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Buy One Book, Get Twenty-Two Free

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sharing-is-a-good-thing dept.

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.

3 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. This is wonderful news by MaggieL · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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=-
  2. Books: The Director's Cut by Pentagram · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. Nobody seems to "get" it... by Autonomous+Crowhard · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Who on Earth wants to try to jump into a series on the 22nd book? Nobody! This is why Baen is releasing all the earlier books.

    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.