Baen signs deal with Amazon

[randy]

My first response was "Aww hell, there goes the neighborhood". But I have mixed feelings in that it will give some of my favorite authors more exposure, sales, and royalty rates.

(H/T to Monster Hunter Nation)

Baen inks deal with Amazon, makes major changes to Webscriptions and Free Library

Old” bundles containing books that have already been published will no longer be available for bundle-priced purchase. (Already-purchased ones should still be available for download, though it is possible some books may need to be removed. Some books may need to be removed from the Baen Free Library as well; Toni hopes to get advance notice when such removals are necessary, but recommends backing them up while you can.)

Future Webscription-style e-book bundles will be still be available for purchase as serialized pre-publications only until the official publication date, after which they become single-purchase-only titles (in order not to run afoul of that pesky contractual price-matching). Prices for backlist e-books will be going up, too; instead of $6, e-books of books whose print edition is currently hardcover will be $9.99, trade paperback $8.99, and mass market paperback $6.99.

E-ARCs—the $15 advance-peek advance reader copy e-books Baen offers—will be unaffected; since they will always be sold only through Baen itself and are no longer sold after the book’s official publication, there will be no need to change them.

Toni also writes it is unlikely there will be further Baen CD releases bound into hardcover books. “The CDs were in part to train people up to use ebooks. Mission accomplished, there.” Furthermore, the Fifth Imperium Baen CD archive has removed the directly-browseable versions of the Baen CD files it used to offer, breaking many inbound links (including those from my Honor Harrington reviews here), though it continues (at the moment) to make the contents available as zipped and ISO files (though may remove those at some future time as well).

Meanwhile, better go ahead and buy up and download any bundles that have anything you might want while you still can, grab those Fifth Imperium ISOs, and back up everything.

[randy]

Update, looks like they've already cleared out the Free Library, reducing it to 1 page

[JAG2955]

I saw that. Ran there once I read your post, but too late.

[tfbncc]

Well......crap!

[evan price]

Well......crap!

Seriously... this is not a BAD thing.

It is, if you liked being able to go and download a book and read it for free.

[evan price]

Apparently you didn't read what I wrote above.

I did. If I had downloaded everything already then I'd be set. UNfortunately I didn't, just read them as I desired.

[evan price]

OK, so they will still be out there "somewhere". I get it. The library system in my home town borrows from libraries all over the state in a sharing agreement so I can get some books, but there are books that no library has, which included most of the later Honor Harrington titles that I wound up reading from Fifth Imperium.

What is a torrent? Do I need some kind of kindle or nook or something to get those files?

[Netpackrat]

This will cost Baen and Amazon money. I read the first book or two in a couple of series from the free library, and this has resulted in my purchase of the rest of the books in each series, as they become available. The whole point of the free library was not that they were giving away free ice cream, it was to get you hooked on an author or story, so that you'd want to buy the rest of the books.

[Denis]

Ah, curses. The Baen Free Library was one of the internet "places" that I figured would abide and endure, so I didn't bother to hoover it down to a local disk. I'm sorry now. I know I can go looking and find the same texts somewhere else, but that's hardly convenient. I wonder how long it will take before some fan open a "not the Baen free library" mirror site.

Like NPR, I found the "first hit for free" library was a very effective way for Baen to get me hook into series the remainder of which I bought.

[Weetabix]

OK, so they will still be out there "somewhere". I get it. The library system in my home town borrows from libraries all over the state in a sharing agreement so I can get some books, but there are books that no library has, which included most of the later Honor Harrington titles that I wound up reading from Fifth Imperium.

What is a torrent? Do I need some kind of kindle or nook or something to get those files?

Torrent is a download method, I think, that eases large downloads.

Get Calibre, a free e-reader that will work on your computer.

Download all the books you want from the link Chris provided above. The index doesn't seem to go to downloadable versions of the ones I'm most interested in, but I didn't try them all. I'm downloading one from the torrent link now. It provides an iso file that you can burn to a CD via something like infrarecorder if your computer doesn't already have an iso burner on it.

I'll have to see if the CD has full books on it or just teasers.

Also, I got a Nook Simpleton or something a while back. E-ink, no back lighting, no web browsing, just reading. I love that thing. It was $80 or $100. I have several hundred books on it, and I think I've paid a total of about $5 so far for books. Project Gutenberg has tons of them. Calibre can look for and download free books for you.

Get going!

ETA: I found a site where you can get many of the books individually: http://baencd.freedoors.org/