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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.
That's not my experience, and especially not with fantasy/sf. I picked up a book by Terry Goodkind from the bestsellers list at the airport a few weeks back and gods is it awful! The preaching (endlessly), the wringing of hands, the posturing! What is it with the US and coming-of-age books anyway? Ick. Don't even get me started on Robert Jordan. However, books that have have picked up a Hugo, Nebula and/or Cambell are usually well worth the money and shelf-space. The n hundred page bricks that are so common these days simply can't be as intense and addictive as the less than 200-pagers of yore.
Best book I've read in the recent months: 'The Stars My Destination' by Alfred Bester.
Actually, if you're shipping a lot of units, it's a lot cheaper to press and mail DVDs than to send the same amount of data on the Net. Net traffic costs US$4 per gigabyte. If you can press a million DVDs or even CDs, it's cheaper to do that and then physically deliver them than to send the data over the Net.
Where the Net really shines is for small runs. If you sell 50 copies of your new album, it's cheaper to transmit them over then Net than to try to do a physical CD run that size. The economies of scale are all backwards, and that's why the Net is so scary to big media interests: it favours small players.
This has probably been argued before, but whether you are doing traditional distribution or electronic distribution (especially if its movie and music titles), there are specific costs that can not be minimized. Product promotion for example can far outweight the simple cost for the distribution chain.
Whats more, with an electronic distribution scheme for high bandwidth content. You likely will be providing more than 1 copy, and certainly more than 1 location (internet geography) so your subscribers can d/l them. Providing and maintaining all of the infrastructure to not only provide the machines, space (physical and disk), as well as the outgoing pipe for all of this wonderful content to be delivered at a satisfactory rate. Let's say that all of this happens with a minimum of fuss and the numbers work out... When the content gets to your home then what happens? You probably won't be satisified with just watching the stream once. For me, I would probably like to have it archived in some way. Leave it on a HD? How many movies can I stuff into a HD? (Remember, we are talking about using E-distribution as the main distro medium) Maybe I will just use the HD as sort of "nearline" and burn a copy. Now there is going to be the cost of the burn medium, burner, as well as the time to sit and burn the darn thing (add cost of upgrades and maintenance, blah, blah, blah). Nah, I am pretty happy with having it delivered already on a pressed disc.
IMHO, what publishers can improve on is exactly what BAEN has done. Make the material sans-encryption. The cost for the encryption, macro-media and all that crap drives up the cost per disc. If the cost of DVD is dropped to about $9.00. I would run out and buy everything that I like (and probably even features that I marginally favor)...
Why? Because I have found that I can never read a book on a screen or for that matter any document more than a couple of pages. A document deserves a printout and if I find that any book is worth reading, I will go out and buy it. After all the ones available free do no cost a king's ransom in print.
Sadly, it also seems that none of the current thin clients for reading books seem to cut it. They are too iconvenient, sometimes too dim, expensive, limited battery, etc, etc.... I just do not see myself curling up in my easy chair with one of these anytime soon. And I must admit that I am very partial to having lots of books on my bookshelf instead of one electronic reader
After all... nothing beats paper's refresh rate.
Out of curiosity, I just went to the book store and purchased the first Honor harrington book. So, already this Baen idea has generated sales. Keep it up!
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I first started reading Weber's first Honor Harrington book "On Basilisk Station" in softcopy form, and then proceded to buy it and all of the Honor Harrington books. I'll certainly buy this new one, and having the books in softcopy will make it much easier for me to evangelize them.
:-)
Now if only they will do the same with Lois McMaster Bujold's "Miles Vorkosigan" series (also publish by Baen), I'll be a VERY happy girl. Honor rocks, and the Vorkosigan stories are priceless. Is "Bujold" a huge-enough name for you?
I'd love to see Mary Gentle's "A Secret History" done this way too.
-=Maggie Leber=-
I'm surprised more authors haven't released books in electronic form. Think of the extra features they could add. Imagine, for example, a DVD version with the text of the book, a reading of the book by the author, interviews, copies of draft versions of the book, an "author's commentary" of notes parallel to teh main text, illustrations etc. "Deleted" scenes, hmm. Biographies of the main characters.
I'm thinking of several works by several authors I would be interested in buying a "special edition" of.
let me check my m500-
current count:
100+ ebooks on my palm. I read many of the free ones first and then was hooked. Some of the books I purchased I have already read in paper form, but I travel a lot, and read fast. Now, everywhere I go, I can pull out my portable library, and save myself from carrying around 4-5 books for a week away.
what makes Baen's model a favorite for me, is the book bundles you can buy by the month. (say that 10 times fast) I feel much better about paying 3-4 dollars a book in electronic form than I do about paying full price. no paper/distribution costs- no surcharge.
What I like least is the way books are put on out of series sequence. there are several books that I bought a while ago that I have not read yet because I am waiting for books earlier in the series to be put online.
there is still some bumps to be worked out, but all in all, I am a happy customer.
Okay, let's try this again, hopefully with a more informed aproach. First, I am going to be VERY anxious to see the results of sales on these books. Eric Flint has been working for quite some time to try and dispel the ridiculous idea that distribution of e-books hurts sells. That is just plain ludicrous. The more advertising an author can get, the more he can sell. It dosen't matter that he looses a few sales. In fact, to use one of Eric Flint's own arguments, it dosen't even count as a lost sale! To be counted as a lost sale, the person 1.) Has to have the money to buy the book. 2.) He has to want to buy the book and 3.) He has to choose not to buy the book in favor of getting a pirated copy. Now, let's look at that. That rules out the kids and everyone who dosen't have the cash. That is not a lost sale, even if they pirate the book and read it.They wouldn't have bought it anyway! In fact, by allowing pirated copies, the authors and publishing companies are gaining invaluable advertising at no cost to themselves. There is no printing or distribution fee, no payment to rent shelfspace in bookstores and no advertising costs. Now, this kid with a pirated copy does 2 things. First, he passes the book on, especially if he liked it. In fact, this is how I heard about many of my favorite authors. Someone loaned me a book. (Almost the same thing as pirating, according to some very narrow minded authors and publishers.) Second, the kid grows up. I found Robert A. Heinlein's books when I was 11 years old. At that time I did NOT have the cash to buy any of his books, so I bought used copies from used bookstores and checked them out of the library. (Again, some narrowminded publishers and authors see both used bookstores and library to be evil and a form of piracy. A way of loosing sales.) Since I was a child, I now own close to 90 copies of Robert A. Heinlein's stories. Many of them are doubles copies, or even triples. I've given away at least 50 and probably closer to 70 copies of different novels as birthday presents or just to friends. In fact, I bet that I have spent close to $1000 over the last 10 or 15 years, just on Heinlein novels. Does that count as lost sales? Personally, I have at least 2,000 pulp novels in my house, which adverages out to about $15,000 I have spent on books so far. I usually spend about $100 a month or so on new books. I read at least a book a day, and sometimes two a day, and one of the things that makes me angry is to go out and spend $7 or $8 for a paperback, or $20+ for a hardback, and not like the book well enough to read it. I also own close to 3,000 e-books. In fact, that is how I ran across John Ringo himself. I found him on the Baen Free Book Library. (A Hymn Before Battle.) I downloaded the book onto my palm, read it in one day, and then went out the next day and bought as many of his books as I could find in the local bookstore, including several in hardback. I spent more that $60 in one trip. Would I have found John Ringo without that free book? Maybe, but not very likely. There were several other books that I was considering buying. Now, the other way around. I also downloaded David Drake's "With the Lightnings" from the Baen site, and really disliked it. I felt that it was badly written and not a very good book. Yet, I did not pay money for it, and so I do not feel cheated. It was the first book by David Drake that I had read, and if I had bought it, I probably never would have bought anything by him again, ever. Instead, I downloaded a different book, "Old Nathan", and loved it. I have since bought several of his books. Does it count as a lost sale if I don't buy "With the Lightnings"? What about the gained sales from the other books I bought later? Don't those count? Okay, moving on.. No, I do not think that electronic books will ever take the place of pulp books, but I do think that they have a strong place in the library of any reader. There are many good readers out there, including many PDA's. (you probably need one of the color ones though. The green or black and white ones don't have good enough definition.) I personally use a Palm m505, which cramps my fingers, but the battery lasts about 12 hours, or 7 hours with the backlight on. One of the best of the e-book readers I have ever seen was the Gemstar REB 1100. The battery lasts about 25 hours with the backlight on, it is about the same size as a paperback novel, (And about the same weight.) And it has a USB interface to connect to a computer. It's got an 8 meg internal memory (Holds about 16 books) and takes Smart Media cards. (Up to 128 meg or about 260 large e-books) My final point is a simple one. I have about 140 files on my computer written by Robert A. Heinlein. Many of these works are out of print. How else would I be able to read them, if not for the wonder of e-books? Oh, and David Weber is one of my favorite authors. I have almost every single one of his books, most of them in hardcover.
It's kind of scary - ten to fifteen years ago, I'd prowl used bookstores and snap up classic sci-fi from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, for a dollar here, seventy-five cents here. Occasionally I'd indulge and buy a hardcover for a few dollars.
:(
Recently, I dropped by several used bookstores (it took some work to find them, as a good many have closed down locally), and found almost NO sci-fi/fantasy, and what was left was expensive - $3-4 for an old mouldering paperback, $5-6 for a used current paperback, $15-16 for a hardcover. I can buy NEW books (on sale, or remaindered) for cheaper than used books now!
I talked to some of the owners and they pretty much agreed - scfi/fantasy is more or less dead - not much new publishing these days. As someone who grew up reading Damon Knight, Robert Heinlein, Fred Saberhagen, Clifford Simak, Alan E. Nourse, I was shocked that many books have never been reprinted (try finding a hardcopy of A for Anything, or Simacralon-3.) There is one dedicated scifi/fantasy used bookstore in Los Angeles area that I know of in Sherman Oaks (Dangerous Visions?) - I guess everyone else gave up carrying their sections.
Lord knows how the local libraries are going to find replacements for their collections when their paperbacks fall apart, or when some idiot librarian decides that some classics aren't being read enough, so they just junk them. Without new younger readers to buy from the genre, the decline in purchasing interest can only get worse
Take a look at the other books that they are releasing. They are all the first one or more books in a series. The idea is to get people to read a book that they would never have read. If they are interested in the series they will pick up the entire series. That's right, the entire series.
If you have a ten book series and you liked the first book, are you about to go out and buy the next 9 without getting a copy of the first one? No.
When you get down to it, this is brilliant way to increase readership in series that would otherwise get very few new people. This has nothing to do with the battle between electronic books and paper books. It's about Baen using their brains to make money instead of trying to legislate the money into their pockets.