Tor Books Is Giving Away E-Books

stoolpigeon writes "Tor Books is launching a new site and running a campaign in which they are giving away e-books (free as in beer) until the site goes live. To get in on the deal, fill out the form at their site, and each week you will receive a newsletter containing links to download a new book. The first two books are Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson followed by Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Scalzi's site says: 'My understanding is that they don't have DRM on them. Or at least, mine isn't supposed to have, and I don't think they're planning mine to be special in that regard.'"

Releasing the good stuff or not?

Will Tor be releasing as e-books those works where science fiction and fantasy reaches the best of world literature (for example, Tor holds the U.S. rights to Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun), or will they only be releasing their ephemeral "airport novels" that are only released in paperback and left to go quickly out of print? It's a pity that so far the only science fiction published to embrace e-books has been Baen, whose publications generally fall into the mindless entertainment sphere of science fiction.

Re:

Well, if you'd read the article summary, you'd see that their second free title was a hugo nomimated work [wikipedia.org]...

Re:Releasing the good stuff or not?

The funny thing is that Tor has occasionally done this before [forbes.com]. Baen also does this [baen.com] on an ongoing basis.

Turns out that people don't read books much and it's hard to get someone interested in a new writer, or in some cases, a new series by an existing writer. Once you get your foot in the door with free copies, though, you actually end up selling more than you would have if you didn't give stuff away. Weird, huh? :-)

Re:Releasing the good stuff or not?

I think that including Scalzi's best known novel is a good sign in this regard; it was well enough received to have spawned a number of sequels/prequels, most of which have had decently sized hardback runs. I wouldn't be totally shocked to see some well-known-but-older-titles available...Ender's Game, anyone?

Re:Releasing the good stuff or not?

Dude, if your self-designed-and-built elevator to bring you from the basement to the kitchen uses more than $6 in energy to do so, you're going to have to give me your Geek License. Sorry.

Hey I have no problem to by them

As long as they are DRM free I can buy them! It's such a bitch to use clit [convertlit.com] everytime I buy and ebook. Do you guys know if there is a cracker for Mobipocket and PDF as well? The problem with Lit is that you have to have Windows to download books, which I don't have.. :-)

Re:Hey I have no problem to by them

For some reason, they don't use that nickname that you're using for Convert LIT the official site.... I really can't imagine why.

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But the default installation directory is C:\clit\.
Or at least was in previous versions.

Re:Hey I have no problem to by them

I could never figure out how to use clit either. I think the trick is to just fumble around with it until something happens. A buddy of mine told me I should try it on my laptop. Never worked for me though, not enough RAM.

Re:Hey I have no problem to by them

It's such a bitch to use clit

Slashdot: we understand.

Baen Free Library

Also see Baen's free library at http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]

Baen will also sometimes include a CD containing many E-books with certain hardbacks. It's made them some money from me, since I was introduced to certain series (1632, March Upcountry, Honor Harrington) via this.

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Yep, and Baen offers a variety of formats. I read 1632 online one slow afternoon when there wasn't much news on /. (and I was still waiting on account approvals so I couldn't do any real work).

For those looking for more

The Baen CDs (which include some novels not in the Free library) are also legally available online at sites like http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ [thefifthimperium.com]

Read Old man's war (Hugo finalist)

I own the book and it's a great read. Nice of Tor and Scalzi to give it away.

Tor is on Webscription

Tor has had quite a few titles on WebScription [webscription.net] for some time now. Since those are all DRMless, it's not unreasonable to expect that they're over the wibbles.

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Not really.

If you search for Tor as the publisher on the webscription store [webscription.net], you'll find that Tor has a whopping ONE book available for sale (by David Weber, who usually writes for Baen anyway). They list a dozen others, but don't actually sell them.

There

Tor?

Am I the only one that wondered why Tor (the anonymity network) was giving away free ebooks?

Re:Tor?

Am I the only one that wondered why Tor (the anonymity network) was giving away free ebooks?

The free ebooks are part of a new steganographic exit node.

Cannot register

I get this error:
"We cannot register you at this time, but please check back in a few weeks for some great science fiction. Thanks!"

I have hard copies of the Mistborn books already, but e-book versions would have been nice...

I Love Tor!

Man, I even like that they give you an option of not sharing your info with third parties.

We give you the option of requesting that we not share personal information about you with third parties that are unrelated by common ownership with Macmillan for marketing use. Click here [mailto] to send us an e-mail with your name and e-mail address(es) if you DO NOT want us to share your personal information with unrelated third parties for their own marketing use.

I'm going to have to buy a few of their books this week instead of using the library, just to show my thanks!

Don't worry, it's only a few 1st & 2nd parties

Macmillan is a privately-owned company, owned by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a large German-based company. The company acquired a 70.81 per cent stake in Macmillan in April 1995, and purchased the remaining stake in 1999, at which point the Macmillan family formally ended its 156-year-ownership of the publishing house. Holtzbrinck owns around forty companies as well as Macmillan and is headquartered in Stuttgart. Its interests include book, magazine and newspaper publishers, television and radio companies and new media firms.

Sounds too good to be true...

What does Tor get out of giving away free books? Are they planning to introduce a pay subscription or a store of some sort?

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I hope so!

Re:Sounds too good to be true...

This is just publicity until their new site is functional. They're not giving away an ebook a week, that is just till their real site comes online. Also, you have to read their newsletter they send to you to get the free ebook, so you'll be exposed to plenty of their products that you actually have to buy.

Too good to be true? What are you smoking - this is how I wish every publishing company worked (books, movies, music, art). Instead of just sending me crappy adds I haven't asked about, for products I don't want, they're paying me with free swag to view their adds that I actually asked to view. They are a business, so of course we'll have to pay for something eventually, but I'd be glad to give my money to a smart/savvy company with a good product.

I've been a huge fan of Baen since their free library, but on average I like Tor books better so this makes me much more happy.

E-books are the future! At least, they will be...

I'm encouraged to see e-books taking a stronger position in the market, but I'm saddened that so much attention is being paid to products that are tied to DRM. When I buy a book, I tend to look at it as a long term investment in my personal library. That is, I'm buying a copy to own forever. This early in the industry, I have no confidence that any DRM scheme implemented now will last any significant length of time. Will I still be able to read the book 20 or (hopefully) 40 years from now?

It's a bit sad how so much effort is being made to obfuscate what is essentially the simplest of all computer formats: a text file. As others have repeatedly pointed out, there are some killer markets for these things in education. Saying goodbye to all those textbooks would be an unbelievable win for schools AND students.

I think three things need to happen before these things take off (and they eventually will):

1) The price needs to come down. A lot. $400 is just waaaay to much to make these things ubiquitous. Think about attractive one of these might be at $50. It would be hard to resist.
2) Lose the DRM / stop with the proprietary formats. Books, even more so than software, yearn to be free.
3) Major publishers and popular authors need to get on board. Unless the authors who people really want to read are available, the whole exercise is sort of pointless.

I can certainly afford a current-generation e-book reader, but until I can actually read the stuff I want to read, it's somewhat pointless. Here's hoping...