Update to the Update, there will be a MHV E-Arc from Baen

I just asked Toni Weiskopf if there was going to be an Early Advanced Reader Copy available from Baen for Monster Hunter Vendetta, and if so, when.

Her anwer was Yes and Soon.

For those of you who don’t know, the sequel to Monster Hunter International will be hitting bookstores in September (October release, but they always turn up a week or two early).  The Baen E-Arcs are reserved for books that are in high demand by eager fans. How it works is that you can purchase an early version E-Book online at the Baen store, and you can get the book months and months in advance of the actual release. 

They do cost a little more. Off the top of my head I believe a regular Baen e-book is like $6, and E-Arcs are like $12, but hey, you can be the first person on your block to read MHV, months before the luddites get their grubby caveman hands on a paper copy.  (which you should still purchase as well, just to round out the collection… the collection of my royalties that is, Bwa HA HA HA!)

For those of you who haven’t used Baen’s e-books yet, not only are they cheaper than other publishing houses, they will work on your Kindle or your Nook, they are DRM free. Which means that they don’t have a bunch of stupid copy protection nonsense on them.  Because as Jim Baen said, people don’t share books they don’t like.  Jim thought people were fundamentally honest and shouldn’t be preemptively treated like criminals.   http://www.baen.com/  Check out their free library too.  Hundreds of e-books, mostly sci-fi classics, all sitting there completely free.

Big Announcement! Monster Hunter International MOVIE DEAL!
Writing update

30 thoughts on “Update to the Update, there will be a MHV E-Arc from Baen”

    1. Baen eARCs (like all of the electronic editions) do not require an e-reader. I regularly stuff them into my Palm, but they do include a pure HTML edition which can be read in your web browser, online at Webscriptions, or get the RTF (Rich Text Format) edition and read it in WordPerfect or any other text editor that handles the format.

      On Baen’s Bar, there’s a “snerkers” conference for those who have read the books so that spoilers are confined to an area clearly marked as “May be hazardous to your surprise.”

  1. When can we start putting in our orders for autographed copies???
    (I really hope you’re gonna do autographed copies with this one as well, gotta have one to sit beside my first one in the case)

    1. I will do autographed copies, but those won’t be until October sometime.

      The big downside of doing autographed copies is that I don’t get the stat boosts for the best seller lists when they come from me.

  2. eARCs are currently priced at $15, and I haven’t seen one yet that wasn’t worth it.

    So: Now that MHV is settled, when do I get to read Monster Hunter Alpha and Grimnoir Chronicles? 🙂

    Thank you, Larry.

  3. bluesun, one of the e-ARC formats is HTML, so you do have an e-reader. You used it to post that message… 🙂

    If it’s in the October webscription half of it will show up, serialized, about July fifteenth, three quarters on August fifteenth, and the whole thing on September 15, give or take a week or so. Usually the webscriptions show up about 2 weeks before dead tree editions in the bookstores.

    I’ve only done one e-ARC, for the latest in the Honorverse. But it was kind of interesting, not extremely proofread. So we get to see just how good the speling is of some of our favorite authors.

    1. My spelling is garbage, as you guys on this blog surely know. But luckily I’ve got Pax and Curly of Reader Force Alpha to go over it before the manuscript ever ends up in Toni’s hands.

      1. So I wonder, when I got the Weber eARC, I probably noticed a couple of hundred typos, whether it was misspelled words, or punctuation, or spacing, or (in one case iirc) an incorrect name. It wouldn’t have taken very long to note them down when I was reading it. Would that have been helpful at all to them? IE, if I get your eARC, should I do it?

    2. In Weber’s particular case, last I had heard he was still using voice dictation software to write his books, and has been for quite some time. Likely most of the punctuation, spacing and homonym errors are attributable to his electronic minion.

      e-ARCs are not through final proofread, often there are larger differences in the final published version than just spelling and grammar corrections.

      1. I duct-taped together an old IBM thinkpad and used that to read the original MHI HTML in bed before lights-out. The display can be tilted back almost 180 degrees so it was almost a poor-mans reader.

        I have to say though that if Baen trickles out MHV a few chapters at a time like they did with MHI the wait will drive me nuts.

  4. I’m a big fan of the Baen ebooks. I regularly download both their free and pay books. Larry is in really good company over their with (in no particular order) John Ringo, Eric Flint, David Drake and David Weber.

    I usually do the .lit format and use the free MS Reader software. Another free reader is YBook if you don’t like the MS stuff.

    Can’t wait to get my ARC version Larry!

  5. Oh, if we buy paperback copies (plan on doing that anyway) and send them to you, will you autograph them? That way you still get the stat boosts for the best seller lists and we get an autograph copy, which would be very cool.

    1. I don’t mind doing that at all.

      I’ll still sell autographed copies, I’m just hoping for an initial rush to give me good numbers. 🙂

  6. Awesome! I thought (for some reason) that eARCS would only work on an e-reader.

    now that I know they come in html, I’ll hafta snag it. I don’t know if I could wait until September.

  7. Baen’s e-book marketing is also known as “The First Taste is Free”.

    Charter member of BOMA (Baen Owns My Ass). Amazing how often I end up buying hardcopy of the “free” stuff.

    Looking forward to my next fix of Correia

  8. You mean I can trade a reasonable amount of money for a copy of the book way early?

    So worth it. Sold!

    Thanks, Baen. I can’t wait.

  9. Grump,not soon enough.Our local paper had an online poll asking for suggestions for the President.I suggested he dye his hair blonde and charge $10 more.Now I am banned from the site..

  10. Yeah, the non-DRM e-ARC is awesome. I can honestly say I’ve spent more on books and e-books over the past five years than I had in the past 15 before that.

    Baen does a great job promoting authors. Can’t wait to get my digitally grubby paws on MHV…

  11. Will a Baen e-ARC work on my iTouch? I want a paper copy to grace my mighty dead tree library but I really hate waiting.

    1. Yes, it’ll definitely work, I read Baen’s stuff on my itouch all the time. The easiest way to do it is to install Stanza, which you can do via itunes. And from there, you can actually download them directly to the itouch over wifi (or over 3G if it’s an iphone).

      Baen has instructions on how to do it here. There’s a quirk on mine in that it asks me to login twice, but otherwise it works. Basically you’ll be able to browse all the books you own and download them directly, or alternatively, you can browse the free library as well.

  12. So, what kinda MERCH are we looking at for Vendetta? I’m guessin’ a new patch, but what all else?

  13. I absolutely hate reading ebooks. I don’t have a e-reader device and only a laptop to read from. Reading from a paper book is just easier to do and much less cumbersome.

    I’ll be making an exception for MHV however. >:)

  14. I have been buying ebooks from Baen since March 2000 (Baen’s web store “store” opened 12/1999).

    In 2001 I bought an HP 5mx for $ Jim thought people were fundamentally honest and shouldn’t be preemptively treated like crimina that the IRS in Ogden had surplussed so I could print out books to read while carpooling.

    Then I bought a Dell Axiom and read baen books on it. When the touchscreen busted on the Axiom I got a laptop. Now I am reading Baen books on my iPhone.

    Thanks to the fact that Baen never used encriptoin, the ebooks I purchased in 2000 and read as printed rtf files I can read today on my iPhone – without purchasing them again. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE WITH ANY OTHER PUBLISHER!

    Since 2000, Baen has sold me over $1800 dollars of ebooks. A $15 monthly webscription here, a $6 one-off purchase there, a $15 ARC everytime Weber / Van Name / Freer / Ringo / Williamson /… release a new book.

    Prior to 2000 I purchased more Tor titles than Baen titles. Since 2005 I have purchased less than 10 Tor titles. I have purchased every title that Weber and Flint have published with Baen and none that their books from other publishers.

    The funny thing is that unlike Ringo, Van Name and Williamson, all of whom I first read because one of their books was included in a webscription package purchased because of other titles in that package, I never “discovered” Larry’s work until I was sitting in Border’s one day waiting for my wife and happened to pick up a display copy of MHI.

    After all these ramblings you may ask, “What is your point RJ? Why did you just spend 30 minutes tapping all this into your iPhone while laying in the dark next to your sleeping wife?”. My point is, DON’T DO IT GUYS!! DON’T BUY THAT FIRST EBOOK FROM BAEN! Save your money. Spend your time at the range.

    Why if it wasn’t for Baen ebooks, I would already own both the Kimber and the Para Ordinance 1911’s I have been wanting to buy. If not for Baen ebooks, my 11 year old son would probably be shooting in the low 20’s on Traps with the youth model 870 he has been begging me to buy. Why, if it was not for all these accursed ebooks, last Saterday, while standing in the women’s underwear department at Wal-Mart waiting for my wife to pick out some pantyhose, I would have been stealing covert glances at the posters of underwear models like a normal husband instead of reading “The Last Centurion” for the second time.

    1. Haha! Excellent post rj! As I side note, I recently purchased a Para P13, which I love!

      I too am a huge fan of webscription.net , Baen’s ebook site. Personally, I download them as zip files and read them on my laptop in Chrome.

      Once you get hooked on the EArc thing, there’s no turning back. I just hope that the authors get more from the sale of an EArc than they do from the “normal” digital version.

      1. I have always hoped that the ARC editions were a way to funnel some extra $$$ to my favorite authors and not just giving the publisher an extra $9. Maybe Mr. C can enlighten us? (it’s really none of my business but I have been wondering about it for several years….)

  15. Love ebooks from Baen. I’ve been feeding the addiction for years and they allowed me to take a few hundred books with me when I deploy. They have also allowed me to read my fav writer’s newest books while in garden spots like Iraq and the place formally known as Yugoslavian.

    Just a note of warning though. ARC are habit forming.

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