Quote:
Originally Posted by Darqref
btw, the reason Vernor Vinge's books are marked "not currently available" is that there was a shortlived experiment between Tor and Baen, where Tor books were to be released by Webscriptions. High mucketymucks at Tor's parent company pulled it back for further negotiations, but not until some people had already purchased it. Baen keeps it available for those who bought it, but not for new sales. (on the good side, there are new high mucketymucks, and negotiations are ongoing again. There may eventually be more Tor Webscriptions.)
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As I recall, the stumbling block had been the fact that Webscriptions books are released sans DRM. The deal was a go until someone at Tor parent company Holtzbrink realized this and pulled the plug.
I believe Holtzbrink got a new CEO who is opposed to DRM, and reversed the decision, but reinstating the deal is a more complicated matter. It looks like Holtzbrink is trying to unify its US imprints under the Macmillan umbrella.
And Tor sister company St. Martins is dipping its toe into the digital publishing waters, recently releasing the first two mysteries by Julia Spencer-Fleming as free downloads in PDF (both), Amazon Kindle (The first) and Sony Reader (both) formats, as a promotion for her third book, and to get folks to sign up for a mailing list.
Offhand, I'd say the whole bunch are groping for a coherent digital strategy, and it will be interesting to see what shape it finally takes.
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Dennis