[Robotech_Master]

The essential points are:

Tor made their free e-books available with somewhat hazily-worded boilerplates from which people could infer (especially if they only skimmed) that "stories, art, [...] and more" might include further e-book versions of the stories. Did Tor mean to give that impression? Probably not, but they did not do anything to dissuade it, either.

Many of the books Tor picked were first-of-series books. I imagine they did it this way intentionally based on the boost in print sales Baen has reported for all books in series that had their first book or two available in their Free Library. (Let's be fair here; a lot of what Eric Flint has said about Baen's use of e-books gives the solid impression that e-books are first, foremost, and in fact almost entirely valueless except as a promotional tool for print books. I always tended to pooh-pooh people who were upset by this over on the E-Book Mailing List, but now I'm starting to see their point of view.) Not only would the samples draw people to their website, they would also sell more print books. One can easily imagine the executives at Tor going, "Oooh, bonus!"

In so doing, Tor did not think about the people who prefer (or indeed physiologically or geographically require) e-books over print books. Many of these people, based on the unclear nature of the boilerplates, the fact that most of the books were first-in-series, and the fact that Baen's Free Library serves to promote its Webscriptions sales as well as its print books, inferred that Tor would immediately be selling the further e-books from this new site. If it was jumping to a conclusion, it was a lot closer to hopping a curb than pole-vaulting.

Having concluded that Tor would have the other books available, these people went ahead and read these first volumes, and in some cases got hooked. It was only after they had invested their time and themselves in the books that they learned there would be no (legal) way to get the sequels in their preferred (or required) electronic formats after all, quite probably for months.

The complainers were not upset at "being given free e-books." That is what pnh would like people to think, because it allows him to trivialize their concerns. The complainers were upset at being victims of—if not a cheat, a misunderstanding.

Just as there is an expression among Linux-haters that "Linux is only free if your time has no value," those free e-books are only "free" if your time to read them, and the portion of yourself you invest in caring about the outcome of the story, have no value.

Now, for the people who don't care about print vs. electronic, or who prefer print (and make no mistake, the vast majority of readers will fall into one of those two categories), that's no problem. They'll go to their libraries or bookstores and read the rest.

For people who are physiologically or geographically unable to get print books, this is not an acceptable solution. If they had known ahead of time, these people would not have invested their time or care in those books, at least until the sequels were available. Having done so, they feel they have been suckered, so they go to the site to complain about it.

What they should have gotten in response from any firm that cared about customer service—whether someone's job title has "customer service" in it or not, they should darned well be trained in and practice it in any contacts with potential customers!—would have been a polite apology and explanation (I wrote out an example in one of my posts in the thread). It never hurts to apologize (except in circumstances where it would open you to legal action, of course), and it has been known for literally thousands of years that "a gentle word turneth away wrath." (Whether you agree with the religious tenets of the Good Book or not, you have to admit there are some keen observations of human nature in there.) If they had swallowed their insistence that they were not at fault and apologized anyway, it would have taken a lot of the wind out of the sails of the people who were angry. (It doesn't cost anything but ego to apologize. However, some people's egos are more precious to them than gold.)

But what they got instead was Torie's denial ("If anyone misled you, it wasn't us") and pnh's scornful bemusement, which in turn got the complainers' danders up, which in turn made the Tor reps even angrier, so we ended up with some posters asking the same question repeatedly when they already knew the answer, and the Tor representatives snapping, and people willfully choosing to misunderstand each other ("Look! They're complaining about getting free stuff!") and talking past each other.

That's human nature at work. If more people understood it, there might be fewer flamewars.