What’s Better than the Baen Free Library and available for your Kindle/ Kindle 2?
Before the answer, A Request: If you read these books and like them please do buy one or more of them to support Baen.
Baen obviously are not prepared for a world where people can download books to their Kindles instead of having to struggle with computer screens and PDAs. Perhaps I don’t see the genius of this ‘free everything’ strategy.
Anyways, without further delay, here are -
With the first book in each of their Sci-Fi series Baen includes a CD that has all the books in the series.
Originally the idea must have been to encourage users to take a look at one or two books and get them to buy the others - since no reasonable person would attempt to read through a whole series on their computer screens or on their pdas.
Since we now have Kindles and the books are available in Mobi format, it means any Kindle owner basically has access to ALL Baen Books in ALL of these Series – and for Free.
It’s not a ‘try out the first Temeraire novel and then if you like it buy the rest’. Its every single book in the series available in .mobi format. And lots and lots of series.
The series that are available include -
- David Weber’s Honor Harrington Series - All the Books. Since I have physical copies of some David Webers, testing the CD .Mobi files seemed ok, and they worked.
- John Ringo’s A Hymn Before Battle and all the books in the Empire of Man series.
- David Drake’s Far Side of the Stars, and all the books in the Legacy of the Aldenata Series.
- David Drake’s When the Tide Rises.
- Paladin of Shadows Series.
- This Scepter’d Isle by Mercedes Lackey & Roberta Gellis, and the books in that series.
- Starfire Series with Steve White.
- A lot more.
In all there are 26 CDs, and even accounting for overlaps that’s a ton of free books, and they are complete series. All in .mobi format which works on your Kindle (tested on Kindle 2 for a few of the books).
I’ll just repeat what the site owner for the site hosting the CDs has said -
The Baen CDs hosted here are freely-distributable disks provided to promote the sale of the books contained within. Baen allows these CDs to be distributed not simply to provide free electronic copies of their books, but to generate sales for those same books. They are a medium of advertising.
Please remember that just because these books are being provided at no cost does not mean that they are in the Public Domain.
If you download any of the disks, please take the time to go to the Baen Webscription site and buy a copy of at least the CD’s primary ebook. For a modest investment of about $6, you can buy the book, which gives you access to a downloadable copy of the CD, anyway. Or you can buy the entire Webscription month that the CD accompanies for $15 and/or buy the book in paper form.
Basically if you like the books buy one or more so that Baen can continue this model of offering its books for free. Part of me thinks they just don’t realize that the Kindle makes this model unworkable. Perhaps I’m wrong and people will pay for books that they feel are worth it.
Finally, this link was somewhere on MobileRead.
Filed under: free books Tagged: | baen free strategy, lack thereof
I read dozens of Baen books on my pda or my phone.
wow – impressive. i got through most of one of the Dune books before realizing that it was beyond me.
[...] is from the Kindle 2 Review (at least I think that’s the name of the blog, the owner’s nomenclature is awfully [...]
Baen believe in this concept call trust – and this other concept known to crack dealers the world over – get the punter hooked and he’ll pay later.
In my experience it works too. You will end up visiting webscriptions and buying more books if you like these ones. You may end up buying these ones too. You’ll probably end up buying eARCs of the next David Weber at $15 a shot.
And quite possibly you’ll stop buying ebooks from other publishers who treat their readers like potential thieves
Good afternoon,
I will have my Kindle 3G WiFi in about 5 weeks time. I have read all the Honour Harrington storiesand would like to read them again. I have “Off Armageddon Reef” David Weber, “The March”series with John Ringo, and John Ringos” ” The Vorpal Blade”. Buying these books cost me considerably more than the face cost. No complaints. The books were great. I do though not agree with Amazon’s oncosts. They are pretty prohibitive.
What I do do is promote Baen Books at every opportunity, even loaning my precious books to virtual strangers. Fortunately I do get them back.
Does this establish my eligibilty?
As an old worn out Aussie soldier I enquired as to my eligibilty to access free books from Baen some years.I believed I was accepted as I am on a Veteran Affairs Pension one level below Totally Incapicated.
For your Consideration
Hi Bill, not sure i understand your question.
You can go to Baen Impaerium and get all the Honor Harrington books for free in Kindle format.