Steve just dropped us a note to tell us about
his site with science fiction e-books. Plus as a bonus, he is offering his book,
The Onuissance Cells to visitors for free.
The site seems to be done the way we would like to see it... no DRM and in multiple formats: PDB (readable by iSilo, Mobipocket and eReader, and others), iSilo, MobiPocket, MS Reader, Adobe Reader (PDF), Palm Doc (unformatted).
His featured book right now is
Encephalopath, which is available for $2.50. The sort of price point we've all dreamed of for e-books. The book summary says, "Glen Jansen is seeking to improve his work and prospects when he purchases bleeding edge personal computer technology. But when the tech gives him unexpected access to strange parts of the net, and seemingly to other people's very thoughts, he finds himself on the run from the government, the mob, and a bunch of ersatz terrorist/patriots, all while trying to find out who's really controlling the country's networks!"
For more detail on his approach to book publishing, here is what he tells us. "Right Brane ePublishing was established by me as a venue offering a more sensible and practical method of selling electronic books and other electronic documents. Anyone familiar with the e-book market is aware that it is rife with uncooperative print publishers, overpriced products, incompatible e-book readers and formats, and convoluted digital rights management (copy protection) systems. These aspects serve to alienate many potential e-book purchasers, and as a result, the e-book market has remained a niche market growing at a snail's pace. I have researched the state of the e-book industry, including starting public dialogues with many e-book users, comparing e-books to other electronic products, electronic and print documents, and examining the realities of selling via the Internet. My conclusion, in a nutshell, was that there was a viable market for electronic books sold exclusively over the web, for a low cost, and with minimal copy protection measures applied to individual books. It is my belief that quality material can be offered in e-book format to a large following of buyers. A low price will encourage more sales, and the low overhead required to sell electronic files over the Internet will still allow for a reasonable profit per sale. There will be some inevitable sharing of the books, lowering the profit coming to me, but the low cost of the e-books should keep the sharing factor down to a comfortable level. As a result, I have decided to create Right Brane ePublishing as my publishing vehicle. I plan to offer my novels (as well as other free material) on this site, adding additional novels as they are finished, and monitoring the site's activity to gauge its success."
Sounds like very sensible (and familiar) thoughts! Now the remaining question is simply whether or not the books are any good. I suppose that a look at the excerpts or free book should make that pretty clear. But as most of us are lazy, why don't one of you give it a try and let us know what you think?! Encephalopath looks intriguing to me from the description, so it just might go on my tentative reading list.