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Tor’s e-book giveaway: Someone is WRONG on the Internet
August 19, 2008 | 9:47 pm
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By Chris Meadows
It happens to all of us: we see a conversation in a forum, or a chatroom, or a blog that calls out to us with its siren song. A conversation where someone is wrong on the Internet.
The lure of correcting that Internet wrongness can be a strong one. It is so tempting, so seductive, to spend all your time writing lengthy defenestrations of the wrongness, hitting the “post” button with a real sense of satisfaction. It is only later that you realize that you at best wasted half an hour, and at worst made yourself look like an idiot.
My exposure to wrongness today fell somewhere between those two extremes.
E-books but No Sequels
Strange as it is to say, Tor has recently experienced a minor backlash from its free e-book giveaway.
The short form of the story is that Tor may have miscalculated by giving away free ebooks in promotion of the Tor.com blogging site. They only intended to provide some free stuff that would get people visiting the website in preparation for its launch, and perhaps promote some of their print book series in the bargain.
However, by providing free e-books, and not being entirely clear in the boilerplate emails they sent, they set up an expectation that those books’ sequels would be available as e-books from Tor.com—which was, of course, not the case.
Although Tor is planning to start selling its ebooks through Baen’s Webscriptions again, soon, some technical issues still stand in the way of getting that done. So, although Tor can parley the free e-book giveaway into traffic for the blog site, it is not yet in a position to take advantage of the interest in Tor e-books that the giveaway is generating—and it is also disappointing Tor readers.
And that was when I realized that someone was wrong on the Internet.
Free E-books
Up until the end of July, Tor gave away one free e-book per week, to promote its forthcoming new blog site, Tor.com. They sent out e-book links along with emails that bore the boilerplate
SOMETHING NEW IS COMING.
A science fiction and fantasy site not quite like any you’ve seen before, mixing news, commentary, original stories and art, your own comments and conversations, and more. A place on the net you may find yourself wanting to visit—and participate in—every day. Stay tuned to tor.com.
Many of these ebooks, such as Old Man’s War (PDF) (Mobipocket), were the first entry in a series, and some of them ended in cliffhangers. And nothing in the emails sending the books explicitly stated that Tor.com was only a blog and would not be selling e-books. (After all, it does say “and more.”)
So, naturally, readers came to Tor.com, expecting they would be able to buy the sequels there—only to discover they were not yet available as computer e-books, though a number of them are available through the Kindle store. If people wanted to finish the series, they would need to buy or check out the print or Kindle editions of the rest of the books.
While many people were disappointed, one or two took it particularly hard. One person, posting under the handle Taylor514ce, wrote, in part (in message 148 on the Tor Freebies thread, and at Mobileread):
I’m deleting all the “free” e-books from Tor. Their neat little promotion trick, at least in this case, has backfired. I will not be doing any business with Tor. You are promoting a product you do not in fact provide.
Although he later recanted (at least to the extent of admitting he can be “ridiculous […] when I post out of frustration”), this post touched off a minor flamewar between Taylor and other disappointed readers and Tor’s representatives.
And it was then that it happened—I realized that someone was wrong on the Internet.
Customer Disservice
Torie Atkinson, an employee of Tor who posted to the boards, responded at first calmly, explaining about the Tor/Baen deal. But then the discussion escalated, with a fed-up Torie finally saying, “There’s no need to get angry or bitter over some fun freebies—if you don’t like them, delete them.”
The tone of her later posts rubbed me the wrong way—it went against everything I had learned in all my customer service training. So I jumped into the discussion with some criticism of the customer service Torie was providing—and was called “condescending” by Patrick Nielsen Hayden for my trouble. Well, perhaps I was condescending; I will let my posts there speak for themselves.
I probably should have known better than to get involved. But in my defense, with all the customer service training and experience I have had, it irritates me like nails on a blackboard to see a business’s employee haranguing its potential customers—no matter how dire the provocation. And I desperately want Tor’s e-book program to succeed.
Anyway, lesson learned: next time I see someone being wrong on the Internet, I should just walk on by. But knowing myself as I do, “should” will probably be the operative word—as opposed to “will.”
Post Mortem
When Baen launched its Free Library, they had Webscriptions already in place—readers who enjoyed a given Free Library book could go and buy at least some of its sequels right away. In fact, Webscriptions was in place before the Free Library was ever launched—the Free Library started out as a demonstrator book so that people could see for free what Baen’s e-books looked like before buying. So, whenever Baen put free e-books up, readers could immedately buy the sequels from Webscriptions.
Tor is not in that position. They put their free e-books up early, to try to generate interest in their website and their printed books. And without a doubt, they generated that interest. However, they also generated interest in their e-books among those people who require or prefer e-books to paper books, and they are not able to fill that demand at present.
This could lead to decreased e-book sales at Tor when they are eventually able to fill the demand, due to all the people who already read the book by other means (such as the library or peer-to-peer) or have otherwise lost interest.
This worries me, as I would love to see Tor’s release of ebooks in open formats with no DRM succeed—not only will it improve the reputation of e-books in general, but it will also reinforce the effectiveness of the no-DRM approach to e-books that Baen uses (and most other publishers do not). Baen is, after all, a relatively small company—but if the technique works for a publisher of Tor’s size, that might make the industry really start to sit up and take notice.
You can argue, as Nielsen Hayden did, that the kerfuffle on Tor’s forum today was due to the “vague sense of entitlement” fans often have. But on the other hand, it was Tor who sent out free e-books—and as Baen has found, free e-books give people a passion to buy more e-books.
When there is no other outlet for passion, it is often expressed as anger, and—let’s face it—many of the people who love books the most (myself included) have the fewest social graces. Add to this the inhibition-stripping nature of the “anonymous” Internet, and it is not surprising that some of them might post hurt and angry rants to the Tor forum. It is disappointing when Tor’s representatives—who should know better—respond in kind. (But there I go again—someone is still wrong on the Internet.)
Hopefully Tor and Baen will be able to straighten out the “technical issues” that are standing in the way of Baen putting up Tor’s books, and this episode will soon be forgotten. Speculation by regulars on Baen’s Bar is that the Webscription servers need an upgrade in order to survive the influx of traffic Tor’s sales will bring. Unfortunately, the latest word on the availability of Tor’s e-books through Webscriptions is that they are still likely “6 to 12 months away.”
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Comments:
One thing boggles my mind in this discussion – why the lack of having an e-book edition prevents someone from reading that book?
I see the point about misleading and so on – personally I have not visited the Tor site since it’s of no interest to me, I use an impartial site like sfworld not a shill for publishers like Tor.com – J. Scalzi ballistic to put it mildly reaction against legitimate criticisms of the Tor site by J. McCalmont just soured me both on Scalzi and on the site – but still, a book is a book is a book irrespective of format and if you like it, why care if it’s not e.
Get it from the library or used if you do want to pay Tor but whining – give me a break…
To be fair, there are some people who don’t have the option of reading in print. I didn’t want to make the essay longer than necessary, or be redundant about the stuff one could find out by going to the discussion thread, but one person who posted in the thread was in the Peace Corps in Africa and not able to get print books. I’ve heard from other people (not necessarily in that thread) who have arthritis or who need to blow the text up to see it.
As for others…yeah, apart from the misleading thing, there is some “entitlement” there. Some people want the instant gratification of the e-book as opposed to having to spend gas and go out to the library or bookstore, or they just don’t have room to keep a print book. Others just like e-books better, I guess.
I sure hope Tor can get moving on the Webscription matter soon. As I said in the discussion thread, not everybody is going to be virtuous enough to wait for the legit e-books, or buy or check out p-books from the library. Not in a world where there are high-bandwidth Internet access, bandsaws, and sheet-feeding scanners.
Interestingly, I made the very same point re: availability of sequels on this very blog (twice!):
http://www.teleread.com/blog/2008/04/11/disunited-states-of-america-is-latest-free-e-book-from-tor/#comment-760620
– C
I would love Tor books in Webscription asap – I still have 2 bought Tor books in my Webscription account from the original experiment and there was another I hesitated till it was too late – but some of those comments about deleting the e-books and so on struck me as whining with capital W.
The book ended on a cliffhanger and I die to read the sequel, oh Tor what did you do to me? – come on, give me a break…
Of course for people overseas or with eyesight problems e-books are a big help, but think 10 years ago or 20 years ago when there were no or very few e-books – and let us be grateful for what we have, and ask nicely rather than exude unwarranted hostility
I totally understand that it sucked not to have sequels or to have Tor provide ebooks in their publications, but really, they were FREE. Not to mention, they now have short stories you can download to read, again for free.
I guess I am one of those people who still love the feel of a paperback in my hand as opposed to reading on a screen, but I thought it pretty nice of Tor to give us the number of ebooks they did and not ask for any money in return.
That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
Yeah, I’m not saying the freebies weren’t very nice; they were. I’m not one of those people who claims they suck. But I think Tor miscalculated about the expectation they would set up with the giveaway, and the kind of disappointment that would follow when it was left unmet.
But on the other hand, it is true that the only time you hear from people is when they complain, so it could be that there are still a lot more people who just don’t care one way or the other about e-book sequels being available. So I guess it will be a while before we find out whether there will be that much fallout over this.
But still, six to twelve months…
I’m one of those who has complained about the lack of availability of sequel ebooks from Tor. I did not complain and do not complain about the free books they gave. I’ve read several and would like to read the sequels of them. I won’t buy the print version because I only buy hardcover editions of books I want to keep as permanent additions to my library. In those instances, I prefer to buy BOTH the hardcover and the ebook versions. But the Tor books I am currently interested in reading sequels to are not by authors who I have decided — at this time — to add to my permanent collection.
I could buy the paper version, if available, but why waste a tree for something I am going to toss away when done? I don’t borrow from my local library because I found that with everything else I have to read and do, I could not always finish a book on time (I do support my library’s budget requests!).
Tor’s failures were and are these: (1) Tor never said that the giveaways were all there going to be available as ebooks; instead the implication was that ebooks were going to make a big splash; (2) customer service is terrible, as Chris has pointed out; (3) I never understood that the new Tor website was going to be a blog site; I thought it was going to be a new ebook site. Now that I know it is a blog site, I ignore it — I could care less about Tor blogs; and (4) 6 to 12 months to create ebooks is absurd, especially of new releases where Tor has the electronic files available that it uses to print the books.
I am not refusing to buy Tor books (in fact, I just bought the new David Weber in hardcover) nor to read the free books Tor graciously gave me. I am refusing, however, to buy the print version of sequels of authors I am not currently interested in collecting and of Tor authors with whom I am unfamiliar, and I am complaining — not whining — about Tor’s ineptitude and poor customer service as regards ebooks.
Didn’t they say something like: “We’re giving away one free ebook per week until….”
I saw the “Until” and figured it was just a promotion.
And, there’s always the saying: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
I can understand that some people mis-understood this, but to be so mad as to delete all the free ebooks and refuse to do business with them? That’s over-reacting.
(And, I for one am planning on getting several of the sequels to the free eBooks…)
Well, I did say he later recanted (to a certain extent, anyway—but on the third page of his Mobileread thread, upon learning it would be 6 to 12 months before Tor Webscriptions were available, he decanted again). As I said, some book-lovers have really poor social graces (comes of having their noses in a book all the time and not getting practice interacting with people, I guess), and there is very little so frustrating as getting hooked on a book series, getting all ready to read the next one to find out what happens—and then learning you can’t get it.
Poor social graces + much frustration + impersonal, anonymous Internet = bad angry posts
Still though, David makes a good point that perhaps Tor should have waited until they had the e-infrastructure in place before they started the promotion. By having an e-promotion in the first place, they are attracting an audience who wants to buy e-books, not a primarily print audience who needs to be sold on the concept. They are just losing money by not providing for these people (and then publishers complain that nobody buys books anymore! How about instead of complaining, you actually sell them the kinds of books they do want to buy?)
Fwiw I had the same issue with ebookwise. I bought a book from them which turned out to be Part 1 of 2, and when I finished (and enjoyed) Part 1, immediately went to their website in search of Part 2. They didn’t have it. An email to customer service informed me that they were ‘working on arrangements with many publishers’ (in sort, they had no clue when or if they would offer it). A month or two later, I saw it at the library in print, borrowed it and read it. Now, even if they do offer it, I wouldn’t buy it. They 100% guaranteed lost a sale there. Now, I know they will say it is the publisher’s fault, not theirs. But still, the whole marketing logic here baffles me, whoevers fault it is. Why would someone give the license for Part 1 and not Part 2? It’s ridiculous. Let the people buy the books they want to buy!
That’s me making that point, actually.
It seems to me that some fans complained in immature ways, but who cares, they have no obligation to anyone really. However it seems that Tor make a few business mistakes 1) Failing to provide what customers were clearly going to want, and 2) Providing poor customer service.
Both seem to be standard practice amongst many businesses I deal with these days. I blame the economy, it’s clearly still doing well enough that almost anyone (except SUV factory workers) has plenty of employment and thus little incentive to keep customers happy.
I can’t understand what technical problems there can possibly be that would take 6 months to figure out, thousands of web stores sell e-text products online, phone one up, ask who made their store, hire them. No, I think it’s either a political issue, or a money issue (probably both, someone has to sign a budget line). But I guess it doesn’t sound as PC to say “We need 5 months to have meetings and think about what we want to do, and then a month to implement”.
If you were going to be a little more cynical you could say ’5 months more meetings on top of the 2 years worth we have already had’.
Clearly you’d need some technology work to upgrade the webscription site, if Tor plans on sticking in a few hundred books instead of a couple of Stross, a couple of Scalzi, a Vinge and a packet of chips like last time. It would suddenly get a lot more popular and in danger of being crashed early. Probably change the marketing of have a section/site that is all Tor, too. Aren’t too many programmers and administrators that slow in our universe (as in taking a year to do it).
Doing ‘Bundles’ if they were going to do that would take some working out, too.
I’d be guessing it is slow sharks and suits, particularly given all the recent evidence and discussion about how agile and with it book publishers are not.
Yes, I’m probably being too cynical. I guess “technical issues” is short for “We have to upgrade the servers, but we have other priorities, so that may not happen for a while.”
It’s NOT a “sense of entitlement.” It’s more a sense of: I got seriously used to reading eBooks in my PDA thanks to Baen. It’s gotten to the point where I no longer bother with paper books except for the new Baen HCs which I donate to the local library. I literally haven’t bought new treeware for my own reading in almost ten years.
So Tor publishes ONE book in a series in my preferred format and I’m supposed to be fscking grateful for that? It’s coming across more like the Harry Potter publisher who said “I think they’d understand that if we don’t provide it they can’t have it.” Feh. I’m already scaling back any plans to buy Tor as eBooks if they ever become available. It’s gone from “almost everything” to “an author I MUST have” like, say, Vinge. Anything else, I’ll think about it. Maybe for 6-12 months.
I downloaded the free “Old Man’s War” expecting a usual first novel. I was surprised to find I REALLY enjoyed it and immediately bought the sequel on Amazon’s Kindle Store. I hadn’t stopped to think, until I read this thread, that there are a lot of others out there who don’t have a Kindle but had downloaded the free nonDRM’ed first book but then couldn’t read the sequel on their Sony or other readers.
Others have made the point here about the lack of publisher’s foresight in not digitizing and offering the complete set of a series. Very frustrating. If I were KIng (or Amazon or TOR or Baen) I would not offer a series book until I had the full series digitized and ready to sell.
I have all of the Tor freebies, and I was pleased to see Tor offer them. I sympathize with those who are unhappy at getting the first of a series as an ebook but not able to get the rest because electronic editions of those don’t exist. But I don’t understand the level of anger. Whatever led them to believe to other editions would be available? Certainly nothing in the communications I saw.
You can certainly be annoyed, and I am too, but since I didn’t expect otherwise, anger is pointless. I would be angry if I’d been told the other electronic editions would be available and they weren’t, but Tor never said they would be.
I posted on the Tor site strongly recommending that they needed to make other editions available, like the subsequent parts of series they offered in their promo. Patrick Neilsen Hayden stated in response that Tor corporate parent Macmillan (which seems to be the unifying umbrella for Holtzbrink’s US imprints) was busy creating digital versions of the rest of Tor’s catalog, and we could expect a lot more ebooks from them in coming months.
That’s about what I expected. Personally, I’m patient, and I have no objection to reading a paper book if it isn’t available as an ebook. I see ebooks as an additional format for books, and not a replacement, and part company with those who want ebooks or none at all.
I expect what led them to that conclusion was two things: First, the fact that e-books were being given away to promote a website. This inextricably links the website and the e-books in the minds of the recipient. From there, it seems like a logical assumption to me that the website would have something to do with e-books.
Second, the relative unclarity of the boilerplate, as quoted above. Particularly the “original stories and art [...] and more” parts. There is nothing there that says specifically that the sequel e-books will not be forthcoming on the site, and combined with the promotion-induced link, there is a lot of room for misunderstanding.
I’m pretty sure that they intentionally chose to give out mostly the first books of series, to try to create a demand for the print version of the later books. And I’ve heard a number of cases where that is exactly what happened. They just didn’t figure on how many people would want to get the next ones electronically, too.
From the offhand manner in which pnh pooh-poohed the notion of people actually wanting e-books in that discussion thread, I would be inclined to suspect that he doesn’t think e-books are very important or desirable, and has a hard time seeing why anyone else would either. That would explain a lot.
I can see where misunderstanding might creep in. But if someone doesn’t explictly tell me something will be available, I don’t assume that it will be, only that it would be nice if it were, and I don’t get terribly upset if it isn’t. I agree that Tor should have the stuff available, and it’s regrettable that they don’t as yet, but it’s not something I’m going to waste anger on. I get angry and pound the table if I think it might produce results. In this case, I don’t see my anger as making any difference I might want.
I told Tor on the website, and pnh privately in email, that there was a market for Tor content in electronic form they really needed to address. I kept my correspondence business like and professional. The intent was to make clear there was money to be made in ebooks, and they should go make some. “I want to give you money! If you have this available, I’ll buy it from you!” is the best incentive I can of think to offer a vendor. I don’t favor “You are stupid so-and-sos for not having this available, and I’m angry!” as motivators. That certainly wouldn’t motivate me to respond in any manner the name caller might want.
I’m pretty sure that they intentionally chose to give out mostly the first books of series, to try to create a demand for the print version of the later books. And I’ve heard a number of cases where that is exactly what happened. They just didn’t figure on how many people would want to get the next ones electronically, too.
Yes, and that was Baen’s motivation for setting up the Free Library. Jim Baen stated in an email some time back that the Free Library was promotion for the paper editions, and he didn’t see profit in pure ebook publication at that time.
In fact, that’s exactly what the Free Library did. Baen promoted authors, not books. You downloaded a book or more by an author in the Library, decided you liked what they did, and you bought the author’s new book in hardcover. It drove Baen’s metamorphosis from a struggling mass market PB house to a thriving hardcover publisher with a 70% sell through rate. And authors reported a gratifying pop in sales of backlist paper editions. Some folks (and I’m one) got the paper books as well as the ebooks.
Subsequently, the Webscriptions program demonstrated that there is profit in electronic editions as well, and Baen does better on Webscriptions than they do on Canadian sales. Reportedly, a lot better. They’ve gone back and made most (if not all) of their catalog available as ebook editions.
But Baen is a smaller house than Tor, and independent. Jim Baen could decide to go ebook without corporate superiors to answer to. Tor is a unit of Holtzbrink, under the Macmillan umbrella in the US, and Tor CEO Tom Doherty does have corporate superiors looking over his shoulder. Tor/Forge also has a larger catalog than Baen to go back and create ebooks of after the fact. In some cases, I suspect that creating ebooks begins with scanning an old paper edition, because the electronic files no longer exist.
And I suspect Hotlzbrink wants a coherent digital strategy across all their imprints, so while Tor may be a test bed, I don’t think they do things entirely on their own. If Tor’s current experiments work, I think we might see other imprints like St. Martins Press doing similar things.
From the offhand manner in which pnh pooh-poohed the notion of people actually wanting e-books in that discussion thread, I would be inclined to suspect that he doesn’t think e-books are very important or desirable, and has a hard time seeing why anyone else would either. That would explain a lot.
It might, were that the case. I live within walking distance of Tor’s office, and know an assortment of people at Tor, including pnh. I doubt it. And even if pnh thinks so, he reports to Tom Doherty. Tom is one of the savviest people I know in publishing.
Tom was Jim Baen’s former boss, when he took over as Publisher and hired Jim to be editor at Ace Books. They stayed friends and in touch, and Tom is an investor in Baen Books. He saw what Baen was doing with Webscriptions, and cut a deal with Jim to offer Tor content through Webscriptions, that was announced by both companies. It got derailed when someone at Holtzbrink discovered Webscriptions doesn’t use DRM, and pulled the plug on Tor’s end, but meanwhile, Tor tried to do it. (I understand Holtzbrink has changed its mind on DRM, and the deal is on again, but don’t know current status.) Tom, at least, recognizes there is a market out there. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t have tried to do the deal with Baen.
I expect to see more in electronic form from Tor.m It may not be in a time frame that will make the less patient folks happy, but I do expect to see it.
“They just didn’t figure on how many people would want to get the next ones electronically, too.”
True. But that’s where I don’t see why the publishers keep making an issue of this. If I want to buy the sequel, electronically, and pay them for it, they are still making a sale of the book, right? So why should they care if the sale is a print version or an e-version? If the customer wants to PAY THEM MONEY for an e-version, a smart publisher would say ‘wow, okay, here you go.’ A sale is a sale, why are they still privileging the print version in this day and age? And then they have the NERVE to whine to the press, constantly, about how publishers don’t make money anymore because people don’t want to buy books? People DO want to buy them. YOU just don’t seem to want to sell them!
@ficbot
They may not care. Or they may care in a different manner than you think.
A publisher may realize there is a market for ebooks, but realizing it and and addressing it are different matters.
First, electronic publishing is in many respects a different business model. No one sensible changes their business model without clearly understanding they are doing so, and what the implications are. You can assume some publishers are still groping toward a coherent digital strategy.
Second, before you can sell ebooks, you must produce them. The current work flow is essentially Word document -> markup/typesetting -> pre-press operation to generate plates for printing -> printing and binding of finished book.
Production of an ebook requires a step between either the Word -> markup/typesetting or markup/typesetting -> pre-press operations to generate properly formatted ebook files. That takes software and expertise to do it I suspect many publishers don’t have.
Third, you have the question of how you sell them. Publishers traditionally have been manufacturers, selling to wholesalers and large retail chains, not directly to the reader. Most of them aren’t set up to do large scale direct to the reader sales.
This is where someone like Amazon can step in. They already sell books, and lots of other things directly to consumers, and have the infrastructure in place. In essence, they’re a catalog retailer doing mail-order fulfillment. They can take the heavy lifting of selling ebooks off the publisher’s hands.
Fourth, most of the major publishers are owned by conglomerates with fingers in other media pies, like movies and music. The corporate assumption will be “Electronic content will be pirated, and we must Take Measures to prevent it!”, resulting in an assortment of DRM schemes, which are at best a PITA for the consumer.
Finally, you have the question of what the reader will use to display the ebook, and what format you you issue in. Adobe PDF? Mobipocket? Sony LRF? eReader PML? ePub? Failure to adopt a standard across the industry is an impediment to ebook adoption. I want to download an ebook once, and read it on whatever I happen to have handy, which might be a PC, Mac, PDA, smartphone, or Blackberry. We are getting closer, but not there yet.
And even if all of the above are addressed, I think many publishers don’t understand the number of ebook converts who will now only read an electronic edition, and refuse to buy a paper book. Getting that across may take some doing.
DM, you raise some very good points, some of which I had not thought of. I guess what continues to baffle me are examples like the Tor series books and the Pocket Books novel I mentioned. Clearly, they ‘get it’ on some level, or they would not have offered book 1 of the series. Why, then, do they not offer book two as well? They lost a sale with me when I finished reading the e-book, went to look up book 2 and did not find it waiting for me. Instead I found a print copy at the public library—months later—and read it, for free, that way. Sale lost forever. Now, you might say that’s only one book, one sale. But seriously, how many people would download book 1, read it, and then think to themselves ‘now I must get myself to a bookstore so I can get my hands on a paper copy of book 2′ Does that make sense? And of course, there is the Harry Potter argument. Of course people aren’t buying it. You aren’t selling it, are you? So, how can they buy it?
Oh, I agree with your feelings. But see my comment to Chris previously, about the original purpose of the Baen Free Library. Whether an author had works in the Library, and which and how many, was a matter of agreement between Baen and the author. Some folks like David Weber cheerfully released everything as a Library versions. Others, like Elizabeth Moon, released one book, and if you wanted the rest of the series you had to buy it. Back when the Library started, Baen didn’t have its entire catalog available as ebooks, so if you wanted to buy other books, you bought the paper copies.
Tor is in part taking a leaf from Baen’s book, and promoting their paper books as well as their website. There are losts of folks delighted with what they have who have indicated intent to read other books by those authors, which was kind of the point.
And Tor recognizes there is a market for ebooks. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have tried to do the deal with Baen to offer Tor content through Webscriptions.
Yes, it would have made sense for Tor to have the other books in series where they gave away the first also available in ebook form, (though there’s the question of how they would sell them,) and I think it was a tactical misstep on their part to not have done so. But while I think Tor is aware there is a market for ebooks, I don’t think they realized exactly how many highly vocal folks wanted only ebooks, and were enraged at the idea of being expected to buy paper volumes.
Well, they know now. The next questions are how long it will take before they remedy the lack, and how they will sell them when they do.
I expect we will see those books in electronic editions in the not all that distant future. I am not the only person who popped up on their new site and said they really needed to offer the other books as ebooks as well. pnh stated that Macmillan was in the process of digitizing Tor’s catalog and more would be forthcoming.
The next questions are when and how they will be made available. It’s a good question. Should Tor attempt to develop the capacity to sell direct to the mass market, or should they sell through established retailers like Amazon and Fictionwise? Or should they restart their aborted deal with Baen and sell through Webscriptions?
I assume we’ll see, soon enough.
To be honest, I’m not sure they really do know now how many people want e-books only. I want e-books as much as the next guy, but I don’t think that the self-selected sample of people who post angry comments to a blog post can be taken as anything like representative of the audience as a whole.
@Chris Meadows
To be honest, I’m not sure they really do know now how many people want e-books only. I want e-books as much as the next guy, but I don’t think that the self-selected sample of people who post angry comments to a blog post can be taken as anything like representative of the audience as a whole.
I agree, and that’s part of the problem.
Some years back, I attended a talk given by Beth Meachum, Tor’s Editor In Chief, at a local SF fan group meeting. One of the points Beth made was that SF fans were an important group, but not necessarily representative of the SF market. If Tor published only the stuff folks in that group liked, they’d go out of business. So they did things like publish the latest Piers Anthony Xanth novel (“Don’t groan, people. That stuff sells!“) because they had the broader market to be concerned with.
And people need to remember that Tor doesn’t just publish SF. Tor is also responsible for the Forge imprint, which publishes a lot of other things. Anybody care to take a guess at who Forge’s readership is and where they stand on ebooks? I wouldn’t.
Frankly, I think the really vocal folks criticizing Tor are a tiny minority, and not necessarily representative of the broader ebook market. I want ebooks as much as the next guy, too, but I’m patient. I’m simply happy to see Tor recognizing that there is an ebook market and moving to address it.
I’m just curious about the level of anger I see from some of the more vocal protesters. If they get that upset over not immediately having the rest of a series available in electronic format, I wonder how they react to really important things, like potential threats to their life, health, or livelihood.
Meanwhile, I think Tor will find out how many people want ebooks only, once they have more of their catalog available in ebook form, and offered for sale. While we can probably assume that some folks might grab both editions, I think most will grab one or the other.