Rider at the Gate, Cloud’s Rider. Rimrunners. Tripoint. Finity’s End, Goblin Mirror, Rusalka, Chernevog, Yvgenie. They won’t be the only ones. Don’t expect them all to appear at once, and that’s not the order in which they will appear. Remember it takes us some deal of time to get them into format, working late in the evenings AFTER doing our regular writing during the day, plus trying to get our electronic records into order AND trying to do editing, covers, and webmastering the blogs and websites. But don’t rush out and pay huge amounts for a personal copyof these titles unless you’re a fanatic collector.
Coming, as e-books.
by CJ | Nov 24, 2009 | Journal | 74 comments
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Good luck with it. Sadly, I’ve got all of them already…but Cyteen 3…well that would be very tempting in ebook format 🙂
I don’t think it’s sad you have them already. 😉
Hopefully, if this venture could support us, it will give the freedom to write books that won’t fit NYC’s current needs. I’m so tired of building complex worlds and plots only to have some committee decide, well, we’ve changed our paradigm this month.
Readers get so frustrated when a story stops too soon—and I can (trying not to sound like a whining artiste) only say that it really hurts when you’ve researched and built and have your long timeline and everything and then they tell you, oh, switch over and do us one like (whatever’s hot this week)…never quite twigging to the idea that by the time an honest novel gets written, the moment has passed, so it’s one more orphan when it gets there. Then your editor changes, be it health, the editor jumped ship, or whim of the corporate structure—and there you go again. It kills you, after a decade or so of that, bit by bit and piece by piece. Now they’re ridding themselves of series, as troublesome to distribute and keep in print under the new tax rules; and they’re refusing to reprint backlist, and are just letting books die, quietly, and fade away…along with the steady but modest income writers used to get from those. So you betcha we’re going to do it ourselves.
There’s a reason beyond any desire for profit here. Science fiction is a complex literature that requires people to come up on it from certain foundational books, certain classics of our field, gaining certain key concepts and a little scientific knowledge along the way.
I had a dear friend who’d never seen an sf movie, let alone read a book. She was older, born around 1910…and I took her to Star Wars. She got a lot of the plot…but, after we left, and I asked her what she thought of the movie, she said she got most things, except why they showed scenes with big colored circles intermittently, before we changed scenes.
Took me a moment, and then I realized she meant the ‘establishment shots’ of planets and suns. She didn’t remotely realize they were changing planets, and actually wasn’t that clear on what a planet was. She thought that was just pretty improbable…”Why did they represent it by circles?” And this was by no means a stupid woman—quite the opposite, in fact, adept in history, languages, and archaeology—downright brilliant in her field. She just didn’t get it. Why? She hadn’t grown up with television, had never read an sf book, or met concepts like FTL, or ray guns or, or, or….
That’s what we end up with if we let the beancounters kill our backlist. To paraphrase, “Those who can’t remember their history can never appreciate what they’ve lost.”
To that end, I’ve got a link to Project Gutenberg on the left sidebar, and I recommend you give it a look and scoop up the orphaned sf books—the ones that haven’t got an irate writer mad as you-know-what and starting up with e-books. Books from people who’ve left us, and who have nobody now but Gutenberg to take up their backlist. They’re out there. Find them. Read them. Enjoy them.
Oh, wow. Such riches. Will it be possible to obtain them in, or convert the downloads into, pdf format? in which case I can email them to my Kindle… [i need to check back on that – i know you’ve discussed format here in the past]
If not, of course, I can put them on my laptop. Either way, wow. Wow. How exciting. I do have them all already, but having them electronically also will provide some insurance against the shelf life of those which I have only in paperback format. My very old Dickens, for example, can’t be read anymore because the pages keep falling out. Very very exciting news. I hadn’t realized how many you would be able to let us have.
Easily. Over there on the left sidebar are two downloads I trust, under e-book free readers. Mobi files are exactly what the Kindle uses except that it has no DRM protection: I rely on the honesty of my readers. You can probably slip it right across without even converting it. E-pub covers a lot of other readers, and the European standard. And the conversion to pdf is very easy. You’ll get a download that you can use on your computer or ship out to a reader. On a computer you can see the color covers–that’s one thing we like; and there will also be a Cafe Press store so you can buy coffee cups and tee shirts with our color covers, parts of covers, logos—Jane’s going to set that up: she has a lot of artwork. We may even do some audio files. Maybe a little filk book. You name it, we’ll try to produce it. Our inventiveness knows no bounds.
oh yippee on the t-shirts! I love having something different for work [and i’m outside a lot, so the silk doesn’t get much use]. I’m like Apf — had then all forever, but thinking like Kokipy — maybe putting them on that lovely little 500 gig Seagate might not be a bad idea either. I am dying though for the resurrected Faery in Shadow and any others you’re putting back to original format, not to mention Jane’s works which I just can’t find for love or money. This is fun, even though I love the fell of a book in my hand.
CJ I’m sure Toni W. over at Baen would love for you to send her your SF if DAW doesn’t want it. There are a number of authors who have moved their SF to Baen. Zahn, Bova, Miller/Lee, and Anvil SF and Hodgell fantasy. Baen has also put their backlog up for sale on the internet.
Carolyn, was that Audrey you were referrign to in your Star wars anecdote/
in any event, I sympathize. Remeber I had to ask about “gravity well”FTL” was
^oops! I’m always hitting the wrong keys on my new KB! The above post should read:
Carolyn, was that Audrey you were referring to in your Star Wars anecdote?
In any event, I sympathize, and recall being totally bewildered by the mention of “gravity wells” & “FTL”…
(feel free to delete the typo-riddled post)
Cool! Does this mean I can’t keep Lynn on the phone too long tomorrow night? I’ve already distracted here today. We are visiting a rescue Poodle up by Tulsa Friday. I sent her pictures. 🙂
I read Merchanter’s Luck on Kindle when it was briefly (and evidently incorrectly available, hey, I paid for it and have it safely backed up too ). I wanted to read Finity’s End when I finished it, but it wasn’t available. Monty pointed out that it is on the shelf across the room in hardback. Do you have any idea how HEAVY hardbacks have gotten? Nuts to that. I’ll make sure I’m first in line for the mobi version.
By the way, you correctly pointed out that mobi is a native format for all Kindle versions. Also, pdf has always been convertible (with varying results) to Kindle. However, as of this morning the K2, International K2 and the DX all handle pdf as a native format. The K2 firmware upgrades were released this morning for manual download. They will be pushed out in waves over the next few weeks to all K2’s.
Elaine
Norman, Oklahoma
Can we see this rescue poodle too?
Can’t wait to test out the first of these on my Android phone — if it works, I look forward to continue buying.
Since we’re DRM-free you can first of all save it on your computer and play with the file until you get it to transfer properly, and we will try to help if you have any problems. We’ll be very interested for anybody who has success (or problems) with a particular device in getting the files installed—to tell us how it went, and what they did. We’ll have a section on Closed Circle explaining how to read these files as books on your computer, but we will be particularly interested in feedback from users of such things as the Kindle, Android, etc, explaining their procedures. We’d like to add the step by step instructions to the site, so that we can have lots of happy customers. As explained in my answer to AzureBlu, we don’t use DRM, so you are not limited in the number of devices you can load the file onto. We just ask, of course, that you not pass it to friends: buy them a copy. 😉
Thanks! We’re working on it. Poor Lynn has a broken hand, if you haven’t heard—she needs tea and sympathy.
Yep, that was Audrey.
Just a question CJ, I was wondering how I could send you a couple hard backs of The Foreigner Series for you to autograph? I read on your website you would,but I’m unsure of how to contact you beside here.
my email is evilwezal@yahoo.com…thank you for your time!
Can be done, and I’ve sent you an e-mail. The PO addy in the Contact Us above is capable of receiving a small package, too.
hurrah! i am glad we will be able to catch up to some of these titles, especially the russian stories. recently read rusalka and LOVED it.
will probably track down hard copies anyway though, as this collector is quite a stickler for complete sets of stuff. drives my friends and family crazy, it does.
and one last thought, cyteen 3? there is something i have not heard before, yet which would be the awesome of awesomeness…
WOW. Can’t wait. I’ve been looking for some of those titles for quite a while. Closed Circle is a awesome concept.
Got it, Got it, Got it, Got it, Got it, Go… wait. What? I don’t recognise “Goblin’s Mirror” at all! Cool, a ‘new’ CJC to read.
Very best of luck in your endeavors, all three of you.
Yay! Glad things are getting so close. And I too have them all, but hey ebooks are so much more portable than hardbacks or even good ol’ paperbacks. I can’t wait! I have a grand vision of being able to carry the whole body of work around with me. How cool would that be! Cheers and wishing you speedy progress…
First,what is DRM? Second,while going through your store
a while back I saw an old friend,my very first CJ! It was
the Faded Sun trilogy. Most of the ones you are making as
ebooks I haven’t read. You have to understand that I was
well beyond civilization for most of your previous novels!
Well, and I forgot two: Heavy Time and Hellburner—they may be slower coming than some since I’ve found no reliable files for them yet.
DRM is the change some companies make in mobi (like Kindle) to be sure that you can’t re-copy the file. We are not using it. Once you have your file, just store it or put it on a DVD, and that way should your computer crash or you change your reading device, you can simply reinstall it. You can also have a copy on your computer and a copy on your reader at the same time. No problem.
Thanks, CJ – Wonderfull to see these older titles (that are all staring at me from across the room on the shelf 🙂 Perhaps I’ll be able to pick up some of the Russian titles (Rusalka, Chernevog, Yvgenie) that I missed first time around. Heavy Time and Hellburner are two of my favorites – I’ll gladly scan them in for you if that would help. (Crowdsourcing scans might be the fastest way to get all your back catalog in at least an OCR’d format that you can work with).
Gets me thinking about the embarassment of riches that I have sitting on my bookshelves. Perhaps after getting electronic copies I should donate the dead trees to the library – I got started on hand me downs from my Dad and Hugo and Nebula award winners from the library, maybe I can give someone else the opportunity.
Lord, scanning is such a PITA. I hate to ask it of anyone.
Of course you would hate to ask some one to do it, but if someone had this burning desire to do it for you, what format would be the best?
EDIT: If you’ve got OCR. Corel Word Perfect, MS Word, both good, Word Perfect preferable. I’m not the only one who needs help. Jane would love to have a scan of one of her books. She’s got scans on a couple.
These are the titles that I most need scanned, and Word Perfect would be the best, followed by MS Word.
Original Faery in Shadow.
Heavy Time—Spandrel has sort of spoken for.
Hellburner.
Tripoint: FOUND IT…it was under its first working title. SO I don’t need that one. We’re down to two, so far, and one for Jane. I don’t know Lynn’s situation, but she’s good about filing and catagorizing things, so I’m betting her files are better than ours.
The one Jane needs: Harmonies of the Net
Note: if you are doing one of these, put up a comment to say so: two people accidentally duplicating each other’s effort would be a great shame.
We don’t need them cleaned up or anything. Just the raw scans.
OK, I am trying to get some free OCR software as I have a scanner and could actually work on this. Any suggestions?
That would be very welcome.
DRM = Digital Rights Management — corporate-speak for “all our customers are crooks and pirates and we’re going to block them.” Which actually makes things very difficult for the normal ethical customer, while barely slowing down the hackers. Grrrrr. . .