Scifi author and long-time blogger John Scalzi (Whatever) made my day with the announcement that his titles Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigades will soon be released as e-books from Tor. I’ve been waiting for my paper copy of Ghost Brigades at the library, but think I’ll wait for the e-version. Why? Because Tor gets e-books in the way that Baen does, and I want to give hearty support to clueful publishers. Scalzi quotes Tor’s Patrick Nielsen Hayden:
We’ve tested a lot of e-book waters, including various cockamamie schemes involving overpriced e-books laden with DRM.Oddly enough, a lot of those “books” didn’t even sell enough copies to pay for their file-conversion costs.
Meanwhile, it hasn’t escaped our notice that Jim Baen has been doing something that works, that people like, and that makes money. I’m delighted to be doing this pilot program; I think Jim has been clueful on this issue for a long time, while almost everyone else in publishing has been staggering around on stage hitting one another over the head with inflated pig bladders.
I have to include Scalzi’s sensible, choice quote as well:
My information does not want to be free; it wants to pay my mortgage. But slapping DRM onto an e-book doesn’t do a damn thing other than annoy people who buy the book online — i.e., one’s actual customers.
Despite their cluefulness, I can’t help but wonder at the lameness of the Tor website. Content is on the thin side, and it’s not particularly current. Did they move and not leave a forwarding address? (Updated 2/27/06: Posted on Scalzi’s site by Tor honcho Patrick Neilsen Hayden: “Don’t get me started about the Tor web site. Yes, we have an entirely new one almost ready to roll out.”)
> […] will soon be released as e-books from Tor.
According to the Tor FAQ Tor itself doesn’t sell books to readers. Anyone know where one could buy e-books from Tor?
Ooh, pig bladders. I think I want to become a publisher now! 😀
Marcus–John’s post indicates that this is very much an inaugural effort and that details are not yet available. It looks like Scalzi’s titles are two of the first, if not the first. I’ll post more here when I know more (which I’ll get from the Whatever blog). –rochelle
OK, so let’s hope they’ll make other titles available as e-books, too, because I absolutely hate having to wait for 6 weeks whenever I order books from Tor and I’d rather have books in digital form anyway…
According to Charlie Stross’s blog, Tor is going to be selling ebooks through Baen’s Webscriptions program very soon. Including books by Stross and Vernor Vinge’s new and best-known works. There’s a new Tor Webscriptions forum on the Baen Bar where it’s being discussed.
Tor, the Universe, and Everything Baen…
I’ve raved about Baen on this journal in the past. I feel that they’ve been doing a great thing for promoting the usefulness of ebooks, and promoting general readership of science fiction while they were at it.
But they’ve not been content to res…