Baen

Here is a map of the planet Marduk from the books that I mentioned yesterday, the Empire of Man series by Weber and Ringo. It is one of the reasons that Baen Books is now one of my favourite publishers.

For some time Baen has had its Free Library up on the internet. It is a great site where you can download completely free copies of many of their books. Now what you'll get are generally the first couple books of a series to whet your appetites for either purchasing the books in print, or at least their sequels. I've certainly enjoyed the library and downloaded several books. Oh, one more thing, you get your choice of formats, i.e. Microsoft Reader, html, and others. Personally I find MS Reader the easiest to read. Even if you don't like Microsoft you should check it out, ;-). You can download dictionaries, translation dictionaries, and even many old free books no longer in copywright. But enough of the program, back to Baen.

Baen also has a purchase program on its website, WebScriptions. Via this part of their site you can purchase books individually or as they come out, say by the month. It is part of they way they hope to hook you in with the Free Library. So far I've not yet done anything with it because I don't want to pay for eBooks at this point, but I might in the future since their eBook prices are very reasonable and far below prices for print books. But for the moment I have access to an even greater treasure trove!

In some of their recent books Baen has begun including CD-ROMs with electronic copies of the author's books. I was reading through David Weber's Honor Harrington series (the latter books checked out from the library) when I found my first CD in a book. Excited I looked at it and found that it was completely free to distribute, so long as it wasn't sold. I of course copied the CD after downloading all of the MS Reader files on it. Then I found something even better. Here you can access all of the CDs that Baen has distributed, and you can even download ISO files with which you can create your own copies of the CD if you don't want to download each individual file. The first David Weber CD that I found only had his Honor Harrington novels on it, but the later one from his newest hardcover has all of his novels, including those he co-wrote with other authors! Now I would really recomend a laptop, or a handheld (I've not yet tried a PalmPilot for reading but I think it would be good) over a desktop as you can be much more comfortable--but if you like Sci-Fi and Fantasy here is a way to read some excellent titles. Oh, and another bonus--the David Weber CDs have art galleries that include many cover images and maps and diagrams from the books.

So yeah, for all that they have done to make their books more accessible I'm really starting to like Baen, besides the fact that I like many of the books their authors publish, ;-). As I continue to read books by their authors I'll not only look for paper copies at book sales but I'm sure that I'll start buying books new (at least in paperback) in series that I'm trying to keep up with.

~Matt