I thought it was a shame we were expected to download ‘their’ application to read a book. This approach strikes me as rather arrogant and backwards frankly. As if I’m expected to be beholden to them for my eBooks and that I’ll subscribe to the idea of doing the same for every publisher I want eBooks from. Crazy. I’m with Oliver on what I’d usually do in this event, as it was James’s book I installed it and started to read the book. I much prefer the ‘prepared for…’ approach pragprog take.

With regards to the book I was surprised and impressed with what I had time to read. I just bought my copy from Amazon UK http://snipurl.com/rrh6j and at £5.50 it’s as good as free. Looking forward to it arriving.

[James' Reply: Do you think all books should be free or just mine?]

“It’s been really fun in my own slow way nudging HarperCollins out of the stone ages and into the dark ages. As far as I’m concerned the entire argument [of the validity of giving digital books away] was won at the point where I got them to put American Gods online…we gave it away for free for a month, and during the course of that month and for about four weeks after, the number of copies of all of my books…went up three hundred percent. As far as I’m concerned, that answered that question.”

That came from here: http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=50469&j=20726859

Gaiman’s Hugo (and Newberry) award-winning novel, “The Graveyard Book”, has been recorded and made available on line for free. Whenever the book starts to slip in the ratings, Gaiman just reminds people that they can get it free:

“Whenever I notice that [The Graveyard Book] is slipping down the Amazon ratings…I just go onto Twitter and say, ‘You know you can watch the entire thing for free,’ and then the Amazon ratings will go up. It has been out in the world for forty-three weeks, and for forty-three of those forty-three weeks it’s been in the top ten of the New York Times Bestseller list. So I don’t believe we have lost a single sale.”

I was excited to see the “Free” download. Then it came up with “download this….”. That’s where I usually hit the “Exit here” button (and use some pretty harsh language about standards and DRM). But since it cam from you I persevered and continued just to find out that your publisher & Adobe do not care for about 10% of their clients….those on Linux and/or Mac. How shortsighted! When will these people learn that their proprietary systems just peeve people off? If they are so worried about DRM why don’t they just present it online as JPG page by page and cut off your login when the trial has finished? Then everybody could read it no matter what tech.

Although I think that this action has brought more sales for you I think it was probably a really awkward experience. Personally it put me off and would have scared me away from buying. I’m convinced though that the book is good and I do want to know more on the subject so I will go and buy a copy. I’m sure you’ll bring some to Stanz?!

Cheers
Oliver

[James' Reply: People have made it work on other platforms. But anyway... It won't be out for STANZ, but a couple weeks later it will be on sale in Australia (perhaps NZ, too, I didn't ask).]

[James' Reply: About 26 years since I first agreed to write it. I can't tell which of the hours in that time count and which don't.

The biggest problem with writing a book is the vast number of ideas I don't include in it. How to choose what goes in and what stays out? It's a non-fiction book, but I had to decide whether to discuss incidents involving my son, or my first wife. Some of the events in my life are difficult to explain, so I gave up and skipped them.]

You choose to make the book alive using Editor, Proofreader and Publisher’s time, work, brain, skills and paper. There cannot be ‘free sale’ in this conditions

Such books like yours can be published without all these components – just write all words in an txt file and publish it on the satisfice.com. Is it the same effect, right – people will read and will know about what you want to say about scholarism and ‘how to teach myself’?

And, anyone, who is able to download and read the book in epub format, can make a copy for longer personal use, or for read the content in other formats. There are several ways do do that, even if there are some technical restrictions in Adobe software.

I don’t know, how much money can give the book sale itself, real money coming from the ‘Hey, this is the author of those book! It worth to make business with him!’.

PS My english is not so brilliant as yours, so I hope for mercy to my grammar.

[James' Reply: I do give away a lot of content on the theory that it brings me reputation and therefore business. I think it's worked pretty well. In this instance, I'm working with a major publisher, so I'm bound to do it their way.]

I found this forum discussion useful.

And here’s someone else reading it under Wine http://tejasconsulting.com/blog/?p=219

I didn’t find I needed any “hackery” to get it to install, but my setup is likely different.

As I mentioned on another post here, I think this can be done without a Windows machine – try using a browser that lets you fake the agent string to look like you’re running Windows, or install a Windows web browser under wine and use that for the download.

and here:
http://www.baen.com/library/palaver_index.htm
which is lengthy, but worthwhile. Especially issue #11, written by Janis Ian.

Your publisher is wrong. Giving away books DRM-free on the internet gets you more sales, not less, and the Baen authors have proved that.

I later downloaded at my home (broadband) .. it just worked fine.

Anyway thanks James ( and your publishers) for this FREE dowload (conditions applied).

Shrini