[RWJ]

I know this is a pale imitation of the Tor.com kerfuffle, but why oh why would you offer a free ebook (or next best this to free - honestly, $1 is free, in essence) in a series when none of the other books in that set (apart from Matter, the latest) is available in eform anywhere?

This is a highly effective loss leader. As with the Tor free giveaways, I've read books I never would have otherwise. Use of Weapons is the perfect example - this is not a book I would have bought, based upon the blurb, or lugged home from the library. (The hassle of bringing a book home, keeping it safe from the munchkins and remembering to return it on time/renew it is worth more than $1 to me.) But I bought it to support the Orbit program (and I'm going to buy everything they offer just to help them realize there is a market out there,) stuck out the first few chapters that took a while to build momentum, loved it, am rereading it, went online to line up the rest of the series to buy, and ... nothing.

So dumb. If they're smart they'll get more books in electronic form right quick, but really, with the kind of visibility these books seem to get (all on the Sony top ten list, for example) they're just fools not to have the featured author's entire oeuvre readily available for purchase. Now I'm going to have to get the rest of the Culture books from the library in pbook; if I could have bought them, right now, for MMP prices, and had them on my Sony instantly (before a trip I have soon) I would gladly have done so.

This is frustrating!