We're not talking about fan-fic or vanity publishing, either. The library is organised and maintained by Eric Flint, and offers works by such authors as Andre Norton, Lois McMaster Bujold, David Drake, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and David Weber.
There is a lengthy explanation of the rationale behind the free library at www.baen.com/library/home.htm - but this snippet more or less captures the essence of it:
In short, rather than worrying about online piracy — much less tying ourselves and society into knots trying to shackle everything — it just makes more sense, from a commercial as well as principled point of view — to "steal from the stealers. "
Don't bother robbing me, twit. I will cheerfully put up the stuff for free myself. Because I am quite confident that any "losses" I sustain will be more than made up for by the expansion in the size of my audience.
For me to worry about piracy would be like a singer in a piano bar worrying that someone might be taping the performance in order to produce a pirate recording. Just like they did to Maria Callas!
Sheesh. Best thing that could happen to me. . .
That assumes, of course, that the writer in question is producing good books. "Good," at least, in the opinion of enough readers. That is not always true, of course. But, frankly, a mediocre writer really doesn't have to worry about piracy anyway.
WOW!!