From the email bag

[rolanni]

Steve and I are often asked which bookstore sales give us the most royalties on our books.  The answer to that is:  We get the same percentage of cover, no matter where the book is sold; our piece of the action is set in our contract with our publisher.  So, please, buy our books at your favorite bookstore, but -- do buy :)

Today brings an inquiry regarding which ebook store we prefer our novels to be downloaded from.

That's both an easier and a more complicated answer.

The only source for Lee-and-Miller, and Lee, eNovels (saving The Tomorrow Log, Barnburner, and Gunshy, about which more in a moment) is Baen Ebooks.  Here's your link.

The source for Lee-and-Miller, and Lee, eChapbooks, and! novels The Tomorrow Log, Barnburner, and Gunshy) is Pinbeam Books, which is owned and operated by Lee and Miller.  Here's your link.

To reiterate, the only source for Lee-and-Miller, and Lee, eNovels is Baen Ebooks.

Now!  You may download books from Baen in all the popular formats, DRM-Free (that means you can put your books on multiple devices and aren't locked into one bookstore, like, say, Amazon, or BN):

• Mobi/Kindle/Palm
• EPUB/Nook/Stanza
• Sony LRF
• Rocketbook
• RTF
• MS Reader
• HTML/Online

And there are instructions for putting your books on your iThing, Kindle, and Nook.

I have heard from more than one person that even with the instructions, it's hard to get the books onto Nooks and/or Kindles.  If you've found that to be so, then the very best thing you can do, for yourself, for Baen, for your favorite authors, and for other ebook readers, is to write to Baen eBook Support and calmly detail the difficulties you're having.  We all want your books to work.  Here's the email address (you will need to put an @ in the correct place and remove the AT):  baensupportATprincipledtechnologies.com.

#

Regarding eReaders. . .Let me share my experience.

My Android phone actually convinced me  that I liked reading eBooks, and led directly to my purchase of my very first eReader -- the basic black-and-white Nook.  I was very happy with it, but BN stopped supporting it after awhile, and the reader itself started to act wonky, and so I looked around for another eReader to replace it.

I quickly became convinced that buying a subpar tablet tied specifically to a store that imposed DRM on my purchases was not in my own best interest.  So, I started shopping Real Tablets.  I shopped HARD, found a sale, and have been for a while the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy 7.0 Plus, which does email, plays music, streams videos, and a dozen other things that I'll never use (just like the Kindle Fire and the Nook), but! it also allows me access to  multiple eReaders.

I have a Nook reader, a Kindle reader, and Aldiko Premium on my tablet, so I'm not tied to one platform, and I'm not tied to one vendor.

If I had it to do over again, I'd probably buy a Google Nexus Tablet -- Steve has one, and it's a lot easier to use than the Galaxy (plus Samsung does some annoying things about trying to lock users into their protocols, which, had I known, I might've waited a little longer for the Google Tab, myself) -- and costs no more than the new Kindles and Nooks.

So, that's my story, and I hope it's useful.

Comments

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

I like dedicated ereaders because I love how light they are and how long their batteries last. It used to be that I carried a paperback or two everywhere and took hours to pack my books when going on a trip. Now I just bring my Kindle, and a paperback or two if the trip involves an airplane. Haven't found it at all difficult to load books onto my Kindle, but then I'm a geek.

I hate DRM for a variety of practical and ideological reasons. (I do know one can strip DRM. I even know how to do it. But why should I have to break the law in order to do entirely legitimate things such change the formats of my legitimately-purchased files, or restore a new Kindle from a broken Kindle's backup in one step?)

eReader

[chaddaï fouché (from livejournal.com)]

I personally use a Sony reader PRS-T1 (I also have an Asus Transformer but that's less satisfying to read on) and love the Baen store, it's basically the only one that gets everything right (all type of eBooks format, all DRM-free, and you can redownload anytime if you lost or corrupted your files).

For all those that have problems with their eBooks, I would suggest using the free software Calibre ( http://calibre-ebook.com/ ) which is an ebooks collection manager that handle all kind of devices, Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, iBooks...

[estara.livejournal.com]

I ditto this comment, apart from the fact that I have PRS-T2 (my third Sony eReader)

Re: eReader

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

I don't know the Sony reader, but I heartily second the recommendation for Calibre. It manages your downloaded books superbly and will copy selected files to any device. It will also convert your ebooks if you have the wrong format (e.g. I've purchased non-DRM epub files, and it converts them to mobi for my Kindle.) And ... Calibre itself is a law-abiding program and won't break your DRM, but it enables unlimited plugins, so you can install a plugin from a less law-abiding source and strip DRM off your files.