Good couple of days for Baen

[sraun]

In the last two days, I've given Baen $83. That breaks down as:

• $50 for one Baen's Universe Titan Club membership


• $15 for the September Webscriptions


• $18 for Fledgling E-Arc + The Tomorrow Log & Dragon Tide bundle

The Webscription includes the final version of Fledgling. Fledgling, The Tomorrow Log, and Dragon Tide are all by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. For those who are interested, it looks like The Tomorrow Log and Dragon Tide will be available independently for $6.00 at some point in the future. IIRC, Webscriptions bundles are usually good for three months - so I'd guess it'll be available individually by itself come September. Oh - you do have to buy The Tomorrow Log & Dragon Tide together - you can't get just the Dragon Tide chapbook.

Comments

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reminding me. I've been wanting a copy of Spider Robinson's Very Hard Choices since it came out in hardcover, but I don't do paper anymore.
I just went out to their website and checked and they just released it in ebook format (it actually says June release, but I was able to get a copy).

[sraun]

You're welcome!

Hmm? Ah! Yes, it does say June - of 2008. Which was probably when the hardcover came out. I could talk for several paragraphs on Webscription timing, but you probably don't really care.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

Ah, didn't notice the year. Whatever. I sent an email months ago to Spider saying that Very Bad Deaths was the very first ebook that I bought to put on my Sony reader, and I'd be buying a copy of Very Hard Choices as soon as it was available electronically. I know he doesn't really have anything to say directly about their publishing schedule, but it never hurts to poke a few buttons. He'd have had my buck or so a year sooner if they'd publish both at once.

Baen is as progressive as any of the publishers, so I'm not going to complain too loudly about what they do, but it doesn't seem to me that ebook publication really hurts paper book publication. They could publish the hardcover and the ebook simultaneously and not really lose any hardcover sales. The paperback will leech away hardcover sales but I don't think an ebook would. Different markets.

[sraun]

I'd have to go back and check to be certain, but my memory is that if the e-book is going to available at all, it's generally available on first publication (be that hardcover, trade paper, or mass market). Now, the gotcha here is the Webscriptions previews - to get the book at publication, you have to buy that month's Webscriptions release. $15, includes 3-5 other books. IIRC, the books become available individually the month after publication - although my memory on that is very dim, it could be up to three months.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

This particular book is one I've wanted to read, and I've been checking on it since it was released in hardcover last June. Last time I checked on it was about 2 months ago IIRC, and it was still hardcover only.

I've never been interested in webscriptions. I've got hundreds of books already that I want to read and don't have the time to, I don't see why I would want to pay for a random grab bag of books that I may or may not have any interest in, when the cost is about what 3 books of MY choice would cost. And I have zero interest in getting books early; in fact I usually don't start reading series until all the books are available, and a large part of my reading is stuff that was written 50 to 200 years ago.