[Worldwalker]

Don't you want to support art?

The free ebooks I have from Baen are either books I also have as pbooks, which I'm in the process of replacing, or books I'm not going to buy -- though occasionally they've surprised me, and I've bought into new authors or series. I buy books from Baen because they're available immediately when the book comes out, in a format that I want, and delivered straight to my email. If they become available free later on, great, but I don't feel that I missed anything by buying them. I would have bought them on dead trees if that was the only option available, so why should I have any buyer's remorse for paying less for them and not straining my bookshelves any further?

For instance, I bought the complete Hammer's Slammers series. I have pretty much all of those stories as pbooks or in magazines. I also have some in free ebooks. But I shelled out for that nice three-part set because it's a nice omnibus, in proper order, and now I can get rid of the pbooks. Will some book I want be released for free next year? Probably, but I don't want to wait a year when I can read it now, and not waiting is worth six bucks to me.

The bottom line is that they sell something I want to buy, and since I'm an ethical person, I'll buy it. YMMV.

P.S. Baen doesn't just *let* people read and share the contents of those CDs, they *encourage* it. Maybe there are more honorable people out there than we might think.