Kevin's Watch

Tor are launching some new... thing. They're not being very forthcoming at the moment about it.
But, to promote this "thing", they're giving away free eBooks.
If you go to this site and sign up for their newsletter, then each week you'll receive a link to where you can download that week's free book.

Tor wrote:Within a day or so of sending us your address, you should receive an email with a download link for this week’s free book. As different free books are swapped in, about once a week, you’ll get further emails with different download links. This program will end when the site launches, but you can keep the free books; we won’t be erasing them with our orbital attack electromagnets. (Yet.) Did we mention, watch the skies?

The first novel they're giving away is Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (you may know him as the author who will be completing the Wheel of Time series); next week's novel will be John Scalzi's Old Man's War.

Go ahead and take advantage of this while you can.

I don't think many are sci-fi or fantasy, but I think I should post this link anyway. Project Gutenberg is a great site with tons of free ebooks. I think they are mostly/all books published a while ago (in the area of 50+ years ago) so that it's legal for them to end up on there for free.

www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Yes, Gutenburg collects works that have entered the public domain (copyright expired--thanks to Disney it can take a very long time)--it's a good resource.

Awesome! Does this mean the Malazan books are going to come out as e-books now? That would be sweet.

Oh, yeah, Eos books is releasing a free e-book every two months this year. You can get Robin Hobb's Shaman's Crossing here.

Well, it's not clear what they're promoting. These free books are one-offs (and we don't know which authors are involved in it beyond the first two), and the new site that will open at the end of it may or may not have anything to do with ebooks. We'll have to wait and see.

Edit: And thanks for that Eos tip! They publish some good stuff, I hear.

Nice recommendations.

I signed up for the Tor mailing list. Looking forward to the free downloads.

I also checked out the Eos site. Lots of books and essays to choose from. Looks like a pretty decent site.

So, has anyone actually gotten the newsletter yet? The site said it would take a day or so, but it's been two days since I signed up, and I haven't heard a thing.

I want me some free e-books (and not the stuff from gutenberg, like the 14th Oz book).

I, also, have yet to receive anything from Tor.

The 14th Oz book??!! Damn, I can't believe I missed that one




Yeah, I'm still waiting.

...these gimmicks might force me to shell out for an e-book reader...

Tulizar wrote:The 14th Oz book??!! Damn, I can't believe I missed that one

Here's Rinkitink in Oz. Sounds awful, but you never know.

Farm Ur-Ted wrote:

Tulizar wrote:The 14th Oz book??!! Damn, I can't believe I missed that one

Here's Rinkitink in Oz. Sounds awful, but you never know.

Nice. I seriously had no idea there were so many Oz books! I checked some of them out on Wikipedia--some pretty wacky stuff!

I just got Tor's e-mail with the link to Mistborn. I subscribed three days ago. However, seeing how no one received the link, yesterday I wrote them an e-mail saying that I had yet to receive said link. I don't know if today's e-mail was just a coincidence or if it's their reply to my own request...

I got it today as well--the confirmation email and the book.
It looks like there are going to be twelve books in total released this way.

Murrin wrote:I got it today as well--the confirmation email and the book.
It looks like there are going to be twelve books in total released this way.

Wow! That's a ton! I really, really hope that they give away Gardens of the Moon. I'd love to have the e-version of it.

I just got my download. It's a pdf, which kind of sucks, but if you go to mobipocket.com, you can download free software to convert the pdf to a mobi-reader file, which is more user-friendly. You have to install the publisher version (not the home version).

Wow, the next book coming up is Spin, by Robert Charles Wilson. I'm psyched! This is a pretty sweet deal.

Received the links for Robert Charles Wilson's Spin this morning. Next week's book is Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory's The Outstretched Shadow, book one of the Obsidian Trilogy.
(An interesting note: All the books so far have sequels. )


In other free book related news, Neil Gaiman recently had a vote on his website for which of his books would be released online to be used as an introduction for new readers to his work. The winner was American Gods, despite it being the longest and possibly most inaccessible of his books.
So, for the next month you can see the whole book on the HarperCollins website.
[Neil Gaiman's blog | Direct Link]