartedly approve of the guy who maintains a copy of all of those CD images and distributes them to everyone. http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

Of course, one of the reasons people might be relunctant to buy a new book in a series is that they haven't read the prior books, and often its very hard to find prior books in the series in stores. So packaging ebooks of the rest of the series with the hardback may well be a good way to increase hardback sales.

Not only that, Baen explicitly encourages sharing of all of those free e-books, and has made no move whatsoever to discourage people who have put those CD images/a> on-line.

In response:
1. 300 books gets heavy to carry/store, and means you have to decide beforehand exactly what you want to bring (if you can even bring all you want).
2. I'm sure the tree-huggers are equally upset at eBook readers as they are at paper.
3. Many of the better heavy-use eBook readers use E-Ink displays, and have a time between charges measured in weeks.
4. DRM'd electronic media is all about "me me me". My non-DRM'd electronic media is easier to lend than the physical books. In fact, some is even distributed freely as a promotion (Baen Free Library and Baen CDs hosted by The Fifth Imperium). If I can't get it non-DRM, I'll get it in hardcopy.
5. Well, technically, non-DRM eBooks could be too, but I'll agree on this point.

That would be awesom. Then we can move on to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin_of_Shadows

Plenty of guns, bombs, naked chicks, presidents who aren't douchebags, BDSM, black helicopters, rape, ...

On second thought, http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/11-UntotheBreachCD/UntotheBreachCD/Princess%20of%20Wands/index.htm

Good Christian mom, martial arts expert, guns, demons, beheadings, thinly disguised SF authors getting killed in gruesome ways, BDSM, secret FBI departments...

You know, I'm thinking Ringo's stuff isn't going to make it to the big screen. At least, not unless they do a reverse Starship Troopers on it.

And please, I'm sick of responses to my posts with some snide remark that you don't have DRM and yours is free with a link to the Pirate Bay. It's getting old. I want to support the content providers but I don't want to give up or inhibit my rights to access that content.

Not all authors and publishers ascribe to this mindset.
Customer for their services/products is the correct term...quit subscribing to the marketing hyperbole prevalent that enables this 'consumer' crap that disables choice!
Do you eat or drink the digital files? No! They are still available in their original form for infinite copies to download- you are only subscribing or purchasing as a customer of that service.

Consumer is a marketing term to enable the mindset of the customers to eliminate free choice and having a say in what and how they choose to purchase as a customer.
Bottom line: if you are not eating or drinking it, you are a customer, not a consumer. Quit enabling this crippling mindset, as it is detrimental to society, and future business.
I only consume as a customer in a pub or restaurant. Consuming has nothing to do with media, as the original copy is still available since I have not 'gobbled it up', thus making it unavailable to others. I don't 'consume' media...I either watch it, or listen to it, without affecting other's ability to do the same with that, or another infinite copy of said media.
Explain to me how I can 'consume', thus deplete, digital media, and I *might* entertain the whole consumption of any form of IP. Until then, you are just barking at the moon as far as I am concerned.
Any subscription model that uses DRM will eventually come around the tree and bite you in the ass. See:Walmart's digital service, MS's 'plays for sure' tech that they did not support on their own Zune player, Napster's subscription service, Rhapsody, etc....

All of the 'subscription' models suffer this same fate of leaving the customer 'high and dry'.(another downside to the 'consumer' mentality)

Instead of supporting the 'content providers', switch to supporting the 'artists', even if it takes the form of downloading from TPB, then slipping the actual artists with some cash with a note on why you went this route.
This misnomer that 'piracy' has a profound effect on the artist that has signed away his/their rights to the distributor is getting old and worn out. They typically sign away all rights to the distributor/label, and see slim, if any income from subsequent song/album sales.
Support them directly! Send an irrefutable message to artists and distributors/labels!
Trent Reznor and Radiohead, among others are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Labels and Distributors/content providers are still seeing a train as the light at the end of the tunnel, and want the fare proceeds to see/ride the train without reaising the light is sunlight, instead of another train.

It's like raising kids, or training horses...make it easy to 'do the right thing' and difficult to 'do the wrong/detrimental' things in life. It's not hard if you use your head and a little dedication to the advancement of society/horse training.**
Yeah, it sounds harsh and inhumane on the surface, but think about it....(why do humans try so hard to seperate themselves from our physical/animal world? I have found that raising kids is not significantly different from training 'other' animals in reality, until the human wants educated for a purpose...otherwise the same, doubt me and check what is popular on TV/Movies/music!)

**I have raised many horses, and a few children...the concept works fabulously when applied consistently and positively.

Also some of the ISOs from here: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

There's a fair bit of duplication between the ISO images, so maybe you could extract the individual book HTML directories and dump them right onto the USB stick.

In fact, their license agreement for the CD's encourages you to make copies and give to people, and they've had no issue with them being placed online, because it's just taking their request, and extending it to the logical conclusion.
They figure that between the people that will read it, like it, and go out and buy it to support the author, and the people that start reading, and transition to paper books for a personal preference, they more than outweigh the people that would have bought a paper copy, but didn't once they found it online, since those are the same people that would have gotten them from a public library rather than buying it anyway...

Anyway, the site that has copies of all the Baen CD's, which Baen knows about and approves of is http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
They have expanded copies of the books hosted, and link to other sites that have the torrents on them.

Read, Enjoy, and then support the authors!

HehHehHeh!
A few captains like Honor Harrington would put fear into pirate hearts for sure!

I just finished 'Storm From the Shadows'(latest in that series, and does not disappoint) No spoilers except to say that you will like it as much as the rest of the series.

BTW, if you like that series, you might also like Steve White's "the Stars at WarI & II".
Can be found here to read online as 'html', or download the whole cd in a zip file.

You probably talked directly to Jim Baen, the publisher, and I'd guess he was irritated that you didn't read the FAQ.

Sorry to be the one to pass you the sad news: Jim Baen passed away last year. I heard who had taken over for him, but don't recall his name, and a quick scan of baen.com home page did not help me...sorry.

You sound like a fellow fan, so have you seen thefifthimperium.com site? Download or read online cd's of Baen books....Free!

I buy a lot of my books from Baen now days. (heh! I have already read all of the free stuff!)

It reminds me of the start of this book...
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/16-ClawsThatCatchCD/ClawsThatCatchCD/Into%20the%20Looking%20Glass/Into_the_Looking_Glass.htm

It starts off with what first appears a nuclear level explosion without any radiation or EMP at a major university. It's quickly determined that it wasn't terrorists or nuclear research. So WTH did the guy do to not only blow up the university but a good chuck of the nearby city as well?

The first chapters of getting a multiple PHd guy in to look at it were pretty much all. "This shouldn't be possible by what we we know!"

I'll agree that comic rays are most likely safe. It's obvious that Earth or the Sun can handle them. It isn't really obvious at all WTH this stuff will do. Sort of reminds me of the early nuclear experiments. They were worried about igniting Earth's atmosphere on fire with the first couple of tests and not being able to stop it. Sort of like a Perry Rhodan's Arkon Bomb. (That thing was a fictional bomb that once set off on a planet would start an unstoppable nuclear chain reaction in everything above atomic number 12.)

When you've only got one planet, and no means of escape, you shouldn't be doing some tests there. There are some tests that we'd most likely rather be held on Pluto or in the next solar system. The problem is that its far easier to worry about this stuff than to know one way or another if you even need to worry about it.

I'm sure that if we were an FTL species looking at others that we'd find many "oops" worlds where civs higher than our wiped themselves out by unexplainable means. Problem being is that we don't know what "oops" tech lines to really avoid. (We'd still research them though. You know we would.)

I agree completely, I think the future of e-books should be that they come along with the physical versions ...

Baen already does this with any of their hard-cover books that include CDs.

The CD contains the book in electronic format, several actually. Well ... several several actually since they both include several books, and include them in several formats, all free of DRM. They also encourage you to make copies of the CD and pass them out to any and all (so long as you do not sell them).

Check out http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ and you can even download the CDs or explore them and check them out.

I wish other publishing houses were as in touch with their consumers as Baen.

I've been reading books with my iPhone and its great at bed time. read with the lights off so I don't disturb my wife, and it powers off if I fall asleep and stop flipping pages. I also have it with me everywhere, so I 've got thought books faster as I can read it anytime.

I've been using my old Clie (PalmOS based Sony handheld) that way for the past 8 years. :)

But content, I cant just loan a copy to my friend, and I cant just mail them a link to the book as hey need the software I use.

E-books need a common format with tags for meta data like MP3s and work on all platforms.
I'd like an e-copy with every paper copy I buy, but copy protection will never allow this freedom.

Check out http://www.webscriptions.net/. Baen has pioneered eBooks as far as I'm concerned. They were one of the first SciFi/Fantasy plublishing houses to release them, and they offer every one of their books in several electronic formats with no DRM (as well as offer a large "Free Library" of older books and their famous "CDs" which are usually chock full of the rest of a given author's backlog of books.

The mobi-book format is supported on both the iPhone and Kindle and the iPhone even has a "BookShelf" app that will let you buy and download books wirelessly.

Granted, its a small portion of the market (SciFi and Fantasy books), but I'd imagine that, for Slashdot readers at least, its a large-ish portion of the books they buy/read. :)

The best part (to me), is that they provide the books both in mobi-book format (for an eReader), as well as .rtf, and html. Heck, with a little bit of knowledge you can even use the plain HTML version to turn a PSP (or any other hand-held device that can retrieve locally stored html), into an eBook reader, just fine. :)

Now the DRM issue. You can in fact get open formats onto the Kindle, its just that there's not as much legal and open stuff out there, and you cant exactly 'rip' a book as easily as a CD. It just sucks.

Well ... there is at least SOME stuff out there if you look in the Mobibook format (and like SciFi/Fantasy).

From Kindle's Tech Specs

Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion

(emphesis mine)

Baen has devoted a whole page to using the Kindle with their eBooks http://www.webscription.net/t-kindle.aspx

And then has both a free library as well as release a fair amount of their older catalog in a Freely distributable format on "bonus CDs" you can even find online (the first fix is free :) ).

I'll admit that most of what I read is SciFi/Fantasy. Having said that, at least 80-90% of what I've read in the past few years could have been gotten in eBook form (and ~50% of it has been). I'd imagine that the number is probably higher, but I still prefer "dead tree" books some of the time. (Haven't tried to get an author to sign an eReader yet :) )

Yeah Baen has really done it right. And their free program lead directly to me making purchases from them. In fact the only digital book purchases I have ever made.

Amen. I've discovered a few books that I bought in dead tree form to read on the beach. Browsing and ordering from Amazon is a nice complement to browsing at B&N.

See for example http://www.baen.com/library/ and http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/.

My vote goes for this one:
"Hey, y'all! Watch this!" It also would not surprise me if it was somewhere around Huntsville, Alabama.
Disclaimer, I just finished reading Von Neumanns War last night.

I love directing people here

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

Because I know that people who read these books end up buying more books, maybe not everyone, but enough that they're still running this program with more CD's each year

You can always check out http://baen.com/ they have an online library of free books and sample chapters for new books. They also have the webscription site where you can read e-Arc (advance reader copy) books yet to be published and other books for a monthly fee.

Also, check out http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ which have all the CD's Baen has published. The CD's are free to copy for non-commercial use and contains alot of books in digital format.

None of the books you get in digital format from Baen is encumbered with DRM in any way.

Thats the name of the book. Anyway the whole strapping wings to your arms as a low grav sport was around before This Place Has No Atmosphere. Robert Heinlein in the short story "The Menace from Earth" had a similar idea.

Depending on what genre you wish to publish, you may want to consider talking to Baen. They seem to have been doing pretty good with that model, though, the way that they expect donations is by you actually.... purchasing the book. They just don't put any electronic restrictions on the e-books. This is because people are more likely to buy books they have already read, or that are from an author they have already read. Oh, and obligatory Library Website and CD collection links

The Baen CDs (which include some novels not in the Free library) are also legally available online at sites like http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

How about this, and this, and even this.

Not exactly the same, of course, and these sites (second one is my server, go easy on it -- the other two links have more stuff anyway) are pretty much limited to the production of one publisher, because that's the only publisher around so far that understands DRM-free ebooks and lax policies on sharing are good for their business. But others are exploring the ideas (look at the list of publishers).

If the titles appeal to you, check out Baen's books, never had DRM, never will, one purchase gives you the ebooks in many formats usually HTML, RTF, DOC, RB, PRC, and LIT.

Many of the authors who deal with Baen even give them away, either through the website or with CDs distributed on first run hardcovers. The CDs while copyrighted are freely redistributable and are all found at BaenCD.

Don't worry, there is at least one publishing house allowing an encouraging its authors to release stuff for free, Baen. They have their Free Library and in a number of their hardbound books they include a CD that states "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but not sold" , an archive of these CDs may be found here.

A bit more details...

Baen has a "free library" on their website with a small, frequently changing collection of stuff. However, their hardcover books also come with a CD licensed for free redistribution that can be copied onto hard drives, etc. No DRM whatsoever.

A fellow running a (unrelated) site called TheFifthImperium has put the contents of every single one of these CDs up on his website at http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com. They can either be read online (as downloaded documents or HTML) or you can download the entire CDs. No idea of this site's ability to withstand Slashdotting, but it's well worth visiting. David Weber (of Honor Harrington fame, plus many other fine novels) and Eric Flint (author of this article and a vast number of superb sci-fi or fantasy books) feature heavily on these CDs, but there are books by quite a few BAEN authors included. If your local library has hardcover BAEN books, there's a good chance they'll have the CDs too (though the link above will get you to all the CDs, which is nice as no one CD has all the books they've distributed this way).

Even if reading on a computer doesn't appeal too much, it's worth checking them out just to learn a bit about the authors and their works.

What that means is I read a large amount of ebooks. Baen books, http:/// www.baen.com , was started by the dearly departed Jim Baen who saw the internet as a way to hook readers. They created http://www.webscription.net/ which has most of their library for sale. Books which aren't even in hardback and are 2+ months from publication are $15. Books in hardback are around 6. Older books are even cheaper, some less than $4.

All of them DRM free.

Jim Baen has been a very passionate voice in the publishing industry against the concept of DRM because it assumes the customer is a Crook. He, and some writers (multiple NY times bestselling writers) decided that it was best to not DRM and to not charge an arm and a leg. Ebooks have low costs, and once the hardware is paid off the only costs are maintenance. They went a step further with a free library of Ebooks, mostly slightly older works and the starts of popular series.

http://www.baen.com/library/

Eric Flint has a nice editorial about the system. The idea is if the books are good, and people share them, Bully! Sharing books gets more people to read them. You might not buy the paperback, but 5 people you share your ebook with might. Or they might buy the hardcover of the sequel. The authors who are in the library have all had greatly enhanced sales.

One step further are their cds. Many hardcovers have a cd in the back with ebook collections related to that book. They even post them online for free, with the only stipulation is you don't profit off their ebooks. http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

I wouldn't mind seeing David Weber's Bahzell books made into movies. While they're based on the writer's D&D campaign also, they at least have significantly more serial numbers filed off than Dragonlance, and follow the interesting choice of casting an orc-equivalent as the heroic paladin.

I'd also enjoy movies based on Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion, which is another D&D-based trilogy...

Wrong.

The license on the CDs says that the CDs may be copied and shared but not sold. That's it. Copied and shared. No restriction on the number of people they are to be shared with. Jim Baen is perfectly happy with people giving them away, torrenting them, sharing them on peer to peer networks, hosting them on the Internet, etc. He'd do an AOL-CD mailing if he could afford it, and has said so on the Baen Bar. (BTW, the zlynx torrents are not "his" (in the sense of the poster to whom you responded), but have been around, and known about on the Baen Bar, for quite some time.)

I'd like to ask what keeps you personally from reading e-books?

Lack of content and overreaching DRM. The selection of devices doesn't help either.

I'm a big fan of Baen's online books. They're quick to purchase, and simple to download to a Palm Pilot. And should you need to file again, you can easily redownload it from your "personal library" feature on Baen's site. Not to mention that they give away free books to get you hooked on new series.

Downloading to my Sony Clie was the perfect way to read eBooks, too. The backlight was pure white, the fonts were crisp, and the scroll-wheel on the side meant that I could hold the device in a pistol-grip in my palm rather than balancing it between my thumb and finger-tips so that I can thumb the up/down buttons on the front. (Sony screwed this up in later models, BTW. They replace the up/down buttons with a wheel, and eliminate the wheel on the side.)

The Clie wasn't so good for technical books (the layout is screwed), but for fiction it was great! I could stand on the bus and read without the difficulties of trying to turn the page on a paperback with one hand. Plus, the Clie fit in my pocket much easier than a paperback, and wouldn't lose its place when I needed to stash it away quick so that I don't miss my stop.

The only real problem I had was that I ran out of content. Baen has some great books, but they're no Simon & Schuster. I looked into other sites, but it was just too much pain and anguish for me to want to bother with. Most sites had a poor selection (though I have noted that selection has been improving lately), limited you to DRM formats (most of which don't work on a Palm Pilot), overcharged for their titles, and just generally hassled the consumer as if he was a theif who should feel honored to have limited access to stuff he paid for.

Thanks, but no thanks.

More publishers should pay attention to Jim Baen. Not only does he release titles you buy in open formats; not only does he give away free books; but he bundles CDs with many hardcover books that are chock-full of eBooks (such as the entire Honor Harrington series). In addition, the license on the CDs state that you can make copies and give them away to friends and family. No restrictions, as long as you're not making a profit.

Now THAT, is how you grow a business. Not by treating the customers like criminals, but by treating them like valued friends. =)

You can download that CD image for free whether you bought the hardback or not. In fact, if you read the copyright associated with it, you're encouraged to give it away to other folks to get them hooked on Ringo. (It works too. A friend at the office got me hooked letting me borrow one of his Aldenata books. I'm not sure why other publishing companies don't get this. Baen, quite clearly, does.)

The CDs are all available online at:

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/

Of course, your point is still valid. Hardback versions occasionally include extras not available in other forms.

There's been a few attempts to put the CD online. The main problem with it hasn't been Legal,
instead it's been this

The files have also bounced around a few Usenet groups, but the preferedd method of storage is still CD-ROM because it's easier to upload them via Palm Format, or quickly browse something via HTML without having to dig through a whole bunch of different directories.

I purchased the hard back as soon as it came out. Not for the CD though which I didn't even know was included. When I saw the reference to the CD however I found that in my copy the CD, attached to the last page of the book, had been removed in the store... and not by the store clerks but rather stolen. Does the content justify buying the book twice (which was one of the weaker in the series) or can the CD be purchased seperately if I contact the publisher?

BTW, if you're interested in the newer stuff (which isn't out yet), you might drop by Baen's Bar or the snippet site for a look-see. Snippets for the next Honorverse anthology are up and a preliminary snippet for the next Honorverse novel (Crown of Slaves) appeared earlier this week.

Cheers!

The first 1/4 of the next Honor Harrington book, War of Honor, is being posted in preview snippets to the David Weber Baen Bar newsgroup, and being collected here.