Let's pause for a moment to remember who we're talking about when we're dealing with Baen Books. These guys sell Science Fiction books, and the market for science fiction books include a disproportionate number of geeks like me. Geeks like me were the early adopters of ebooks. Yes, I own a SONY Reader--one of the first ebook readers that came out when the Kindle first did. And yes, I paid way too much for it.Moreover, Baen has been one of the best publishers to embrace the hacker ethics of anti-DRM and giving away the titles that would otherwise go out of print.
It's a great loss-leader to have a series of N books with a give away of the first half of the series. We'll just give you a taste, a sample, to get you hooked. Baen learned this way back when.Put all these factors together and it made sense for Baen to put together a book-selling-and-giving-away operation that was independent of Amazon's Kindle site.
But not playing nice with Amazon had its downside as I discussed above. Sure, I can follow the procedure outlined in that note, but it's a lot easier to push the Buy-Now-With-1-Click button. For an early adopter like me, the procedure I used to buy Sarah Hoyt's Darkship novels makes a lot of sense.
Nevertheless, the world of ebooks and ereaders has evolved from us early-adopters to the mainstream. In the years that have elapsed, Amazon has dropped its DRM requirement, so the hacker ethic is now OK with buying ebooks from Amazon's Kindle store.
The downside, if there is one, is that Baen cannot give away books for free or charge $6.00 for titles that would otherwise go for $9.99.
So, if you know of any Baen titles you want to buy at $6.00 or snag for free, you'd better move fast before Baen's agreement with Amazon goes into force.
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