Tor Books Is Giving Away E-Books

stoolpigeon writes "Tor Books is launching a new site and running a campaign in which they are giving away e-books (free as in beer) until the site goes live. To get in on the deal, fill out the form at their site, and each week you will receive a newsletter containing links to download a new book. The first two books are Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson followed by Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Scalzi's site says: 'My understanding is that they don't have DRM on them. Or at least, mine isn't supposed to have, and I don't think they're planning mine to be special in that regard.'"

Sounds too good to be true...

[Hellcom]

What does Tor get out of giving away free books? Are they planning to introduce a pay subscription or a store of some sort?

Re:Tor is on Webscription

[RalphBNumbers]

Not really.

If you search for Tor as the publisher on the webscription store [webscription.net], you'll find that Tor has a whopping ONE book available for sale (by David Weber, who usually writes for Baen anyway). They list a dozen others, but don't actually sell them.

There was a burst of hype, and even an /. article about Tor selling their stuff using Baen's DRM-free model a year or so ago, but they seem to have chickened out (or at least dragged their feet for a good long time, if this new mystery website has to do with selling DRM-free ebooks).

Re:Hey I have no problem to by them

[arth1]

What format ARE the books in on Tor? I could find no mentioning of this, nor a privacy policy of how my name and e-mail would be used, and I would like to know both before I give them my details.
For all I know, they would be in a format I can't read, and they will sell my e-mail address to dozens of book related stores who will spam me to within an inch of my life. Or they may be in a format I can read, and they won't share my information with anyone. Problem is, they don't tell!

Keep TANSTAAFL in mind before jumping on a "free" offer.

Mistborn is fantastic!

[Anonymous Coward]

I read this recently and it was one of the best fantasy novels I've read in years. The premise behind the world is "what if the prophecied hero failed?" It has a very creative and richly described magic system, likable and well fleshed-out characters, and the ending is superb.

Oh, and Brandon Sanderson is also the author who is going to write the final book to finish off the Wheel of Time series. Harriet (Robert Jordon's widow) picked him to finish the series after reading this book.

So like, yeah, you should totally spend your $0 to download it. And if you like it, maybe even buy the book! I mean, we all register our shareware, right?

Re:Releasing the good stuff or not?

[xstonedogx]

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series sells very well, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them offer The Eye of the World (the first in the series) for free. Tor offered the first eighteen chapters of the novel for free in order to sell the series (it worked on me). Those were physical books which had to be printed and shipped. Giving away free e-books in large scale must be orders of magnitude cheaper - especially if they lack DRM.

Ender's game may be kind of a special case, since the first novel is the most compelling of the series and very complete in itself. But it wouldn't surprise me if it, or other titles like it, were offered as a way to jump start sales of the series as a whole.