Very Happy with Baen (no longer disappointed)

[NatCh]

I expect it's a matter of limited resources. Good as the converters available are (particularly the ones in libprs500) they still take time to use. I get the impression that Baen's e-book department is rather small, and there are a lot of books that would have to be converted. Sure Fictionwise has done their multiformat books, but Baen's folks may not have realized that yet, and may still consider it too big a job to undertake in the short term. Especially when RTF works pretty well on the PRS line.

The Kindle thing is a different animal, since Kindle handles unlocked mobi files just fine, all they had to do was relabel the files they already had and they were done. I wouldn't be surprised if that only took a few hours.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I expect it's a matter of limited resources. Good as the converters available are (particularly the ones in libprs500) they still take time to use. I get the impression that Baen's e-book department is rather small, and there are a lot of books that would have to be converted. Sure Fictionwise has done their multiformat books, but Baen's folks may not have realized that yet, and may still consider it too big a job to undertake in the short term. Especially when RTF works pretty well on the PRS line.

The Kindle thing is a different animal, since Kindle handles unlocked mobi files just fine, all they had to do was relabel the files they already had and they were done. I wouldn't be surprised if that only took a few hours.

Heck, I've got converted versions of every WebScriptions monthly bundle book that's up in final form. And many of the non-bundled books too. I'd be happy to burn a data DVD and just mail it off to Arnold. He'd have to get up to speed with the conversions for future months, but would get the back conversions for free.

In fact, I'll drop him an email with this offer right now. We'll see what happens...

Xenophon

[NatCh]

Xenophon, you rock.

[abailey]

Originally Posted by bkilian

I have to admit that every so often Baen screws up a book. The .LIT for "New Amsterdam" is full of line breaks in the middle of sentences, which drives me nuts. Sometimes I go in and fix their book in my archive.

Subterranean is just starting to send books to Baen. Baen doesn't edit what they send because theoretically they are already edited. In this case it looks like the page breaks were rendered as paragraph breaks causing sentences to be cut in half when it was reflowed to continuous. Check back in a couple of days and I'll see if I can get it fixed.

[JSWolf]

I think Baen should hire me to do the LRF editions.

[NatCh]

Xenophon works cheaper.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NatCh

Xenophon works cheaper.

We can have an LRF-off to see who's conversions are better.

[wmrawls]

Mr. Bailey glad to see you joined up. As you can see I am not the only one wishing for the Sony Format.....and let me make sure everyone understands I still think Baen is way ahead of any competition on what they offer and the service they provide. After all Baen is a business and they have to make a profit .....

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

We can have an LRF-off to see who's conversions are better.

Well... Mine are purely automatic via libprs500. The only things I've been doing by hand are to make sure that the cover picture is set correctly and that the author(s) are all present and that their names are spelled correctly. (Actually, I haven't quite finished that pass through my libprs500 database yet -- couple of years worth of books to go. But I digress.)

So, if JSWolf has done anything more careful than that, his conversions are probably better. If not, then not.

I should also note that I was volunteering to provide what I've already done, not to work on into the future producing more conversions. I keep pestering Arnold about lrf conversions because I want to skip that step!

Xenophon

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by wmrawls

Mr. Bailey glad to see you joined up. As you can see I am not the only one wishing for the Sony Format.....and let me make sure everyone understands I still think Baen is way ahead of any competition on what they offer and the service they provide. After all Baen is a business and they have to make a profit .....

Hear Hear! I wouldn't own so many eBooks from Baen/Webscriptions if I didn't agree!

Xenophon

[NatCh]

No question: Baen ROCKS -- no, no Baen BOULDERS!

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I expect it's a matter of limited resources. Good as the converters available are (particularly the ones in libprs500) they still take time to use. I get the impression that Baen's e-book department is rather small, and there are a lot of books that would have to be converted. Sure Fictionwise has done their multiformat books, but Baen's folks may not have realized that yet, and may still consider it too big a job to undertake in the short term. Especially when RTF works pretty well on the PRS line.

The Kindle thing is a different animal, since Kindle handles unlocked mobi files just fine, all they had to do was relabel the files they already had and they were done. I wouldn't be surprised if that only took a few hours.

That's no excuse. I have a CMD batch file that goes through my entire Baen collection (Both the free and purchased books, a not-inconsiderable amount, I'm afraid I've spent surprisingly large amounts of money at Baen ) and converts them to LRF. It does so entirely automatically, recurses the subdirectories, can default certain settings for a whole group of books (my Baen folder defaults to --baen for instance) and can do specific settings for any specific book, which I do to embed the right fonts for David Weber's "War God's Own" and "Wind Rider's Oath" which use crazy characters not supported by the default font in the Sony.

Every so often, when there are changes in libprs500 that I'd like to make use of, I do a del /s *.lrf and reconvert the whole lot again, completely automatically. Took me all of a couple of hours to write the script. I'd give it to the Baen folks for free. All it requires is the .LIT, and the knowledge of when to override the defaults for specific books.

Originally Posted by abailey

Subterranean is just starting to send books to Baen. Baen doesn't edit what they send because theoretically they are already edited. In this case it looks like the page breaks were rendered as paragraph breaks causing sentences to be cut in half when it was reflowed to continuous. Check back in a couple of days and I'll see if I can get it fixed.

Thanks! I've already fixed it in my .LIT version, but I'd be happy to download it again fixed properly, since I have no way to recreate the .LIT once I explode it, I just zip it up. I have no idea what you folks use as your base version, in the HTML and .LIT one, the problem shows up as random <br /> in the middle of paragraphs. Sometimes three or four in a single paragraph. I fixed it in less than a minute in vim by using :%s/<br \/>//gc

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by bkilian

That's no excuse. I have a CMD batch file that goes through my entire Baen collection (Both the free and purchased books, a not-inconsiderable amount, I'm afraid I've spent surprisingly large amounts of money at Baen ) and converts ....

You're overlooking the fact that they have other projects to do, and that there are priorities and requirements on them that we can't see.

In short, they have to do what they have to do (and we can't always see the whats and whys of it) and they've only got the people they have to do it, and they're limited to the same 24 hour days we are.

You're right, it's not an excuse, it just is.

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by NatCh

You're overlooking the fact that they have other projects to do, and that there are priorities and requirements on them that we can't see.

In short, they have to do what they have to do (and we can't always see the whats and whys of it) and they've only got the people they have to do it, and they're limited to the same 24 hour days we are.

You're right, it's not an excuse, it just is.

I agree that they may not have the bandwidth to make it a priority, but baen has shown a tendency to use it's community to, for instance, help edit it's slush pile. I don't see why they shouldn't use their community for other things too

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Well... Mine are purely automatic via libprs500. The only things I've been doing by hand are to make sure that the cover picture is set correctly and that the author(s) are all present and that their names are spelled correctly. (Actually, I haven't quite finished that pass through my libprs500 database yet -- couple of years worth of books to go. But I digress.)

So, if JSWolf has done anything more careful than that, his conversions are probably better. If not, then not.

I should also note that I was volunteering to provide what I've already done, not to work on into the future producing more conversions. I keep pestering Arnold about lrf conversions because I want to skip that step!

Xenophon

If your conversions look good, then I'd say go with those. No reason not to.