Free SIFI books from Baen

[kacir]

Originally Posted by lamoe

Normally write in Word then use spell checking for everything. Will have to remember to do so from now on.

I am not Dyslectic, but English is my third language, so a good spell checker can be very useful.
Beauty is, Mozilla Firefox does have spell checker built in, so I can write posts without copying text back and forth.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by lamoe

Checked out the “similar threads” at the end of my post and see that the oldest link to Baen is from 2003. Didn’t realize readers have been around that long.

Roughly speaking, we are currently in the fourth wave of ebook reading.
The first wave goes back to the pre-PC era and time-sharing systems. Project Gutenberg started around then.
The second wave moved the action to PCs and Universities got into the act.
In the late 90's PDAs hosted the third wave and gave birth to the precursors of most of the current major formats. We also saw the first commercial ebooks from the likes of Baen, Peanut Press, and others.
Around the turn of the century the first dedicated reader devices came out and ebook reading started to expand beyond computers (desktop or pocket) to cellphones. Shortly thereafter, Amazon and B&N, among others, started selling ebooks but the volume was low and eventually they both closed up shop. Everything since then has been an ongoing search for a business model that could take ebooks into the mainstream of publishing and there is every indication that we are at that threshold now.
It's been a long wait (and we're barely getting started with the mainstreaming) but it looks like ebooks are here to stay.
(And it's about time! )

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Too bad it's Tor and only available with DRM and geo restrictions.

I hear you.

Had to do some serious manoeuvring to bring those to a PC and ereader near me.

Baen is the best. I buy their webscriptions bundle every months even if only one of the ebooks interests me. I want to contribute to their distribution model as it outshines the agency five bunch's' flawed and outmoded business model.

[Worldwalker]

Should spelling matter?

r shud we just tok like wow playerz do?

Given that MobileRead is a place for intelligent, literate, well-read people, I would hope that we endeavor to write as we would wish to read. Firefox (or quite a few other Web browsers) does spell-checking. Remembering to capitalize the first word of a sentence (and the pronoun "I") isn't hard. We have all the time we want; there's no rush go get a post up in the next 30 seconds. We can take the time to look it over and make sure we have things right. There should be one place on the Web that doesn't look like an online game or a teenage text conversation.

As for "sifi" ... I've heard Forry Ackerman's "SciFi" used (generally used against SF by mundanes) many times, but not "sifi" or "SIFI".

And yeah, support Baen. I don't agree with their politics, but DRM trumps politics; they're one of the good guys. I spend more there than I do at the big box stores. They're certainly not news (check the date on the Baen Free Library!) but they deserve all the support we can give them.

Though I think David Weber took a flying leap over the shark a while ago; "Honor Harrington, Ruler of All Space and Time" is getting old. I still buy Weber's books, mind you; I just gripe more. I've gotten some wonderful things off Webscriptions, such as P.C. Hodgell's books (finally finding a home after Meisha Merlin sank), and the complete Lankhmar series, replacing some shabby pbooks.

[JSWolf]

Use Calibre and convert to ePub.

[AdamV]

Originally Posted by BaenSidhe

I think you're also assuming that Baen has the right to offer their books in Poland. (That geo-restriction problem.) I believe Baen contracts for global electronic rights, but they might not (probably not) do that for the paper rights. If my belief is true, you'd have to contract with the author and not Baen.

That is not necessarly a true... First, I am not sure how this works in US but my wild guess is that an author being published by a publishnig company has an paperwork done with them that (usually) gives them property rights and/or copyrights to the author's works... So in this case Baen publisher is the entity to talk to...

Second thing is that I do not want to sell their books here. I run my own publishing company and I will need the rights/permission from copyrights owner (Baen) to translate selected books to Polish then publish them (print, distribute etc.)

Anyway, I will keep trying to contact them - thanks to all for your (slightly offtopic) feedback

[igorsk]

If you still don't get any replies, try posting in Toni's Table.

[lamoe]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Roughly speaking, we are currently in the fourth wave of ebook reading.
The first wave goes back to the pre-PC era and time-sharing systems. Project Gutenberg started around then.
The second wave moved the action to PCs and Universities got into the act.
In the late 90's PDAs hosted the third wave and gave birth to the precursors of most of the current major formats. We also saw the first commercial ebooks from the likes of Baen, Peanut Press, and others.
Around the turn of the century the first dedicated reader devices came out and ebook reading started to expand beyond computers (desktop or pocket) to cellphones. Shortly thereafter, Amazon and B&N, among others, started selling ebooks but the volume was low and eventually they both closed up shop. Everything since then has been an ongoing search for a business model that could take ebooks into the mainstream of publishing and there is every indication that we are at that threshold now.
It's been a long wait (and we're barely getting started with the mainstreaming) but it looks like ebooks are here to stay.
(And it's about time! )

Thanks for the history. Very informative.

[AdamV]

Originally Posted by igorsk

If you still don't get any replies, try posting in Toni's Table.

thx