Talk:Baen Free Library

Troubles in Paradise

I thought this section would look good as a formated table, but it is not working for imbedding links. Can anyone figure out how to make it present nicely and still allow user-customers to navigate links?

Link and Title of Page	Discription in Brief
*Introducing the Baen Free Library	Eight pages on how the library came to be and the software piracy and publisher issue in general.
*Letters to the Librarian December 20th, 2000	A selection of 123 letters about the free library as seen by the readers; of particular note: Messages from a blind reader and a handicapped reader.
*Letters to the Librarian January 16th, 2001	Special Report on 200 plus Letters recieved in 24 hours when the Free Library made internet news.
Letters to the Librarian February 04th, 2001	Specal Report on self-publishing on the internet with comments by the First Librarian.
Letters to the Librarian February 04th, 2001	Specal Report on self-publishing on the internet with commentary by First Librarian Eric Flint.
M.P. Macaulay on copyright law 1841 issues	Two speeches on copyright law the the British House of Commons during 1841, characterized by historian Flint as brilliant, as they cover the issues still problematic in copyright law.
Letters to the Librarian, Eric Flint September 1, 2001	This matter deals with intellectual property rights and piracy of intellectual materials

• NEVER MIND - Missing a slash after 'http:' FrankB 17:27, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Update (temporary store) partial list build FrankB 21:07, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Alternate Form

This is the contents of the table put up today as opposed to this less attractive format:

• Introducing the Baen Free Library — Eight pages on how the library came to be and the software piracy and publisher issue in general.
• Letters to the Librarian December 20th, 2000 — A selection of 123 letters about the free library as seen by the readers; of particular note: Messages from a blind reader and a handicapped reader.
• Letters to the Librarian January 16th, 2001 — Report on 200 Letters recieved in 24 hours when the Free Library made internet news.
• Letters to the Librarian February 04th, 2001 — Specal Report on self-publishing on the internet with comments by the First Librarian including getting published.
• Macaulay on copyright law — Two speeches on copyright law the the British House of Commons during 1841, characterized by Flint as brilliant, as they cover the issues still problematic in copyright law.
• Letters to the Librarian, Eric Flint September 1, 2001 — This letter deals with intellectual property rights and piracy of intellectual materials
• Letters to the Librarian, Eric Flint April 15, 2002 — One and a half years into the Library, Flint provides hard numbers on how sales and works listed on the Baen Free Library are related.
• Letters to the Librarian, Eric Flint April 26, 2002 — More numbers on how hypothetical thefts can't be harming publishing industry to any significant extent. Discusses as well Book Vs eBook preferences, and need for authors to achieve exposure and the role of the Free Library in providing such.
• Letters to the Librarian, Eric Flint April 26, 2002 — Discusses prominent writers opposed to eBooks for free, and cites how such might help their sales.
• Letters to the Librarian, Eric Flint May 12, 2002 — Stance on helping blind and handicap persons and others of limited means including kids obtain free materials with a arguement of how that eventually helps an authors sales.
• Letters to the Librarian, Eric Flint May 12, 2002 — Discusses paper versus screen reading; studies showing much better retention from paper learning, and includes a long letter relating experiences on sales by a educational publisher once they offered free works like Baen Free Library.
• Reprint by singer-song writer Janis Ian September 16, 2002 — Three time grammy award winner Janis Ian in an article reprint excoriating music publishing industry and praising Baen and a few others. Flint makes one comment— a minor correction. (This is the last of the Letters to the Librarian)

We don't need to list the current titles

I don't think the section on current titles is necessary or a good use of our time. The Library itself keeps a current list - all anyone should have to do is go there to view it. It is all a bunch of duplicate effort, if you ask me. But I didn't delete the section - if someone wants to keep it updated, that's fine. While you're at it, why don't you keep an updated list on the iTunes article of all titles available there.  ;-) Roachmeister 17:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

No, it's not necessary. But it is useful, because the Baen website has lists by title and by author, but not by both together. It also gives you an idea of which authors are very keen on the Free Library idea, which I find quite interesting. And long as it is, it's still quite a bit shorter than the iTunes catalog ... and (more importantly) changes much less often! Cheers, CWC 02:01, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Did it work?

The article contains the sentence, "It was founded in autumn 1999 by science fiction writer Eric Flint and publisher Jim Baen to determine whether the availability of books free of charge on the Internet encourages or discourages the sale of their paper books." but gives no indication of what the answer was. Did it help sales or hurt them??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.226.91.213 (talk) 00:13, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

It helped them. You can see more here. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 07:03, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Was this ever in question? My impression, from the first days of the library, was that Flint and Baen knew perfectly well that it would help sales, and they were simply trying to prove it. If that's correct, it should probably be mentioned in the article. Dstar3k (talk) 05:09, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Does anyone have something we could cite? Cheers, CWC 12:31, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Drastic reduction to the free library.

Now there are only 12 full books available to download plus a Reader's Guide and three partial editions of short story collections. The pack-in CD-ROM contents can still be downloaded from the fifth imperium site and by bittorrent but only as complete ZIP files or ISO images. Bizzybody (talk) 10:38, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. This is one of several changes Baen have made in order to get Amazon and other major eBook retailers to sell Baen eBooks. Quoting from http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx

The Baen Free Library is Under Reconstruction – Please Be Patient

The Baen Free Library is undergoing a transition. As a result of our decision to sell our titles at third party vendors, we have had to remove some titles. Others are undergoing alteration and will be brought back into the Library over the next few months. The Second Editions with new material will be available for sale at all venues; the original editions will be restored to the Free Library. We are trying to keep as many titles here as possible. We will also be adding new titles soon, including ones by Larry Correia, and Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.

BTW, (1) Baen eBooks sold via Amazon are still DRM-free and (2) Baen "raised ebook royalties to authors by 25%" as part of this move.) See Baen Ebooks#2012 for more info.

Any volunteers to edit this article accordingly? CWC 14:14, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Letters to the librarian links need to be updated.

Those are now accessible from here: http://www.baen.com/library/prime_palaver.asp I'd update them, but kinda busy right now. Hopefully someone else can do it. If not, I'll get back to it eventually. 85.138.93.166 (talk) 14:35, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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The bot SHOULD NOT add df= without value, I didn't know what it is and reading the convoluted {{cite web}} docu SHOULD NOT be part of a simple bot-review. –2A03:2267:0:0:A5F1:61EC:DB60:97BB (talk) 13:53, 3 December 2016 (UTC)