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Tor has had quite a few titles on WebScription for some time now. Since those are all DRMless, it's not unreasonable to expect that they're over the wibbles.

Baen also sells ebooks - DRM free, multiple formats, and relatively inexpensive. http://www.webscription.net/

Also, they publish, with some of their books, the Baen CD - a CD containing all of the Free Library, the book you just bought, and a whole bunch of others, typically by that individual author. And the license is great - you can do anything you want with the cd - copy, give away - EXCEPT sell it. http://oberon.zlynx.org/ has all of them, with links to other distribution sites, all PERFECTLY LEGAL.

Jim Baen passed away last year (God rest his soul), but the people who continue to run the shop show no signs of lessening their commitment to these distribution channels. Science Fiction and Fantasy may not be your cup of tea, but what they are doing is great.

I'm definitely another Keith Laumer fan, well met. Though I've got to admit that I liked Galactic Odyssey even more than the Bolo series.

You beat me to it fair and square. I was going to reply with this: http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743471873/0743471873.htm from the most excellent online reading source, the Baen Free Library! http://www.baen.com/library/, as it seemed appropriate to the article.

Bad Bolo! Heal boy! Sit Bolo, sit! Ahhhrrrgghhh!

Yes, interesting times: human defined AI+combat machines....it could get VERY interesting before we truly master it- if ever.http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/23/2323214

If my assumption that you are another Kieth Laumer fan, then...well met. If not, I still applaud your timely Bolo reference, and thanks fore the opening for my links! :)

I have been reading ebooks for years using whatever PDA I have been carrying around (currently: a Palm TX). I have a large library of non-DRM ebooks: a bunch of stuff that's so old it is out of copyright (for example, the Sherlock Holmes stories), and a bunch of Baen ebooks.

I plug Baen every chance I get: they give away some ebooks for free, they sell the others at good prices, they offer multiple formats, and they don't wrap the books in DRM.

Baen Free Library (free ebooks)

Baen books for sale

Most of my reading is ebooks on my PDA now. Any time I have a few minutes to spend (sitting in a waiting room, for example) I can pull out my PDA and read a few more pages. I always have my book with me and it's always at the last page I was reading.

For long airplane trips (like flying to Japan) I still use my old Handspring Visor. The Palm TX is good for maybe four hours on a charge; the Visor is good for dozens of hours with a pair of good AAA cells.

I'm planning to buy an XO mini-laptop, and that should make an excellent ebook reader. Like the Visor, it will be readable in direct sunlight, and will have long battery life. It should be excellent for long airplane flights. It's a lot bigger than a Palm PDA, but it is smaller and lighter than most hard-cover novels.

http://laptopgiving.org/en/index.php

steveha

Maybe it was like this Sci-Fi authors Ryk E. Spoor and Eric Flint wrote in the book Boundary. Link to the first 1/4 of the book. http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416509321/1416509321.htm?blurb Great book I liked it; I am still waiting to see if aliens wipe out the dinosaurs. Hope book two is out in the near future. Tim S

Perhaps we could start with trusting and respecting people? Thankfully, Baen has seen fit to try this revolutionary practice of trust. A few other publishers are dipping their toes in the water, as you can see on WebScription, and with luck, this practice will spread to the rest of the industry.

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).

Personally I'd read a lot more ebooks if more ebooks were available without the restrictive DRM and hardcover prices as compared to paperbacks.

I'm not going spend $400 and $20/book*.

Though I'll admit to considering it as long as I can transfer my webscription ebooks to it.

*Yes, they advertise "New York Times® Best Sellers and all New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise." The whole 'unless marked otherwise' is real assuring. Besides, I don't normally read best sellers, and pay less than $10/book.

One last unrelated thing: I see everyone talking about DRM'd ebooks. I have never bought a DRM'd ebook in my life and never will. I buy my books from baen.com (ALL completely DRM free and in several formats) which has -years- of good books that I don't have yet, and they release more each month than I can read in a month.

Amen to Baen! Darned near all of their catalog is available electronically (certainly everything printed in the past decade), they have a huge library of free books, and everything is available in plain ol' HTML as well as other forms (Rocketreader, Palm Mobipocket, Microsoft Reader, and RTF). Individual books are priced about the same as a paperback, cheaper if you buy the bundle-of-the-month.

They also publish a monthly SF magazine in a purely electronic format, if that sort of thing floats your boat.

Baen has a serious corporate allergy to DRM. Jim Baen hated it, and his successors hate it. This is what commercial electronic media should be. (I'm talking to you, RIAA!)

For those of us that got the reference, I highly suggest "Vorpal Blade", by John Ringo and Travis Taylor. http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416521291/1416521291.htm?blurb

Baen Books still the best ebook deal on the planet - cheaper than the paperback, multiple formats available, and NO DRM!

well, if you want to be lazy: webscription.net

I'd love it if I could go back to ebooks, but I will not until they fix (or eliminate) their horrible DRM scheme.

I am a very satisfied customer of Baen ebooks. Baen does it right.

You can download in any or all of five different formats: HTML, RTF, Palm ebook, Rocket ebook, or Microsoft ebook. The book is not under any sort of DRM. They have all their new releases, not just some weird out of print titles. And they have a deal where you can buy 5 or 6 books at a time for $15!

That latter deal they call "Webscriptions". If you buy a really new book, the webscription might include only part of the book. Over time, more of the book is revealed, and finally the whole book is available. But as long as you are buying a Webscription monthly selection that is old enough (which is most of them) you get all the books at once.

And, I believe they are still doing the deal where you buy a monthly Webscription selection and you can give a Webscription selection to a friend. You do this by providing them with the friend's email address, so check with the friend to make sure he or she is cool with giving out the email address. (I made a test email account on my server, and gifted it with a monthly selection; it has never received any spam, so I believe Baen when they say they do not give out your email address to spammers.)

I have spent over $300 at Baen, and my collection of Baen ebooks is up to 200 books! That includes titles from the "free library". Yes, Baen also just plain gives away some ebooks.

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

ebooks, and monthly Webscription selections:
http://www.webscription.net/

Here are a few free ebooks to get you going. These are some of my favorites; perhaps you might like them too.

The best of Keith Laumer's classic "Retief" stories!
http://www.webscription.net/pc-347-1-retief.aspx

A book in the style of the old "pulp" novels, with magic and mad science thrown in.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-110-1-doc-sidhe.asp x

Humans stranded on a planet with large intelligent large molluscs. The humans need help just to digest the local food, but they can do some things the locals cannot, also.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-287-1-mother-of-dem ons.aspx

The first of the "Honor Harrington" series, and my favorite of them.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-304-1-on-basilisk-s tation.aspx

I hope you will enjoy reading some of these ebooks!

steveha

I'd love it if I could go back to ebooks, but I will not until they fix (or eliminate) their horrible DRM scheme.

I am a very satisfied customer of Baen ebooks. Baen does it right.

You can download in any or all of five different formats: HTML, RTF, Palm ebook, Rocket ebook, or Microsoft ebook. The book is not under any sort of DRM. They have all their new releases, not just some weird out of print titles. And they have a deal where you can buy 5 or 6 books at a time for $15!

That latter deal they call "Webscriptions". If you buy a really new book, the webscription might include only part of the book. Over time, more of the book is revealed, and finally the whole book is available. But as long as you are buying a Webscription monthly selection that is old enough (which is most of them) you get all the books at once.

And, I believe they are still doing the deal where you buy a monthly Webscription selection and you can give a Webscription selection to a friend. You do this by providing them with the friend's email address, so check with the friend to make sure he or she is cool with giving out the email address. (I made a test email account on my server, and gifted it with a monthly selection; it has never received any spam, so I believe Baen when they say they do not give out your email address to spammers.)

I have spent over $300 at Baen, and my collection of Baen ebooks is up to 200 books! That includes titles from the "free library". Yes, Baen also just plain gives away some ebooks.

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

ebooks, and monthly Webscription selections:
http://www.webscription.net/

Here are a few free ebooks to get you going. These are some of my favorites; perhaps you might like them too.

The best of Keith Laumer's classic "Retief" stories!
http://www.webscription.net/pc-347-1-retief.aspx

A book in the style of the old "pulp" novels, with magic and mad science thrown in.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-110-1-doc-sidhe.asp x

Humans stranded on a planet with large intelligent large molluscs. The humans need help just to digest the local food, but they can do some things the locals cannot, also.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-287-1-mother-of-dem ons.aspx

The first of the "Honor Harrington" series, and my favorite of them.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-304-1-on-basilisk-s tation.aspx

I hope you will enjoy reading some of these ebooks!

steveha

I'd love it if I could go back to ebooks, but I will not until they fix (or eliminate) their horrible DRM scheme.

I am a very satisfied customer of Baen ebooks. Baen does it right.

You can download in any or all of five different formats: HTML, RTF, Palm ebook, Rocket ebook, or Microsoft ebook. The book is not under any sort of DRM. They have all their new releases, not just some weird out of print titles. And they have a deal where you can buy 5 or 6 books at a time for $15!

That latter deal they call "Webscriptions". If you buy a really new book, the webscription might include only part of the book. Over time, more of the book is revealed, and finally the whole book is available. But as long as you are buying a Webscription monthly selection that is old enough (which is most of them) you get all the books at once.

And, I believe they are still doing the deal where you buy a monthly Webscription selection and you can give a Webscription selection to a friend. You do this by providing them with the friend's email address, so check with the friend to make sure he or she is cool with giving out the email address. (I made a test email account on my server, and gifted it with a monthly selection; it has never received any spam, so I believe Baen when they say they do not give out your email address to spammers.)

I have spent over $300 at Baen, and my collection of Baen ebooks is up to 200 books! That includes titles from the "free library". Yes, Baen also just plain gives away some ebooks.

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

ebooks, and monthly Webscription selections:
http://www.webscription.net/

Here are a few free ebooks to get you going. These are some of my favorites; perhaps you might like them too.

The best of Keith Laumer's classic "Retief" stories!
http://www.webscription.net/pc-347-1-retief.aspx

A book in the style of the old "pulp" novels, with magic and mad science thrown in.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-110-1-doc-sidhe.asp x

Humans stranded on a planet with large intelligent large molluscs. The humans need help just to digest the local food, but they can do some things the locals cannot, also.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-287-1-mother-of-dem ons.aspx

The first of the "Honor Harrington" series, and my favorite of them.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-304-1-on-basilisk-s tation.aspx

I hope you will enjoy reading some of these ebooks!

steveha

I'd love it if I could go back to ebooks, but I will not until they fix (or eliminate) their horrible DRM scheme.

I am a very satisfied customer of Baen ebooks. Baen does it right.

You can download in any or all of five different formats: HTML, RTF, Palm ebook, Rocket ebook, or Microsoft ebook. The book is not under any sort of DRM. They have all their new releases, not just some weird out of print titles. And they have a deal where you can buy 5 or 6 books at a time for $15!

That latter deal they call "Webscriptions". If you buy a really new book, the webscription might include only part of the book. Over time, more of the book is revealed, and finally the whole book is available. But as long as you are buying a Webscription monthly selection that is old enough (which is most of them) you get all the books at once.

And, I believe they are still doing the deal where you buy a monthly Webscription selection and you can give a Webscription selection to a friend. You do this by providing them with the friend's email address, so check with the friend to make sure he or she is cool with giving out the email address. (I made a test email account on my server, and gifted it with a monthly selection; it has never received any spam, so I believe Baen when they say they do not give out your email address to spammers.)

I have spent over $300 at Baen, and my collection of Baen ebooks is up to 200 books! That includes titles from the "free library". Yes, Baen also just plain gives away some ebooks.

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

ebooks, and monthly Webscription selections:
http://www.webscription.net/

Here are a few free ebooks to get you going. These are some of my favorites; perhaps you might like them too.

The best of Keith Laumer's classic "Retief" stories!
http://www.webscription.net/pc-347-1-retief.aspx

A book in the style of the old "pulp" novels, with magic and mad science thrown in.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-110-1-doc-sidhe.asp x

Humans stranded on a planet with large intelligent large molluscs. The humans need help just to digest the local food, but they can do some things the locals cannot, also.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-287-1-mother-of-dem ons.aspx

The first of the "Honor Harrington" series, and my favorite of them.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-304-1-on-basilisk-s tation.aspx

I hope you will enjoy reading some of these ebooks!

steveha

I'd love it if I could go back to ebooks, but I will not until they fix (or eliminate) their horrible DRM scheme.

I am a very satisfied customer of Baen ebooks. Baen does it right.

You can download in any or all of five different formats: HTML, RTF, Palm ebook, Rocket ebook, or Microsoft ebook. The book is not under any sort of DRM. They have all their new releases, not just some weird out of print titles. And they have a deal where you can buy 5 or 6 books at a time for $15!

That latter deal they call "Webscriptions". If you buy a really new book, the webscription might include only part of the book. Over time, more of the book is revealed, and finally the whole book is available. But as long as you are buying a Webscription monthly selection that is old enough (which is most of them) you get all the books at once.

And, I believe they are still doing the deal where you buy a monthly Webscription selection and you can give a Webscription selection to a friend. You do this by providing them with the friend's email address, so check with the friend to make sure he or she is cool with giving out the email address. (I made a test email account on my server, and gifted it with a monthly selection; it has never received any spam, so I believe Baen when they say they do not give out your email address to spammers.)

I have spent over $300 at Baen, and my collection of Baen ebooks is up to 200 books! That includes titles from the "free library". Yes, Baen also just plain gives away some ebooks.

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

ebooks, and monthly Webscription selections:
http://www.webscription.net/

Here are a few free ebooks to get you going. These are some of my favorites; perhaps you might like them too.

The best of Keith Laumer's classic "Retief" stories!
http://www.webscription.net/pc-347-1-retief.aspx

A book in the style of the old "pulp" novels, with magic and mad science thrown in.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-110-1-doc-sidhe.asp x

Humans stranded on a planet with large intelligent large molluscs. The humans need help just to digest the local food, but they can do some things the locals cannot, also.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-287-1-mother-of-dem ons.aspx

The first of the "Honor Harrington" series, and my favorite of them.
http://www.webscription.net/pc-304-1-on-basilisk-s tation.aspx

I hope you will enjoy reading some of these ebooks!

steveha

You're right of course. It's been too long since I read it. Back to geek school I guess. http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/034530107 2/0345301072.htm

>>Time to start reviving your library card, before the DMCA goes 1984 on you.

Nonono! Didn't you read 'Fallen Angels'? (get it here, from the publishers, for free: http://www.webscription.net/s-83-jerry-pournelle.a spx) You start using a library card and the gubmint will be sure to "tag you for future study"! :)

Many years ago before I got interested in science fiction I got interested in book sales/fairs (having near-zero disposable income at the time was a considerable motivation). And since then I have neverNeverNEVER bought a 'new' book for recreational reading and I never plan to do so - what you see on the store shelves this season will be on the sale/fair tables next, and 9/10 times what you pay is going to a good cause.

By this timing, I can confidently say that I've never bought 'new' science fiction, but I've read the cream of the crop (too many authors to enumerate here) over the intervening years as far back as 40's pulps and know that nothing written in the past too-many years can hold a candle to the works that defined the genre. Occasionally I browse the 'sci-fi' shelves at the local B&N and other chains and, honestly, don't see stuff I would even purchase used.

I guess the SFWA, Pournelle, et.al. don't like me for not helping to line their pockets. S'be't.

I thought it was called Minerva?

Reminds me vaguely of Hogan's The Multiplex Man (Baen Free Library copy available).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_mach ine I say someone in the past created Self-replicating machines and they are not destroying all life in the Milky Way. They have probably heard our radio broadcasts and are on the way already to wipe us out. But, Then I recently read this book Von Neumann's War. http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520759/14 16520759.htm?blurb Tim S

For an interesting take on things, read "Fallen Angels" by Niven, Pournelle and Flynn.
Freely available from your local library or from Baen.

OK this is probably one of the reasons big corporations actually might agree to publish non DRMed music.

It might just work. I haven't bought or even downloaded music in the last 5 years or so. My music collection is getting badly aged, I've heard some songs I like. I might actually end up giving Apple money now, as the DRM was one of the big reasons I wouldn't give them money.

For example, I've literally spent hundreds of dollars on Baen's webscription site. I 'own' at least a third of their ebooks. They're completely without DRM. Meanwhile, I've purchased exactly 1 ebook from another source, mostly as an experiment. I haven't been back since. They're too much of a hassle.

Yes, I know I could download everything illegaly, but I happen to like being legal, as well as the added convenience.

This fella punches, "How can I get rid of my wife?" Just for the fun of it. The screen is blank for half a second. Then comes a flash. "Service question: Is she blonde or brunette?" He hollers to us an' we come look. He punches, "Blonde." There's another brief pause. Then the screen says, "Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a constituent of green shoe polish. Take home a frozen meal including dried-pea soup. Color the soup with green shoe polish. It will appear to be green-pea soup. Hexymetacryloaminoacetine is a selective poison which is fatal to blond females but not to brunettes or males of any coloring. This fact has not been brought out by human experiment, but is a product of logics service. You cannot be convicted of murder. It is improbable that you will be suspected."

The screen goes blank, and we stare at each other. It's bound to be right. A logic workin' the Carson Circuit can no more make a mistake than any other kinda computin' machine. I call the tank in a hurry.

"Hey, you guys!" I yell. "Somethin's happened! Logics are givin' detailed instructions for wife-murder! Check your censor-circuits--but quick!"

Baen's library, while it's great, doesn't include all of their books. They choose which books to include mainly for promotional purposes, and allow authors to opt out.

While that is true, they do provide many books for free in an unencumbered format for download, DRM free, and have a WebScription site that allows you to download others at a reasonable price, also completely DRM free.

Jim Baen got it, God rest his soul, and the company he left behind still does.

IMO, e-books will never take off until publishers get over their e-greed. I'm not sure why a new novel that's $25 in hardback form is listed by many publishers at $26 for the electronic copy. I certainly won't pay more money to be locked in to their DRM. There's also the issue of format, and a reader app being available for my particular e-reader.

The only exception I've found to this is http://www.webscription.net/ Baen's webscription service. Prices have increased since inception, but they're still cheaper than a paperback. They even give away lots of books for free (to get you interested enough to buy the rest of the series, of course :).

e-books won't work until the consumer-hostile DRM craze dies.

-j

I hope they use an open format with little or no drm. I have purchased ebooks from Baen in the past (http://www.webscription.net/) and I love their no-drm html file setup. For reading ebooks I just use my cell phone, it's small and get's great battery life, no screwing around with an ebook device. I use Tequilacat Book Reader, it's a simple, free and excellent tool (http://tequilacat.nm.ru/dev/br/index-en.html). If Baen stuck all sorts of DRM on their books I would be limited to using a small number of expensive and poorly designed devices but since it's just html I can do whatever I want with it, if Google can do something like this I would be very happy. More companies need to follow Baen's example.

I own approximately $300 worth of content I purchased for my Rocket eBook which is locked down to the particular serial number of my physical device. Nuvomedia and Gemstar are long gone, the servers are shut down, there's no customer service available, the battery life on my device is now down to a couple of hours... and when the device fails I'll be the proud possessor of expensive content which is completely inaccessible to me.

This is why I really love the ebook philosophy at Baen. Baen is a fairly large publisher of science fiction books. Real, paper books, sold in real bookstores. For the past eight years, every book they've published in paperback has also been for sale in electronic format on their web site. The ebook prices are comparable to the paperback editions, or somewhat less if you buy a bundle of all the new titles for a given month. The thing that makes Baen special is that they really dislike DRM of any kind. All their books are available as plain ol' HTML. No encryption, no special reader needed. I buy a lot of their books, and convert the HTML to something my Palm Pilot can handle. If the Palm ever dies, I can reconvert the HTML to whatever other format I need. If somehow all knowledge of HTML is lost to the world, I can still open the files in a text editor and read around the markup.

Baen also makes a huge portion of their back catalog available for free. Some of their hardback books have come with CDs chock full of free, complete novels. People are encouraged to copy and share the freebies with their friends. The Baen editors and authors say that the more free ebooks they give away, the more paper books get sold.

I do almost all of my fiction reading electronically. Probably 75% of what I read comes from Baen, because they have the titles, price, and philosophy that all hit my sweet spot. The other 25% are books that I own paper copies of, but that I've downloaded bootlegs off of alt.binaries.* because the ebook editions are either completely unavailable, locked to a format I can't use, or priced higher than the hardback paper editions. I don't mind paying for what I read, but ain't no way I'm going to pay a premium for an edition that will evaporate if some fragile piece of electronics dies.

Why are we still stuck with hardcopies and stores full of dead trees?

We're not, you just can't get them from Amazon, and the selection is somewhat more limited. Try Fictionwise, WebScription, or a number of other eBook sellers.

Unlike certain other content production industries which shall not be named, book publishers embraced electronic downloads early on. I was buying real magazines and stories from Fictionwise long before there was any legitimate source of downloads for these other industries.

Book publishers are, more or less, on the side of good in this fight, so I think you have it wrong.

For example, I was buying eBooks off of Fictionwise long before anybody was selling music downloads. Fictionwise mostly offered and still offers PDF downloads that are almost completely unencumbered. (They often have silly prohibitions against printing which are easy to work around, but nothing ties the document to a single machine.)

The Baen Free Library offers a lot of Baen titles for free, even though they're still in print. Baen's WebScription offers a huge number of titles for electronic purchase.

Now, Baen is an extreme case, but in general it seems that publishers are significantly ahead on the technology curve compared to their less-enlightened brethren. In fact, book publishers seem to be the most enlightened of any traditional media (possibly excepting newspapers) and I would not be surprised if a large number of publishers started licensing their libraries for use in these machines, if they ever become more than a curiosity.

Something similar was predicted by Charles Sheffield in "The Compleat McAndrew"

http://www.webscription.net/chapters/067157857X/06 7157857X.htm?blurb

I miss Mr. Sheffield. There are few true scientists who write hard science fiction.

http://www.webscription.net/ (BAEN) has 4 ebooks for $15.

I'd like to get the reader, but that's easily 25-50 books right there.

If you like Sci-Fi/Fantasy at all you should check out Baen.

While many publishers are overcharging for e-books, Baen books http://baen.com/ sell electronic versions in multiple formats for very reasonable prices. I can buy six or seven Baen novels in a package for $US 15.00 without any DRM http://www.webscription.net/.

Individual books are between $4 and $6.

Baen also has more than eighty novels available for free (again no DRM) here http://www.baen.com/library/

For several years I've been reading e-books on my palm pilot (currently a Tungsten T5) with plucker . I need the PDA for work anyway and it allows me to carry several novels with me everywhere I go.

Delayed at the doctor's office for 30 minutes? It's an opportunity for me to enjoy a chapter or two from David Weber's latest :)

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 agree with Eric Flint's essay, found in the Free Library on baen.com: Until there's some way to make music/movies/books that doesn't require musicians/actors/directors/authors, and until people stop wanting those materials, there *will* be ways to make money off of them. It's just a matter of finding them. And, perhaps, accepting that people don't really need millions for doing what they love."

Don't forget that Baen Books puts their policies where their mouth is. Baen's Webscriptions http://www.webscription.net/ have almost all of their catalog available for paid download in multiple formats, all unencumbered and non-expiring. The prices are reasonable, and the download process couldn't be more convenient - I mean, they take Paypal, fer Chrissake.

And guess what - they make money at it.

In the article's scenario, Baen couldn't possibly be doing this - once one person spends the $6.99 for the download, the book would propogate all over the net, and Baen wouldn't see another dime. Yet that doesn't happen. Why?

- Most people are inherently honest, and don't mind paying for quality
- Those honest folks, when asked to post the books on file sharing networks, generally tell the requestor to stop being a cheapskate and buy the damned thing. It's cheap and convenient, and if you still don't want to pay, go to a public library.

Is there filesharing with these? Sure, but like Eric Flynt said, it's like stealing penny candy.

BTW, Jim Baen, the publisher of Baen Books and the driving force behind their digital publishing policies, recently passed away. Whether you like what he published or not (and many don't, especially the military sci-fi), he was the ONLY mainstream publisher with the balls to try the business model being advocated so much on slashdot. Put your money where your mouth is, go to webscriptions, and buy some books. Or buy hardcovers and donate them to a school or library.

The wonderful thing about anything published by Baen is that free samples are almost always available. For example, the book you are talking about, you could have read the first 9 chapters of to see if you liked here. baen.com will give you links to their publishing sched, samples from almost all their books, and a number of free books curtesy of Baen's Library (tm)...

Duh, this idea has been around and pretty much proven for a couple of years now. Sometime in the 90's I think. There's even a sci-fi book written that utilizes the phenomena. http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743488628/07 43488628.htm?blurb

Although I realize this was posted in jest, I couldn't help but be reminded of:
The Gulf Between, by Tom Godwin.
http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/101125001 4/1011250014.htm

Be careful of what you wish for...

I already have around 300 e-books. Most come from http://www.webscription.net/ This is the e-publishing arm of Baen publishing. They come in 4 different formats and are DRM free. Now, most of the books are science fiction or fantasy. So, you do need to like those formats. Also, you can get all the books Baen releases in a month for $14.95. This is usually 4-5 books.

I've broken the DRM on my ebooks and put them in a secure location on web site but my blackberry isn't fast enough. It can't hold the entire book and it takes a minute or more to download the next chapter. Imagine the page in a book refusing to turn for 60 seconds. Its just too darn slow!

I have AT&T/Cingular. I've tried Verizon and Nextel and they seem faster but still not fast enough.

Other than that, I'm happy. I'd much rather read the ebook. So I guess its really three things:

1. No DRM! I won't buy your book unless I know I can read it the way I feel like reading it. If I know I can crack your DRM I'll buy it but then why would you bother? If I can't crack your DRM I'll just wait for someone to scan it to a .txt and then I'll read it. You won't get paid then but that's your problem.

Ironic, isn't it. You treat me like you suspect I'll steal your book and - cause and effect - I do exactly that as a result.

2. Convertable format. Whatever format you give it to me in, its wrong. You can give it to me in exactly the format I specify and next week I'll decide I like something else. Don't worry though, I'll convert it to a format I like. Just make sure one of your formats is a .txt or a .rtf that's an easy source to convert from.

I should mention that BAEN Books (http://www.webscription.net/) passes both of these requirements with flying colors. Kudos to a publisher that gets it. I've spent hundreds of dollars there.

3. A blackberryish device that's fast enough to keep up. I don't want a special bookreader that I have to download books to. I want my phone/email/pda device that I take with me everywhere to serve as a reader. I want it to connect to my home server and fetch whatever book I feel like reading and I want it to happen fast.

To quote from David Drake's newsletter that came out yesterday.

"All my Tor titles with electronic versions are going to appear as Baen Webscriptions [http://www.webscription.net/%5D. This is due in no small measure to Geoffrey Kidd, who did the scanning and proofing on a couple and was the conduit to Baen Books on all. Thank you, Geoffrey.

It's still up in the air as to whether electronic versions of all Tor titles are going to go up as Webscriptions. The CFO of Tor's parent company appeared to have killed the deal because Jim Baen puts books up without encryption (which I've been told to call DRM, a stupid acronym for a stupid concept). Yes, that's true: Baen Webscriptions can be read on any browser than can get you to the site. It apparently doesn't compute in an accountant's mind that ease of using Jim's system might have something to do with Jim's electronic income being well into six figures and everybody else's electronic income being squat. Now, tentatively, the deal is back on.

Given that we live in a world where people blow up places of worship in the name of religion, I guess this degree of narrowness shouldn't surprise me. I think it's all right for me to be sad, though.

By the way, my books are going up because I asked Tom Doherty, not the CFO. Tom is a very smart man."

Oh -- they hate DRM and only distribute standard unencumbered formats. They have this quaint notion that if they treat their customers well, their customers will respect their copyrights.

As a writer, I'd like to be paid for my work. I'd rather not make it easy for people to redistribute my work without compensating me.

Here's another writer's view on the issue. The whole essay is worth reading, but his second-to-last paragraph sums it up pretty well:

The future can't be foretold. But, whatever happens, so long as writers are essential to the process of producing fiction -- along with editors, publishers, proofreaders (if you think a computer can proofread, you're nuts) and all the other people whose work is needed for it -- they will get paid. Because they have, as a class if not as individuals, a monopoly on the product. Far easier to figure out new ways of generating income -- as we hope to do with the Baen Free Library -- than to tie ourselves and society as a whole into knots. Which are likely to be Gordian Knots, to boot.

And Eric Flint and other authors are putting their money where their mouth is: The Baen Free Library offers full, unabridged novels for free download, in multiple formats, with no DRM. Once they've gotten you hooked with that, the Baen Webscription site offers books for sale, for low prices, also in multiple formats and with no DRM.

Baen has also put CDs in the backs of several recent hardcover releases, containing other books from the same author, books from other authors that readers may like to try, plus high-resolution copies of cover artwork (without the book title or other text -- just the art). The CDs not only include no DRM, but they also have a statement printed on the label that *encourages* the sharing of the content with friends and family. Baen does ask that you don't distribute the content to the whole world, but has never sued anyone over it. There was one fan of David Weber's Honor Harrington series who put the full text of all of the Harrington books on his web site. Jim Baen found out about it, but rather than threatening a lawsuit, he simply sent the fan an e-mail and explained how the fan's actions were counterproductive and damaging. The fan promptly took the material off-line.

Baen has also recently started doing something new, too. They're now offering "Advance Reader Copies" of new books. These are unproofed versions of books that are going to be released in coming months. Serious fans buy them both because they don't want to wait for the release and also because there's something cool about reading their favorite authors' work in it's "raw, unpolished" form -- it's basically straight from the author's word processor. The advance copies start out at $15 and decline in steps as the publication date approaches. After release, of course, you can buy the final version for about $4.

Oh, and everything is in multiple formats, with absolutely no DRM.

This is innovation in publishing, and this is the sort of thing that can build a sufficiently large and loyal fanbase so that piracy is simply irrelevant.

According to Jim Baen, the experiment has been extremely successful and profitable. Not only has it increased the sales of their current top authors, it has also allowed them to publish -- and profit from -- lots of their back catalog that would otherwise be impossible to publish.

I know that I, personally, have spent *way* too much money on Baen books over the last two or three years. If there are others like me, and I'm sure there are, it's no wonder Baen is doing well.

I just dug out my copy of the book ... it was actually spelled "Crmblznski". My mistake.

Here's a link to the entire text of the novel, for anyone that's interested:

The Great Time Machine Hoax

Baen books sell lots of ebooks, through the Webscription web site. The e-books they sell are available in multiple different, unencrypted formats. Oh, and they also make a fair number of their books available for free download in the Baen Free Library - usually the first book or two in a series, so you can get properly hooked and then start buying the rest, of course.

They also, on occasion, ship CDs filled with e-books with hardback editions of certain of their books - and these CDs are explicitly OK to distribute and copy and share (as long as you don't yourself try to make anymoney off them). There are even web sites that offer CD images for download.

I usually read Baen's e-books on my Palm Tungsten T3 with the MobiPocket Reader, but the books are also available in HTML, RTF, and Rocket Ebook format, so you should be able to read them in one of the available formats.

And just to say it again: they're not encrypted, DRM:ed, or anything else.

That is how e-books can become mainstream.

This absolutely rocks man, thanks for the tip.

Feel free to mention any other sites, tricks, or tips you have. I can see myself trying to catch up on all the Timothy Zahn and L. Neil Smith titles I've missed since I got tired of the hassle of dealing with an every-larger stack of papers as I move around the world.

That's really my biggest problem with books - I LOVE the things, not just as collections of words, but the texture, the smell, the weight of paper... but it's that weight that kills it. I've moved a lot over the past 10 years, and it gets so old trying to transport or store box after box of books, not to mention coming back for stored boxes after 5 years or so to find them mostly destroyed by mold and insectoid critters anyway.

Yeah, and most of that $3.2 million is Baen WebScriptions and has no DRM at all.