Off Armageddon Reef is a special case, a one-off deal separate from the earlier aborted program.

Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber

There a bunch of other Tor books listed, but you can’t buy them yet. I assume they were put up before the Secret Masters of Tor sent the word* down.

*”No”

I believe that most publishers have no idea how to use ebook rights effectively — or rather, individuals within the organizations know exactly what they need to do, but are blocked from acting on it because of corporate policy. A large chunk of the problem stems from the fact that publishers aren’t independent book publishers any more, for the most part; they’re components of media conglomerates that own magazines, newspapers, and even radio and TV stations. Corporate policy in such organizations isn’t tailored to the needs of any one division, and sometimes doesn’t make sense unless you view it in a wider context. (This is why Baen are able to do the right thing — Tor own a big stake in them, but AIUI they’re effectively a private company. So they can act independently without having to get prior approval from six layers of corporate bureaucracy who don’t understand how book publishing works because they’re actually focussed on movies or newspapers.)

I would’ve thought that publishers would see eBooks as a way to pre-market work in a way that would give them better control over their print runs. So if an electronic ARC is a “big” seller (for an eBook), they can make arrangements for a larger print run. Overall, the established media companies are simply terrible at adapting to the opportunities and risks caused by the new distribution channels. With luck this is more a task of turning an oil tanker rather than reviving a petrified dinosaur.

As Patrick mentioned, Tor’s position on DRM is not too far off of mine; it’s their e-book partners who demand DRM. For me, it’s not a huge concern of mine, partly because I know that anyone who is truly enraged about DRM won’t buy an eBook anyway, or if they do, they’ll crack the DRM in short order. I’m not going to demand the eBooks be DRM-free in my next contract, but neither would I demand that they have to be DRM’d, either.

There have always been a FEW Tor books on Webscriptions as well (Presumably those author who reserved the electronic publishing rights). There are about 10 of them out there right now, mostly Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge.

John: You may not have control over what Tor does with your books after you sign the contract, but you do have control over the contracts you sign and the rights you assign to the publisher in those contracts. I’m not saying you should go against your own interests just because a segment of your customers are anti-DRM evangelists, but I hope your reader’s comments at least give you and your agent something to think about for the next contract you have to negotiate.

But a huge draw for me is that I don’t have to hold the book open, I like to knit while I’m reading and that’s really hard to do when at least one hand has to be holding the book!

I’d really like publishers to do something like what’s starting to happen with DVD’s and that “digital copy” option. Some kind of code or something inside the book that lets a person also get the digital version of the book. Granted it’d have to be more complicated than that, otherwise people could just go browsing through the bookstore copying the codes out of the books they wanted!

Can’t wait for it, specially if you’re going to sell the ebooks at ~6-10$. I live in Italy, and a new US hardcover costs A LOT! For example, I can’t get Weber’s By Schism Rent Asunder for less than 23.9€ including delivery: that’s 37.84$! if I buy it with some other books I can spread the cost, but I can’t always spend 50+ € in books, so I’m probably going to wait for the paperback.
But I’d be happy to buy a cheaper ebook and then the paperback for my “collection,” as I usually do for Baen books.

Without DRM, if possible, I’m a linux user.

John is a professional writer; he writes to earn a living. (This goes for me, too.) Right now, we work on the basis that lots of folks give us a little money when they want to read some of our larger works. Rather than handling the accounting and distribution side of this ourselves, we go via publishers (like Tor) because (a) that’s where folks who buy books usually look for books to buy, and (b) we don’t want to mess around doing all the sales and marketing and warehouse admin ourselves — we want to spend our time writing. (We’re better at writing; they’re better at taking what we write and shoveling it into the supply chain.)

Ebooks are, as it happens, still a very small part of the market. (Baen, with the best will in the world and doing their best to do everything the way their readers like it, still sell fewer ebooks than hardcovers — even though they’re typically a quarter the price or less.) So when it comes to negotiating a contract for a bundle of rights (such as paperback, hardcover, audio book, and all the other stuff publishers buy at the same time) we usually let them bundle ebooks in with the rest. Especially as some publishers are so scared of the evil internet cooties that they think are going to eat their lunch at some indeterminate time in the future that they make acquiring ebook rights a deal breaker.

Folks who ask for DRM-free ebooks, or creative commons licensed free ebooks — well, they’re good things, and whenever we do lunch I bend my editors’ ears about it. But it’s not up to them; that kind of decision is made at a higher level. If their managers tell them that those things are non-negotiable, then making an issue of it in contract talks isn’t going to get me anything except a failed book deal (and a multi-year hole in my income stream). I’m not inclined to cut my own throat because of a matter of principle over a format that is worth, at best, a tenth of my income. (And if you feel inclined to criticise me for this, just tell me — have you ever quit your job over a matter of principle? One impacting about 5-10% of your work?)