Baen Ebooks Kindles Relationship with Amazon
Passive Guy received the following email from Baen Books:
Baen Ebooks Kindles Relationship with AmazonBest-selling Baen Authors David Weber, John Ringo, Lois McMaster Bujold
Available on Amazon.com for First Time in Ebook Format.RIVERDALE, NEW YORK- Ebook pioneer Baen Books is making its ebooks available in the Kindle Store on Amazon for the first time beginning in mid to late December 2012. Science fiction and fantasy publisher Baen Books has sold its own ebooks for over fifteen years at Baen’s retail site, Baenebooks.com, where ebooks have always been downloadable totally free of digital rights restrictions. They will also be DRM-free in the Kindle Store. The move to third party distribution is new territory for Baen, which has built a name for itself in the ebook arena with an innovative e-Advanced Reading Copy program and limited time monthly discount bundles. These programs will continue, according to Toni Weisskopf, Baen’s publisher.“Now that we’re selling on Amazon, it will be easier than ever to download your favorite Weber, Ringo, or Bujold ebook to your Kindle or free Kindle reading app,” says Weisskopf. “But you can be sure we will always maintain our famous ebook pioneering spirit and customer-first orientation.”
Baen’s well-known monthly discount bundle program, previously known as Webscriptions, and its eARCs-advanced copies of upcoming titles in “galley” form-will still be available exclusively at Baenebooks.com, according to Weisskopf. “As part of the change, we will also be raising ebook royalties to our authors by 25 percent so that they not only get the benefit of the expanded audience but a larger cut, too.”
Baen is known for its New York Times bestselling science fiction and fantasy, including David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, Eric Flint’s Ring of Fire alternate histories, Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International urban fantasies, and Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga, Baen’s most recent entry on the bestsellers lists. Baen’s paper titles are distributed by Simon & Schuster.
For more information email laura@baen.com or call 1-800-ITS-BAEN.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
P.G.
I’m glad to read this. While I’m a customer of Baen, navigating their site isn’t as easy as Amazon.
Perhaps that’s because I’ve been using Amz for ages, but I still think Baen is clunky at best.
I like the DRM free. “Cue anti-pirate fire and brimstone writer indignation.”
brendan
Glad to know that Baen has finally done an other step and not try and stay in it’s former Glory.
While I applaud the visionary ebook offers, as created by Jim Baen and forwarded by the new team, I had a few doubts about it’s commercial validity in the new ebook market. This marks a new departure, and hope this step will be followed by a few others (at least making the ebooks available at the other e-booksellers), perhaps even restoring it’s place as a leading scout of the ebooks revolution
I also think this is a great decision. Authors need their publishers to have their books for sale where readers are. I can remember the first time I tried to shop for a Baen book on Amazon. I was so confused by no digital edition, until a friend explained the “deal.” I almost didn’t go check it out. Glad I did, because found some new, favorite authors, but it was a clunky website to navigate.
I’m impressed with how Baen is handling this, very customer friendly. I’ve heard good things about them from other authors – Baen is one of the few places that authors praise in terms of how the author is treated.
Well, raising ebook royalties 25% is awesome!
So glad. Better for my purchasing patterns.
I am a long time frequenter of their site – altho mainly to monitor new paper book releases. My bookshelves are stacked with Baen books – maybe 20% of my hard covers. [I collect certain authors in hard cover and even tho I am committed to ebooks - my wife and I have 4 e-readers - don't ask - I will undoubtedly continue to do so...]
So while I may buy an occasional Baen ebook, I probably also will buy Baen paper books.
Er – PS. The 25% increase is 25% of what the author currently receives – so if the author is currently on 10%, this increases the royalty to 12.5%. A modest although undoubtedly welcome move.
Oh, bah. How I hate spin. Still, I don’t see any other publishers actually *increasing* their rates to the author. At least it’s a step in the right direction~
I wonder who at Amazon finally caved? Baen tried talking to them before about distributing ebooks to Amazon’s store, but refused Amazon’s demand to stop their subscriptions and eArc service.
Kudos to Baen for sticking to their guns and being patient. They are now able to keep their subscriptions and eArcs while also distributing to Amazon. Win win for all involved, especially the readers.
I never really understood what objections Amazon would have had with the E-ARCs. Baen offers their readers the opportunity to buy a roughly edited and not proofread version of a book for about twice the price of the regular release.
B.S.
The eARCs and webscriptions are still exclusive to Baen. I think Amazon wants to be the only one providing exclusive content. On top of that, even if Baen had let Amazon sell the eARCs, the eARCs are just what you said, unedited non-proofread versions. Given the complaints I’ve heard of authors receiving over minor typos, can you imagine the complaints and demands for money back that Amazon would receive from readers who didn’t bother to read the description of just what they were purchasing? It doesn’t want exclusive content on someone else’s site, but it doesn’t want the headache eARCs would give it.
I love eARCs. I don’t mind reading galleys by an author I’m addicted to. (And to be fair, galleys by Drake or Bujold are very clean, and later editions tend to pick up editorial typos rather than the other way around.)
But the real beauty is that, if I pick out a Baen HTML version of an ebook, I can edit and annotate it as I see fit for my own use. This isn’t something you can do satisfactorily in any other format.
For example, you can’t add footnotes, weblinks, and pictures of the Tuckerized protagonists to most books, but that’s just what I did to my electronic version of Fallen Angels. It doesn’t “destroy” the ur-editions (much less my paperback), but rather adds depth and beauty.