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Well, it's official...
Apr. 5th, 2006 12:08 pmSomeone at Tor's parent company, Holtzbrinck Publishers, is dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Sue me if you like, messieurs, but truth is a defence, as you very well know.
In March this year, Tor arranged with Jim Baen for a trial release of an unencrypted ebook version of their paperbacks (ie. we're not even going to talk about the riskier hardcovers). This was going to happen through Jim's highly profitable and expanding Webscriptions setup, with a ready market of people who've been buying unencrypted Baen ebooks, monthly packages, and now e-ARCs, for 7 years now. The news went out through Charles Stross and various other channels, and gleefully excited readers were lining up with their much-abused credit cards to wait for the new books to appear. They'd even agreed that the limitation to paperbacks and the higher pricing for Tor books than for Baen's own list was acceptable - because these would be functional ebooks, not just horrendously crippled DRM copies.
So what happened?
Holtzbrinck pulled the plug on Tor. No, you can't possibly learn from the example of a successful e-publisher. NO, you can't sell those books to customers in a format that they want!
Heaven forbid that even a limited innovation should go ahead.
They just decided to spit in the face of the people lining up to pay them real money for their ebooks. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a publishing company make money by selling copies of its intellectual property?
In March this year, Tor arranged with Jim Baen for a trial release of an unencrypted ebook version of their paperbacks (ie. we're not even going to talk about the riskier hardcovers). This was going to happen through Jim's highly profitable and expanding Webscriptions setup, with a ready market of people who've been buying unencrypted Baen ebooks, monthly packages, and now e-ARCs, for 7 years now. The news went out through Charles Stross and various other channels, and gleefully excited readers were lining up with their much-abused credit cards to wait for the new books to appear. They'd even agreed that the limitation to paperbacks and the higher pricing for Tor books than for Baen's own list was acceptable - because these would be functional ebooks, not just horrendously crippled DRM copies.
So what happened?
Holtzbrinck pulled the plug on Tor. No, you can't possibly learn from the example of a successful e-publisher. NO, you can't sell those books to customers in a format that they want!
Heaven forbid that even a limited innovation should go ahead.
They just decided to spit in the face of the people lining up to pay them real money for their ebooks. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a publishing company make money by selling copies of its intellectual property?
