Quote:
Originally Posted by Taylor514ce
Does Tor actually sell ebooks? Or publish ebooks, for purchase on other sites? If so, where? Of their free ebook offerings, I actually read one all the way through and liked it, John Scalzi's "Old Man's War". It's part of a trilogy. All right, the free bait hooked me, and so I'm ready to purchase the other two. Here's my money... but no one wants to take it. I don't see any ebook options on the Tor/Forge MacMillan website.
What's the story? I see that there is a Kindle edition of "The Ghost Brigades", which tells me that the book has been published electronically, but certainly not just to Kindle owners?
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Good question.
Tor is certainly
aware of ebooks. Tor CEO Tom Doherty was a friend and former boss of the late Jim Baen on Baen books. He was aware of what Jim was doing with the Webscriptions program, and at one point had put together a deal with Jim to offer Tor content over Webscriptions, and things had progressed enough for both companies to announce it.
Unfortunately, Tor is a unit of the German outfit Holtzbrinck (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_v...blishing_Group), and Tor's corporate parent pulled the plug on the deal when they discovered Webscriptions books were not protected by DRM. Cue much annoyance all around.
Holtzbrinck seems to have rethought its opposition, and things may be moving again. But offhand, I'd say Tor is in the process of figuring out the best way to do it, and I see part of Tor's ebook offer as a test of the market for electronic editions and the acceptance of particular electronic formats. (I have no doubt someone is tracking numbers of downloads of each format.)
There may also be contracts to be amended to permit Tor to offer electronic editions, if an author's contract doesn't explicitly provide for that.
And the trilogy Old Man's War is a part of is definitely worth it, even if you must resort to paper.
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Dennis