Baen Books is one of the pioneers in ebook sales, particularly in genre fiction. While I think they do a lot of things right, there are a couple of things I think they miss the boat on (notably, not having their ebooks available for purchase from Amazon, you know, the largest seller of books in any format in the world??). But since I don’t run the company or have any financial stake in anything they do, it’s not really any of my business.
But one thing Baen does that I’ve never seen anywhere else is offer e-ARCs for purchase. What’s an e-ARC, you might ask? Well, let’s start with what an ARC is. An ARC is an Advance Reader Copy, a pre-release copy of a book typically provided to journalists, reviewers, or people of note to garner blurbs, reviews or hype about a book before it is released to the general public. An e-ARC is an electronic version of the same thing.
What Baen has done is turn this into a marketing tool, and a revenue stream as well. They sell e-ARCs on their website, making it very clear that these are not the final versions of the books. Things might change a little, there might be some further polishing, some cover edits, things like that, before the final book is released. But a hardcore fan doesn’t want to wait. Not only that, but these hardcore fans will actually pay a premium to get the book early.
I’m hoping that I have a few hardcore fans, because as of today I will be offering e-ARCs of Genesis for sale here on the website. These will not be sold at a premium, but will be the same price as the release price of the book – $2.99. These are ARCs, though, so don’t kill me on typos. If you find one, please send me an email and point it out, so I can change it before the final release. The cover is also not finalized, but will be close. So this is the whole story, the completed story, just not at its final polished state.
But if you’re one of those people who has to be the first one on your block to have the next cool thing, then this is your deal. This is the kickoff volume to my new series, a very different series than the other stuff of mine you’ve read. This is much less silly, and it’s designed to be teen-friendly, so no f-bombs.
And that was tough, let me tell you!
But here’s the link to buy with PayPal. Just shoot me $2.99, and within 24 hours I’ll email you the file in whatever format you choose (PDF, ePub or Kindle).Enjoy!
