A month and a half since Baen made the jump to Amazon availability, the publisher is about to add another feather to its cap. On her forum on the Baen Bar, publisher Toni Weisskopf has mentioned that Baen e-books will soon be available DRM-free in Apple’s iBooks store. A formal announcement will be made when the exact timeframe has been nailed down. As with the current Amazon deal, EARCs and monthly discount bundles will continue to be exclusive to Baen. The time since the program happened has seen some minor controversy erupt on the Baen Bar. After December 15th,...

Since I originally posted about Baen’s deal with Amazon, a couple more details of about the deal have come to light. First of all, the deadline for buying any of the old Baen bundles is Saturday, December 15th. That’s when the deal with Amazon goes live, and the old $10, $15, and $18 monthly bundles vanish, replaced by the higher-priced single books only. If there are any old bundles you might want, better look at and snap them up now. They’ll soon be gone. Second, there has been some discussion over what is to happen with the monthly serialized...

You may have noticed I haven’t posted anything at The Digital Reader lately. It was a fun run, but sometimes things just don’t work out. Fortunately, Dan Eldridge was kind enough to extend an offer to me to write here again, and I’m happy to be back where I was for six years before leaving. Here’s to at least another six!                 And it’s almost as if current events were welcoming me back, because what should happen on the day of my return but one of the things I’ve been either calling for or predicting (depending on how much prescience you’re willing...

A couple more e-book-related news items from Diane Duane’s blog that hit in recent days: First, Duane is now able to make available multi-format bundles, including both EPUB and Kindle/MOBI, for all the DRM-free e-books in her store. (And .LIT will be added to these bundles as well, over the next month.) To celebrate, she’s running a week-long 20%-off sale using the coupon code BUNDLE. (When you place the order, you will enter the code on the very last screen after you verify your PayPal information.) Second, Duane has added a package deal where all nine volumes of...

Sci-fi/fantasy publisher Angry Robot Books has announced a new annual subscription model for its ebook store. For £69, you get every new release for the next twelve months, which AR promises will consist of at minimum 24 titles. For books that are part of a series, subscribers will be able to purchase the earlier titles at a 30% discount (although the discount is only good for one use, apparently). Although the editions are in EPUB format, they're DRM-free so you can convert them via Calibre if you happen to need another format. Via The Bookseller...

On Publishing Perspectives, John Konczal of IBM’s Sterling Commerce takes a look at some of the ways e-textbook providers are experimenting with diversifying or enhancing their e-book offerings, and suggests some of these methods could be applied to traditional publishing. One such thing is renting e-books for set periods of time at lower prices—a student might have access to the textbook during his semester, then have that access revoked afterward. He wouldn’t be able to resell the book after classes end, but wouldn’t have to pay full price at the beginning of it either. Another is...