Buy One Book, Get Twenty-Two Free

nojayuk writes "Jim Baen of Baen Books is releasing David Weber's latest space opera epic in the Honor Harrington series, War of Honor, with a CD-ROM bound in the back a la computer reference works. From the website, he says this CD-ROM will contain the complete text of 22 novels, including all the previous Harrington books by Weber as well as illustrations of book jackets, sound samples etc. The Baen website says the texts on the CD-ROM will be unencrypted, requiring no special readers or decoders. The files are in .rtf or .html format, and the buyer will be able to download them into their PDA of choice. Baen's website is already a rich source of free SF books for download; I've harvested quite a few myself in the past. Jim and many of his writers are advocates of this kind of promotion, dismissing talk about piracy as paranoia. Baen books also supports a Web subscription service for new books, another bonus for PDA bookreaders." We've mentioned the Baen library and its effects on sales in several previous stories; it'll be interesting to see how this CD-ROM helps or hurts.

Comments

God, if only

[ObviousGuy]

I was at all interested in hack David Weber's stories...

I doubt it will hurt his sales very much. It isn't like he's a huge name in sci-fi.

File sharing seems to have a leveling effect. It brings high-sellers down and it boosts low-sellers up.

Say what you will about popular music, but in the literary world, a high ranking usually equates with talent. Low ranking usually means the opposite.