|
Wanted to offer a (possibly) slightly different perspective on all of this.
I'm disappointed by it, and it's all Robert Jordan's fault.
A few years ago I was looking for something 'new' to read and was pointed towards Book 1 of Wheel of Time. By the time I got to book 10 it wasn't published yet; I hadn't enjoyed some of the previous installments but I'm one of those people who has to know what happens. By the time book 10 came out I'd forgotton enough of what had happened before to be totally confused; this is one of the very few instances where I haven't persisted regardless. I now have a significant weight and volume of books in a series that is incomplete, but I can't bring myself to dispose of books (sacreligious) so will probably cart them around for years to come.
(There is a point, honest, I'm getting to it, and I'm not slurring Wheel of Time either, circumstances conspired against my appreciation of it).
Anyhoo, the big attraction of ebooks was having entire series like that taking up so little space that it doesn't matter how many there are; I had effectively stopped buying books in recent years because moving became an increasingly intimidating prospect. My ebook reader has been my portal to get back into reading and when I saw the Tor promotion and accompanying hype it achieved it's purpose; I thought great, a chance to expose myself (?) to some new authors, read some new material and encourage new participation in the ebook market. Because I only clocked the offer towards the end of the period and don't have hours to spend trawling the net, I downloaded them all, didn't read much of the fine print and certainly didn't look up which were series, where they were available etc. I think the key thing is that I was attracted to them purely because they were ebooks, and thought the promo was indicative of a new resource rather than an advert for a new forum. Now that I know that wasn't really the point, and have no intention of purchasing more p-books at this time, given the above-mentioned compulsion towards completion I probably won't even bother reading the ones I downloaded (except perhaps the ones identified as standalone) which is a disappointment for me and, I can't help feeling, a wasted opportunity for Tor since if they did have the follow-ups as ebooks, if I had enjoyed the freebie I would have bought them (i.e. paid money for the ebook).
If previous posts are correct then at least the experience has highlighted the ebook market and hopefully encouraged consideration of expansion into it. In the meantime, I'll be sticking to the classics and the sites where I've been able to source the reading material I'm looking for in it's entirety from the outset.
|