Dragon Moon Press (http://www.dragonmoonpress.blogspot.com/) is offering 10 free novels as PDF downloads from their blog. If any of you are interested in small press, this should be interesting.

The better half likes this stuff, I snagged them for her. Thanks

A whole pile of new authors to try out! Cool, thanks for the link :2thumbsup

Dragon Moon Press (http://www.dragonmoonpress.blogspot.com/) is offering 10 free novels as PDF downloads from their blog. If any of you are interested in small press, this should be interesting.

I'm interested in small presses, but not in reading PDF.

I'm interested in small presses, but not in reading PDF.

Same here. I wrote to the publisher at Dragon Moon about availability in other formats and the response was that free versions are only in PDF but that other formats are available at Fictionwise. I am interested in a couple of their titles, but I'm not willing to gamble on the quality of the authors/press without trying one of the books first. Seems shortsighted to me but I do understand the reluctance to give away product.

There are a few of these small pubs that sell PDFs direct, but use Fictionwise multiformat to make other formats available. I know Imajinn does it that way too, so do some others I just can't think of who right now.

Same here. I wrote to the publisher at Dragon Moon about availability in other formats and the response was that free versions are only in PDF but that other formats are available at Fictionwise. I am interested in a couple of their titles, but I'm not willing to gamble on the quality of the authors/press without trying one of the books first. Seems shortsighted to me but I do understand the reluctance to give away product.

I'm not exactly a fan of pdf as an e-book format either. However, I've got a couple of their e-books, and they're not too bad. So, I thought others would be interested in it.

Same here. I wrote to the publisher at Dragon Moon about availability in other formats and the response was that free versions are only in PDF but that other formats are available at Fictionwise. I am interested in a couple of their titles, but I'm not willing to gamble on the quality of the authors/press without trying one of the books first. Seems shortsighted to me but I do understand the reluctance to give away product.

Since you can download the PDF for free wouldn't you be able to use that to access the quality of the writing and story. Surely neither would be tainted by the format.

Dale

Hmm, I can only open four of the ten books: The two by Oliver, and those by Henderson and Ward. I get errors on all the others. :-(

The way they structured the pdf's is quite annoying actually.

They open in full screen mode, one crashed my pc - happens occasionally with large pdf's that I open in Firefox for some reason - , it's really a lot of trouble for the end-user - not worth the time unless you really want one of those books. Which I don't.

But for sampling, I think it is exactly the wrong way to do it. Either offer a straight pdf download, or offer half the text in html or prc, and ask for payment for the rest...

The way they structured the pdf's is quite annoying actually.

They open in full screen mode, one crashed my pc - happens occasionally with large pdf's that I open in Firefox for some reason - , it's really a lot of trouble for the end-user - not worth the time unless you really want one of those books. Which I don't.

But for sampling, I think it is exactly the wrong way to do it. Either offer a straight pdf download, or offer half the text in html or prc, and ask for payment for the rest...

What I did was I saved the file before ever opening it via ctrl-click:save file as. Then, when I opened in Acrobat, I told it not to open in full screen and had it remember the settings. No problems that way, and I can sample them at my own leisure.

Since you can download the PDF for free wouldn't you be able to use that to access the quality of the writing and story. Surely neither would be tainted by the format.

The problem is less the PDF format as that I absolutely refuse to read for pleasure on my computer, which is what would be required. I spend all day working as book editor reading books on my computer and by the time I'm ready for my pleasure reading, the very last thing I want to do is sit at my desk and read yet another book on my computer. It's one of the reasons why I bought a Sony Reader rather than a Kindle. The Kindle seemed to be too much like reading on my computer; the Sony seemed to be more like reading a paperback. My hands-on experience with both (a neighbor bought a Kindle) demonstrated that for me the Kindle is too much like my computer.

So it is less the PDF format than the necessity of reading on my computer that makes me shy away from this type of offer.

these "free" books certainly aren't short on advertising, every page !

The problem is less the PDF format as that I absolutely refuse to read for pleasure on my computer, which is what would be required. I spend all day working as book editor reading books on my computer and by the time I'm ready for my pleasure reading, the very last thing I want to do is sit at my desk and read yet another book on my computer. It's one of the reasons why I bought a Sony Reader rather than a Kindle. The Kindle seemed to be too much like reading on my computer; the Sony seemed to be more like reading a paperback. My hands-on experience with both (a neighbor bought a Kindle) demonstrated that for me the Kindle is too much like my computer.

So it is less the PDF format than the necessity of reading on my computer that makes me shy away from this type of offer.

I was not suggesting that this is a substitute for an eBook which was also available but not free. I was asking if a free PDF could be used to decide if you wanted to buy the real eBook that you wanted to read. Your original comment was you had to have a free eBook in the correct format to evaluate the author. I was trying to understand why this would be true unless you just wanted eBooks for free with no intention of buying.

Dale

So, I thought others would be interested in it.

Oh, definitely -- and I did not mean to imply otherwise. It's good that they're doing it, and good that you posted it.

Your original comment was you had to have a free eBook in the correct format to evaluate the author. I was trying to understand why this would be true unless you just wanted eBooks for free with no intention of buying.

Can't speak for the person who made the comment...but it's true for me. I'm not going to deal with PDF to evaluate whether an author is of interest. Life's too short!

On the other hand, I have found some new authors from Tor and other publishers via their providing selected free eBooks in a format I can use directly on my reader -- and this has led me to make a number of follow-up purchases.

What I did was I saved the file before ever opening it via ctrl-click:save file as. Then, when I opened in Acrobat, I told it not to open in full screen and had it remember the settings. No problems that way, and I can sample them at my own leisure.

I agree that there are work-arounds; the whole idea though of these free samples is to make it easy, since after all there are tons of free offers around.

Anyway the original posting about the books is very good, my point was that when you offer something to induce someone to read, maybe buy..., you should make it as easy as possible, since otherwise it kind of defeats its purpose to some extent.

All 10 of them opened perfectly for me. They are not all of interest to me, so I only saved 6 of the 10. But I'm grateful for their being offered!

I was trying to understand why this would be true unless you just wanted eBooks for free with no intention of buying.

Dale, I spend between $5,000 and $7,500 every year (or have until the recession hit and I've slowed my pace this year) for the last 10 years or so. But most of the books I have bought are from authors with whom I am familiar or based on reviews I have read in publications such as the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, and The Economist, or because a book I am reading is citing a particular author/book. I also buy books that I can spend some time reading at my local Barnes & Noble so I get a feel for them.

What I never do is try to evaluate a book by reading a PDF on my computer because by the time I am reading to do my pleasure reading, I simply cannot bear to look at my computer screen for 1 second more and thus would not give a book a fair evaluation.

I am not suggesting that the books need to be given away free ever. Nor am I suggesting that a publisher doesn't have the right to choose the format. I am simply saying that I won't blindly buy a book, which is what you have to do for the most part with e-books, and if I can't make an e-book readable on my Sony Reader, I won't try a book at all.

There is one other point: When I buy a book at Barnes & Noble's website, if when I receive the book it isn't what I expected or want, I can return it. That's because there is a physical product to return. However, the same isn't true with an e-book, which makes it harder to justify buying an unknown author.

I am simply saying that I won't blindly buy a book, which is what you have to do for the most part with e-books, and if I can't make an e-book readable on my Sony Reader, I won't try a book at all.


I think with the Kindle you can sample any book in their library before you buy it. You can also return books withing a certain time frame, I think it is 10 days... not sure though, might be 24 hours.

One major reason to get a kindle. You can even sample books then buy them elsewhere.

BOb

I agree that there are work-arounds; the whole idea though of these free samples is to make it easy, since after all there are tons of free offers around.

Anyway the original posting about the books is very good, my point was that when you offer something to induce someone to read, maybe buy..., you should make it as easy as possible, since otherwise it kind of defeats its purpose to some extent.

I agree about the ease of use statement for samples. They've done this type of thing before. Scott Sigler was their "big name" author before he signed with Crown, and he had them release his work Ancestor as a .pdf that he could put in his RSS feed. That looked a lot cleaner than any of the copies that they're offering here. Also, the delivery method hit the sweet spot. I got it from him without having to go to a special web page or anything.

As an aside, can't your Sony reader handle .pdf files? I thought they could.

The Sony can handle .pdf files which don't have security options set, but only those of a certain ratio of type size to physical page size will be easily readable on the small screen size.

William

Just to let you know, Dragon Moon Press has released two new promotional PDFs.

- The Case of the Pitcher's Pendant (http://www.dragonmoonpress.com/PromoPDFS/thepitcherspendant-freepdf.pdf)by Tee Morris
- Digital Magic (http://www.dragonmoonpress.com/PromoPDFS/digital_magic_freepdf.pdf) by Philippa Ballantine

I've purchased books by both of these authors through Fictionwise, so hopefully you should be able to get them in a bit more friendly version once the print versions are released.