Download button no longer on Tor.com

[Hatgirl]

As you probably know, Tor.com periodically posts free new stories from established authors. You can read them online or download them in a number of formats.

Or at least you used to. Today I went to download some of the new ones, and discovered the download button has disappeared from all of the stories. It used to be on the left-hand side of the screen. See?

http://www.tor.com/stories/2008/07/after-the-coup

Well, this sucks.

[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by Hatgirl

As you probably know, Tor.com periodically posts free new stories from established authors. You can read them online or download them in a number of formats.

Or at least you used to. Today I went to download some of the new ones, and discovered the download button has disappeared from all of the stories. It used to be on the left-hand side of the screen. See?

http://www.tor.com/stories/2008/07/after-the-coup

Well, this sucks.

Probably getting ready to sell you those stories at LOW LOW PRICES! ACT NOW AND GET A FREE FRONTAL LOBOTOMY! EVERYTHING MUST GO! HALF PRICE WITH THIS COUPON! NO MONEY BACK!

[perost]

It seems to me like it's only old stories that don't have a download link. The one you linked is for example more than two years old, and after a quick look at tor.com I can't find any stories from 2008 that has a download link. Perhaps they simply didn't start to offer downloads until 2009?

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by perost

Perhaps they simply didn't start to offer downloads until 2009?

Nope, they've offered downloads since the site started.

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by perost

It seems to me like it's only old stories that don't have a download link. The one you linked is for example more than two years old, and after a quick look at tor.com I can't find any stories from 2008 that has a download link. Perhaps they simply didn't start to offer downloads until 2009?

Aha, you have spotted something. It seems to be the early ones that are gone (but not everything from 2008, Jack and the Aktuals is still available to download).

After the Coup was definitely available on 20 Jul 2010 (I wrote a post on the author's website about the formats available for that story). So this is a recent removal.

It doesn't suck as much I thought, but it's still pretty sucky.

[catsittingstill]

_Firstborn_ didn't have a download button. I picked "print" from the remaining options and saved it as a pdf. It loads to my Kindle okay but the print is pretty small, even viewed half a page at a time in landscape.

I tried upping the print size in the web page, but the Kindle wouldn't open the resulting pdf, saying that it had "embedded features not yet supported by the Kindle."

Stanza will convert the pdf to azw, but the illustration goes bye-bye and I get the footers from the pdf embedded in the text periodically. Stanza will convert the web page itself to azw, but then there's no picture...

[ATDrake]

Tor.com deliberately removed the downloads from at least 13 stories late last month, so that they could better push them for 99 cents each in the Sony/B&N/Amazon/iBooks stores.

I'd link to the official blog post about the decision to monetize things this way, but I bookmarked it on the other computer and it wasn't that easy to find in the first place.

Personally, I think they're making a mistake, because by limiting e-reader friendly downloadable versions to only those stores, they're likely also geo-restricting, not to mention format and DRM-locking, what their non-US/UK/Canadian readers are able to get.

Better to continue to offer the downloads free to all readers on their site as a goodwill thing, and have the pay versions as a tip-jar for people who want to give back to authors they've enjoyed.

Or do as they did for those four Nebula/Hugo Award nominees and make them promotional freebies in the stores to lure readers in and incidentally boost their profile, because the free books usually end up on the bestseller lists, at least on Amazon. Not to mention, lots of people just download them indiscriminately, and if someone happens to try and enjoy something they wouldn't have normally gotten even for 99 cents, then that's another potential future paying reader for that author/publisher's works.

I know that getting Stross' Overtime as a Kindle freebie is directly leading to my tracking down and reading his related "Laundry" books once I've got some spare change/time.

Baen and Cory Doctorow give away a tonne of free books this way and it doesn't seem to be hurting their sales.

Anyway, I've been advising people to download any remaining stories they might want to read in all the formats they might think they need, just in case.

[catsittingstill]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

(snip)
Anyway, I've been advising people to download any remaining stories they might want to read in all the formats they might think they need, just in case.

Yeah, I just went through and downloaded everything that would download and used Stanza to pick up everything that wouldn't. Now my collection is complete :-) I wish I'd done it before, though, because Stanza doesn't collect the pictures.

Let that be a lesson to me.

[Hatgirl]

I tweeted them today about this, and Irene Gallo replied with a link to the June 2010 post on Tor.com that ATDrake mentioned:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/07/fee...ader-revisited

...
Starting tomorrow, twelve of the first thirteen original stories published on Tor.com will be available on a bunch of e-book platforms, including the Kindle store, Apple’s iBooks store, Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore, the Kobo store, and the Sony Reader store, for 99 cents each. These are in effect little e-chapbooks, complete with the original Tor.com art on their “covers,” designed to work properly with the current generation of e-book devices and reading programs.
.....
As these stories become available for sale, they’ll remain freely available on Tor.com. We’ll be taking down the downloadable versions—the ePub and PDF files, and so forth—but the stories will still be complete on the site, along with their downloadable audio. This is all an experiment on everybody’s part, Amazon’s and Apple’s and B&N’s and everyone else’s, and ours as well.
...

First off, how nice were they to get back to me so promptly? Yay for technology and polite people!


Secondly. Still sucks. What was once DRM-free and available internationally is now DRM infected and georestricted to the US. (I don't have a problem with the Pay A Dollar for a Pretty Cover idea, though. I'd pay it. But I am a sad, sad individual who buys variant cover comics).

[Hatgirl]

UPDATE:

And now, less than six months later, all Tor.com stories are DRM infected and georestricted to the US. Gah. At least they still let me read them online

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/02/the...d-your-readerq

[ATDrake]

Great. Right after I spent the weekend talking up Tor.com as a source of free downloadable short stories by big-name genre authors to a salesguy at the Chapters Kobo display to entice people into buying e-readers with.

And of course they've made it unilateral by not leaving the downloadable versions up and encouraging people to buy the pay versions as a tipjar, but instead surprise-removing the lot with no notice to blog readers, as far as I can tell.

Also while locking a lot of people out of getting the e-reader-friendly files entirely because DRM and geo-restricted, and possibly with bonus Whispernet fee if buying via Amazon (not to mention taxes).

Sometimes I think it's not the Holtzbrink-whoever higher-ups who are blocking Tor's entry to a Webscriptions-like customer-friendly sales model, but Tor themselves, whacking their readers over the head with the rifle before shooting themselves in the foot.

[starrigger]

You know, it might also have to do with what rights they purchased from the authors and for how long. I recall seeing a story in December that I would have liked to download, but it was only available for online reading.

Maybe we could just be grateful that we got a bunch of stories to download for free over the years, and not complain because they weren't free forever. I'm disappointed when I miss out on a freebie, too, but still.

I did the same thing with several novels that I gave away for over two years. I decided it was time to see if they could start paying their way. Nobody has complained to me so far. (Knock on wood.)

[ATDrake]

Usually the non-downloadable stories were reprints, like the Neil Gaiman thing and the Kage Baker one and the Ellen Kushner chapbook which were posted in recent months.

It used to be that the downloadable ones were the Tor.com originals which they'd presumably commissioned especially for the site.

I myself don't particularly care if they want to additionally monetize what they've got. I'm perfectly capable of making my own ePubs from the online versions if I want a portable copy.

But I do think that yanking the openly available downloads just as the e-reader market is really starting to take off now that the devices are at a much more affordable price and gaining media attention is disadvantageous to Tor and the participating authors from a promotional perspective.

The first thing people do when they get a reader is look for stuff to put on it. Preferably free stuff, which then hopefully leads people to try the paid stuff.

I myself went and bought several of Charles Stross' (whom I'd never read before even though they've got plenty in the library) books purely on the strength of his Tor.com stories, which I'd downloaded and read on public transit using my Kindle; something I might not have done if I'd had to find time to sit down at the computer to go through them.

And I've also gone and bought a number of sequel or same author/imprint books after having been offered another to read free during the standard time-limited publisher promotions in the major stores.

As I mentioned upthread, I spent some time talking up various free downloadable e-book sources such as the Baen Free Library and MobileRead and the now defunct Tor.com short stories to a Kobo salesguy as a possible selling point to add to his customer pitch.

How many people here on MR and elsewhere, tend to first mention places with at least a small free section (Feedbooks, All Romance eBooks, those Try Harlequin/Mills & Boon sites, Cory Doctorow) to the newbies asking where they can get stuff to put on their reader?

I know that I certainly talk up publishers like Night Shade Books (well, not so much since the unfortunate royalty non-payment incident) and authors like Peter Watts who've made a few of their books available for free download.

And I'm much more likely to recommend something of theirs when suitable requests pop up during discussion, because I definitely prefer to point potentially interested people to something they're officially encouraged to sample in full at no cost beyond their time.

It's as simple as that. Openly offering easy-to-get free stuff (even if you rotate it) is often good publicity for your paid stuff.

Sure, you might not make every last penny off of it that you could if you charged, but it gives the impression of generosity and creates goodwill, which people tend to meet with slightly more open wallets then perhaps they normally would.

I've gone and bought e-books that I could likely have read from the library, or perhaps have found more cheaply second-hand, from authors whose works I've managed to sample from free giveaways and decided that I wanted to repay their open-handedness by putting some money into it, even if it turned out I didn't really enjoy their writing all that much and likely wouldn't have paid out of my own pocket to read it under regular market circumstances.

And I don't think I'm that much of a statistical outlier.

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Maybe we could just be grateful that we got a bunch of stories to download for free over the years, and not complain because they weren't free forever. I'm disappointed when I miss out on a freebie, too, but still.

Oh, I have no problem with them moving from Free to Paid. I'm quite happy to pay money for a quality product. What has me upset is that what was once DRM-free and available internationally is now DRM infected and georestricted to the US.

*waves a stack of Euros* my money may look different, but I assure you Tor.com could convert it with very little difficulty if they would just let me buy their damn product!

[starrigger]

Yeah, I hate that they've gone the DRM route, too. I was pretty much promised DRM-free on my Tor novel, Sunborn, but guess what. And I'm still trying to find out why there are geo-restrictions on it, since I didn't ask for any in the rights clause. Probably an administrative error, but those can be the hardest to find and fix.