jcfiala

I've never read the Honor Harrington series of Science Fiction novels by David Weber before. I'd seen them around, but I don't tend to pick up military SF... indeed, I have a tendancy on skipping 'new' SF/Fantasy and reading things that are ten, twenty, or thirty years old (or older!). But my friend JM's gift of the tenth book in the series (War of Honor) has been one of my most appreciated (and used) birthday gifts this year.

The reason isn't the book itself (or at least not yet). It's the CD inside, which contains about thirty or fourty science fiction and fantasy novels. The series is published by Baen Publishing, which has the revolutionary concept of letting people have electronic copies of the novels for free. Anyone not wanting to pay the money for the CD can see all the books on that disk online, or can just ask a friend with the CD for a copy - as the disk itself clearly says "This disk and its contents may be copied and shared but NOT sold."

Why? Because apparently this sells physical books. People start reading a novel online (or on CD), and assuming they like it they then go out and buy an actual physical copy to read. Also, they'll often have the first (one or two) novels in a series for free, which encourages the reader to buy the later novels to see how the story goes. Another reason for the CD in the book I was given is simple if you remember that this volume is number ten - and so normally the only people buying this are the people who bought the previous nine. But by including the previous nine volumes, they make it more of an impulse buy, even in hardback - why not spend thirty dollars on a ten book series?

It's a good deal, and it shows that offering electronic things free on the internet can still make money for you. I haven't read much of the Honor books yet - but I've been enjoying several of the other novels, such as 1632 (about West Virginian mining town that gets timeshifted to the middle of the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Year War) and 'Retief!' (a collection of short stories and a novel about a diplomat who knows that the best way to a solution is often not strict diplomatic protocol).

The Baen Free Library is at http://www.baen.com/library/