Free (DRM-free) Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett [Vintage Sci-Fi Post-Apocalypse COA]

[ATDrake]

The Long Tomorrow by the late Leigh Brackett (ISFDB, Wikipedia) is her Hugo Award-nominated vintage post-apocalyptic coming-of-age science fiction novel starring two brothers and their lives in a US altered by a nuclear holocaust as they go on both a journey of adventure as well as self-discovery, free courtesy of publisher Phoenix Pick Press, who are e-printing it from its 1955 Doubleday edition.

This is their featured Free eBook of the Month for March, and has been placed on the list of "SF: The 100 Best Novels 1949-1984" over at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. I've actually bought this one during a previous PPP sale years ago and quite liked it when I read it and would recommend.

Currently free, throughout the month of March directly @ the publisher's promo page (DRM-free ePub & Mobi bundle available worldwide in return for your valid email address)

There's also a tie-in deal to get additional vintage works by authors closely associated with Brackett: for $6.99, you can get a bundle of Best of Edmond Hamilton (Brackett's husband, and she edits and provides an introduction to this collection), a Best of Hal Clement collection, and L. Sprague de Camp's time travel classic Lest Darkness Fall. This is very good value for some excellent old school science fiction, though you may already have portions of it from other PPP giveaways and special offers throughout the years.

Description
One of the original novels of post-nuclear-holocaust America, The Long Tomorrow is considered by many to be one of the finest science fiction novels ever written on the subject. The story has inspired generations of new writers and is still as mesmerizing today as when it was originally written.

Len and Esau are young cousins living decades after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization as we know it. The rulers of the post-war community have forbidden the existence of large towns and consider technology evil.

However, Len and Esau long for more than their simple agrarian existence. Rumors of mythical Bartorstown, perhaps the last city in existence, encourage the boys to embark on a journey of discovery and adventure that will call into question not only firmly held beliefs, but the boys' own personal convictions.

[Dr. Drib]

Got it.

Thank you!

[AlexBell]

Thanks

[datcha]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

The Long Tomorrow by the late Leigh Brackett (ISFDB, Wikipedia) is her Hugo Award-nominated vintage post-apocalyptic coming-of-age science fiction novel ...

This is their featured Free eBook of the Month for March, and has been placed on the list of "SF: The 100 Best Novels 1949-1984" over at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. I've actually bought this one during a previous PPP sale years ago and quite liked it when I read it and would recommend.

Currently free, throughout the month of March directly @ the publisher's promo page (DRM-free ePub & Mobi bundle available worldwide in return for your valid email address)

There's also a tie-in deal to get additional vintage works by authors closely associated with Brackett: for $6.99, you can get a bundle of Best of Edmond Hamilton (Brackett's husband, and she edits and provides an introduction to this collection), a Best of Hal Clement collection, and L. Sprague de Camp's time travel classic Lest Darkness Fall. This is very good value for some excellent old school science fiction, though you may already have portions of it from other PPP giveaways and special offers throughout the years.
[/I]

You state that "The long tomorrow" is free and that the 4 books bundle is $6.99. Actually these are the minimum prices, and their recommended price for the bundle is actually $12.99, though one can pay even more, or less downto $7. I am new to this and trying to understand. Is your description a shorthand way of giving the information, or is it the case that most people pay the minimum price. The latter can make sense when one buys a lot of bundles, more books that one is going to read, and inputting in the system as much cash as one ever will. It would not make sense with paper books, but does with ebooks that have no marginal cost.

I hope it is not improper to ask this kind of question here.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by datcha

Is your description a shorthand way of giving the information, or is it the case that most people pay the minimum price.

Both. Most people pay the minimum price for the tier that they want, just as they do with bundles from other sources such as Humble Bundle, which may or may not contain extra titles they are not interested in, although of course you are welcome to pay more if you like, just as the people listed on the Top Contributors leaderboard at HB quite often do. And I figure that people will see the higher suggested price when they actually visit the page, so I needn't mention it, any more than I need mention the default setting for the slider on a StoryBundle offering, which is usually well above their top tier price.

Phoenix Pick Press is quite generous with the freebies and offers more closely-targeted tie-in deals than most retailers. But the cumulative result of their previous sales and bundle offers quite often means that one will already have a few books in the current bundle offer anyway.

I've skipped the past half year's worth of tie-in deals myself because I've usually already bought enough of the offered books that it would have been cheaper to buy the "missing" ones at full price rather than rebuying the lot in the new bundle, even with the significant discounts.

Hope this helps.

[datcha]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Hope this helps.

It does. Thanks. Ebooks economics is fascinating, and dealing with it is not obvious.

[ATDrake]

Just a reminder that this will probably be the last day to pick up the freebie or get the tie-in bundle if you haven't already.

[datcha]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Just a reminder that this will probably be the last day to pick up the freebie or get the tie-in bundle if you haven't already.

Apparently the March 2016 Phoenix Pick Bundle (and I guess the freebie alone, if you limit your ambition to that), based on The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett, is still available, this April third.

There is a possibility that it might stay longer (but why wait?) as, there will not be a new one for April. Arc Manor / Phoenix Pick subscribers received a Newsletter apologizing for this fisrt no-freebie month since June 2010, due to a family loss. We can only express our sympathy to friends who are serving so well our common interests in science fiction and fantasy.

They intend to be at Ravencon at the end of April, so that things should resume in May.

By, the way, the web and its servers can sometimes be lenient on deadlines. May, if you try hard enough, you might find another bundle still accessible.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by datcha

By, the way, the web and its servers can sometimes be lenient on deadlines. May, if you try hard enough, you might find another bundle still accessible.

I wish they would leave past ones up but disable the purchase links for the freebie & discounted bundles. Been a couple of times I really wanted to get the summary off those pages when adding my book to Calibre, but they'd already been taken down.

[datcha]

Originally Posted by Manabi

I wish they would leave past ones up but disable the purchase links for the freebie & discounted bundles. Been a couple of times I really wanted to get the summary off those pages when adding my book to Calibre, but they'd already been taken down.

StoryBundle does provide this service in its archive.

Personally, I always download a copy of the book description page when I download, from whatever supplier, and I archive it. You can also go to another current supplier. But also, if you like the original, the Wayback Machine can sometimes be your friend. Actually, I suspect the more you use it and the more friendly it is (David Brin must have some influence, after all). See for example http://web.archive.org/web/201311080....bookbale.com/.

What I find hard to get sometimes is a nice high-resolution cover. I expect screen size and screen resolution of ereaders to increase in the future (not to mention existing pads). While covers and books illustrations, when any, can be adequate for ereaders today, I do not expect them to remain adequate on future hardware. Of course this also goes for illustrations found inside the story, either in the original magazine publication, or in some of the nicer old editions.

Finding nice illustrations on the web, with enough resolution, may require some ingenuity. Then there is also an issue of illustration copyright. But dealing with it properly seems nearly hopeless.

Then, some graphic artists are inspired by books, sometimes apparently just for the pleasure. For example, I have in mind illustrations for the works of Cordwainer Smith, both color and BW.

I wonder whether there is an application to easily insert and adapt images in an existing (EPUB) ebook, at some specified page. I know about cover insertion that can be done with Calibre.

[Manabi]

There's a Flickr Hi-Res Science Fiction Book Covers pool that's incredibly useful for Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Also a couple of other book cover albums I've found as well. (Mostly Sci-Fi/Fantasy as well.) And Fantastic Fiction is a good resource, but I can usually find higher resolution scans elsewhere than what they have.

It is frustrating when you just can't find any decent resolution cover for a book. And it amazes me how many purchased eBooks will have no real cover image in them. The Amazon page will show a cover, but it's not actually in the eBook itself. I'm more inclined to overlook this if the book was a freebie, but if I've paid for it, it should have a bloody cover image in it!

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Manabi

It is frustrating when you just can't find any decent resolution cover for a book. And it amazes me how many purchased eBooks will have no real cover image in them. The Amazon page will show a cover, but it's not actually in the eBook itself. I'm more inclined to overlook this if the book was a freebie, but if I've paid for it, it should have a bloody cover image in it!

I've had a surprisingly high number of generic cover ebooks where the actual cover was included in the epub but just not used in the ebook.