Sean Williams

Good stuff! It really makes sense to release the first book in a series for free like this, because it can only serve to hook in new readers.

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Excellent! I already own this book in paperback, but i'm more likely to read it as an e-book. Any idea if they are likely to release it in formats other than PDF? Something more PDF friendly would be nice (MS Reader or better yet Mobipocket?)

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ladnews.livejournal.com

PDF it is, at the moment, but I'll make sure they hear your request!

Edited Date: 2009-02-28 03:15 am (UTC)

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I am following in your footsteps. :-)

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Many others came before me, that's for sure. Cory Doctorow has been pushing the freebie ebook for ages, and he's not the only one.

I'm just glad more publishers are getting on board.

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paulhaines.livejournal.com

Interesting! Luckily I have a flesh and blood copy of this brain-hurting-expanding-busting book (thank you, kind sir, it is simply amazing in its vision) because I still no like reading electronically, but I find myself quickly becoming an old person these days.

Do you get anything out of this arrangement?

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In the interim, one possibly is to download mobipocket desktop reader or creator, and convert yourself a mobipocket version with that.

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Thanks!

You could also say for the first one, Weird by way of Mark Chadbourn.

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*Looks around furtively*
What makes you think I'd do something like that, guvnor...

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So you can read it? :)

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I do own it as a paperback, and digital format wars have never really slowed me down. I'm not going to feel guilty reading a book in a different format to what it was supplied in.

I'm a big fan of e-books, and unsuprisingly have purchased in Dead Tree Edition many of the ones I have read.

Why e-books? Easy to read one handed on a crowded train.

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I'd be curious too.

Mind you if I was Sean, I'd be letting the Boing Boing crowd know which would be good for a couple of million downloads and the resulting "surge" in sales. Baen consistently report a massive upswing in sales of a Dead Tree Edition book shortly after the e-book version has been released.

Cheap, wide publicity, and how many of us grab a friend and say "Hey I just read a GREAT book. You should BUY it!".
(Hint: I pimped several Stross books at a recent con on the grounds I'd read them as e-books before buying them. It may not work on everyone but I am certainly a sucker for it)

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Right, that is what I meant, that sentence is ambiguous now that I look at it.

So you then have it in the format that is useful to you. e.g. mobipocket.

I've read it, but to put it on the one-handed PDA device has to be html or txt for me to convert via Plucker.

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Nothing but a warm fuzzy feeling. Which suits me, to be honest.

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Cory is a legend, of course. And I was very pleased to see this news up on Boing Boing already:
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/28/sean-williamss-darwi.html

Hot off the press!

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Yet another author I really must read. You recommend him?

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I think BoingBoing took the Hal Spacejock freebie ebook press release as a practical joke, or more likely binned it as spam. They wouldn't be the only ones ;-)

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I let BoingBoing know when the first Hal book came out as a freebie download last year (as mentioned further up this comment thread), but no joy. I'm not an internationally recognised author, so it probably wasn't much of a news story outside Australia.

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Yeah, unreservedly.

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