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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.
Normally I would agree with you but when you hit your local bookstore and see the crap that the 'bestseller' list is rife with. Jackie Collins, Romance Novels, abd other shite, it makes you wonder if there is any correlation to talent or if the General reading public is truly a good representation to judge what is quality literature.
An Oprah Winfrey endorsement or even the book of the month club deal can drives sales up on what would normally be something that should be consigned to the bargain table at the end of the summer, or suitabale for wrapping fish. And we all know that Oprah is one of the literati. What kind of lemmings mentality have we come to where Oprah Winfrey can have a staff member read a book, tell the the Big O, Oprah, and the endorsement sells millions?
My point is that digital publish is great. I love it. Opens the medium to get more people reading. Although, as a newtwork engineer d00d I prefer to have the book in my hand than read it on a PDA. Call me retro. Can't imagine a long snooze in the tub with the good old PDA in hand.... I can always dry the book out.
And then taste is in the mouth, eyes, mind of the beholder. I for one look at the best seller lists and shudder. And to be fair, I will buy one at least once a month and read it, and sometimes I will be pleasantly surprised. Other times I choose to cringe in horror in the closet for a few days.
As for sci-fi. Neal Stephenson and Bruce Sterling seem to carry on the tradition well. Hard stuff with a sense of humor that is quite beleivable in a not so distant future. Allen Steel with this Moon backs a few years back were great as well. But I find more self on an ever increasing hunt for really good sc fi. How many Enders Game sequels can we have? Gibson needs to get off his ass and back to the Sprawl.
My point to this entire rant is that we need some quality to put on the medium for the would be publishers just start putting everything on to the insnanely popular shiny metal discs we all must have in our caves,homes. A bad book is a bad book no matter what the format.
I can't wait to get my DVD of the Ya Ya Sisterhood special edition with cutscenes, the book, the script, so I can put it on my Palm and have all the Ya Ya goodness whereever I go.
Put all the classics on the medium first. There is nothing worse than being on a plane or a trip with nothing to read, than having something bad to read.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Well, regardless of how much I hate DMCA and similar crap, the point is that the book costs a few dollars and it is much nicer to read from a paper form, while a copy an important piece of software costs hundereds and is equally useful, regardless of whether you have the original or a copy.
My point is that book writers can only boost their sales by giving free electronic copies away, while software companies not neccessarily so.
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 has already been shown that the amount of money an author will typically make off of old books is so small as to be considered insignificant. Even if people obtain copies of the books legitimately, they might loan them from a library, buy them from half-price books or a book faire, or just plop down in B&N and read them there (Starbucks is making a killing).
To include all the books on CDROM adds no cost to the book (CDs are dirt cheap to mass produce), but it gives the reader an enormous additional benefit. In many cases, someone who actually wants to read the books cover to cover will probably buy them anyway, as books are still rather more convienent for most people than text files are. However, this gives them the opportunity to preview them, and if they DO want to read them via PDA, they have that option.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
it makes you wonder if there is any correlation to talent or if the General reading public is truly a good representation to judge what is quality literature.
I posted this somewhere on slashdot before, but I'll reiterate: I used to work as a supervisor at Barnes & Noble. Believe me when I tell you that their bestseller list is nothing but marketing and hype.
The best example I can give you of this (apart from the Oprah list you already mentioned) is something Barnes & Noble calls "Out of the Box Bestsellers" - essentially meaning that, based on the popularity of an author and "how many copies have been pre-ordered from the distributors" (IE: how popular B&N wants to make it) a book will hit their bestsellers list BEFORE it's EVER sold a copy. Amy Tan's "Bonesetter's Daughter" was like that. Let's see...Tom Clancy, Rowling and Mary Higgins Clark were all like that as well.
Triv
They make a very big point about how everything is in rtf format. Pretty amazing. Sounds like they're trying to get the nudge, nudge, wink, wink, piracy thing going
WTF?!?
They don't want you to pirate their stuff. They want to be paid. What planet are you on right now?
They are being nice. They could have picked one format that is loaded down with tons of Digital Rights Management junk. Instead they skipped the DRM junk and released their books in unencrypted files. Just to make sure it is convenient for you, they release each book in five different formats: HTML, RTF, Palm Doc, Rocket eBook, and MS Reader.
The books that they put in the "Free Library" are free as in beer. You can make copies and hand them out to your friends. By the way, the first two books in the Honor Harrington series are in the Free Library. That's how I got hooked on HH.
Please don't pirate Baen ebooks. It's biting the hand that is being nice to you.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
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.