I can climb the highest mountain; I can cross the wildest sea

[rolanni]

Called CIGNA this afternoon, explained the problem and got it taken care of in less time than it had taken to navigate the phone tree and actually reach a live human. Thank you, Brittany; it is rare and bright and very welcome, to find something that was easier to do than I had feared.

Moving on with the evening’s work, I compiled and uploaded Duty Bound: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number Three (copyright date: December 3, 1999. Um, eek.), and Shadows and Shades: AitLU Number Eight.

The electrifying project has really brought home how long we’ve been doing this writing thing — and I’m only dealing with work from the First Rebirth — and how much we’ve written. Yeah, it’s taken us dern near 30 years (with, yanno, a ten-year gap in the middle), but still — that’s an impressive little mountain of words we’ve got here.

Probably no echapbooks uploaded tomorrow — we have class — but my intent is to see this thing done. We’ve uploaded fourteen; only — what? — eleven? twelve? more to go? Piece o’cake.

After we get the existing paper chapbooks in the Kindle and Nook stores, then we’ll start expanding our distribution base. It remains Highly Improbable that these books will be offered at Webscriptions. This is why. Remember that Nook = epub and Kindle = mobi, and that we are making the electronic chapbooks available DRM-free.

And now, it’s time for lunch.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[liadan-m.livejournal.com]

Understanding Webscriptions' limitations - which chapbooks are *not* included in the Great AitLU Pts 1 & 2?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Best answer I know -- go over here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaden_universe and scroll down to the short stories part. There's a large table that tries to explain which chapbooks are where...

LUC does not equal Unibus

[psw456.livejournal.com]

Except that the Liaden Unibus volumes from Baen do not match with the printed Liaden Universe Companions. Unibus 2 has Allies (#12) and Necessary Evils (#11) which LUC2 doesn't...

Re: LUC does not equal Unibus

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Excellent point! So... take a look now, and let me know if there are any other errors?

Re: LUC does not equal Unibus

[robotech-master.livejournal.com]

The Liaden Universe Big Bang (Unibi) was put together a couple of years after the Companions, at which time two more Chapbooks had been published (and so were available for collection).

They were not a straight transcription of the Companions. They were a way to gather up everything that currently existed and make it available electronically, along with the two e-novel collections, so that old or new fans who wanted to pick up (almost) everything written in the universe to date could do so electronically right away even though it was going to be months or years before everything could be reprinted in paper.

(And it was also a way to start earning some income for the authors, given that Meisha Merlin had gone under without paying them royalties in any form other than a U-Haul truckload of books from their warehouse.)

There are a number of key differences between the Companions and the Unibi.

For one thing, the Unibi do not include "King of the Cats" from Companion 1 (chapbook: "The Cat's Job") or "Sweet Waters" from Companion 2 (chapbook: "Calamity's Child"). I seem to recall the publication rights to those were tied up elsewhere at the time. (I'm sure if I'm wrong I'll be corrected.)

Also, the stories in the Companions are sorted by subject and internal chronology (all the early-days-of-Korval stories grouped together, all the Moonhawk and Lute stories grouped together) and the stories in the Unibi are listed in chapbook publication order (which puts "The Wine of Memory" several stories after "Moonphase", among other things).

The authors are up to publishing Chapbook 17 now. I wouldn't be surprised if, when they hit 20 in a couple of years, everything from 11 and up (plus "Intelligent Design" forthcoming from the website) was gathered into a Liaden Universe Companion 3, and perhaps Baen would reprint 1 & 2 at the same time. But that's just me guessing (and hoping).

(It's probably too much to hope for that they'd shuffle and reorder everything together into one single Liaden Universe Mega-Companion—the two existing Companions are already decently thick as trade paperbacks as it is. :))

Re: LUC does not equal Unibus

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

For one thing, the Unibi do not include "King of the Cats" from Companion 1 (chapbook: "The Cat's Job") or "Sweet Waters" from Companion 2 (chapbook: "Calamity's Child"). I seem to recall the publication rights to those were tied up elsewhere at the time. (I'm sure if I'm wrong I'll be corrected.)

Correction. As it happens, Toni wanted stories from Liaden chapbooks, since the request in the Bar had been for Liaden chapbooks. Neither "Calamity's Child," nor "King of the Cats" appears in a Liaden chapbook.

Re: LUC does not equal Unibus

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

You really don;t want us to do more shuffling right now, though, right? Dragon Ship needs words, too.

[(Anonymous)]

The Unibus volumes are AitLU #s 1 through 12 -- if you haven't been reading them, Misfits, Halfling Moon, and Skyblaze (#s 15 through 17) are all really great.
I'm looking forward to buying Eidolon as soon as it is uploaded -- I haven't read it yet.

I can also confirm that the Amazon chapbooks are getting sent out as DRM free -- I don't have a Kindle, but it's a simple step to get them onto my Sony eReader.

-James McCain
Atlanta, GA