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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.
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)...
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.
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.