Saturday is Free Comic Book Day

It's Lucky again, and I hate it when Deej or Snuffles sit around reading comic books and don't talk to me or even forget to feed me and don't do the housework or the cooking or help around here at all. It's a good thing I have Phenny and Frederick or this place would be a mess.

Anyway, Deej and Snuffles are sure to be out of it this Saturday, because Saturday is Free Comic Book Day (which you can read about here), when many bookstores give away free comics as a promotion.

I thought I could escape the event this year because the Shady Bookstore Down the Street had closed its doors, but as it turns out, it immediately opened its doors again at another location and became the Shady Bookstore a Little Further Down the Street.

Tor Offers Free Books, Other Goodies

A reader kindly gave notice that Tor Books is launching a new website and promoting it by offering free books to download, one a week, to anyone who signs up. The website is here. Also offered is a sweepstakes and free fantasy artwork for your computer desktop.

This week's free novel is Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder. This week's free desktop art is by Julie Bell and Boris Vallejo. Both artworks, I notice, feature females of unusual physical proportions wearing little or no clothing. Normally, that's not the kind of image that graces my computer desktop, but Julie Bell's art appears to be a painting of Lilith and Taniniver, which I simply can't resist.

Speaking of which, I notice Lilith in this painting is blonde. Though I realize Lilith is blonde in, for example, the poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I still tend to picture her with dark hair and pale skin, perhaps because of her association with vampirism. And speaking of Rossetti, this fine painting by Julie Bell inspires me to proclaim,

'O bright Snake, the Death-worm of Adam!
(Eden bower's in flower.)
Wreathe thy neck with my hair's bright tether,
And wear my gold and thy gold together!

Or something like that.

A Couple of Links

Readers have sent me a couple of things I need to pass on to you. Peter Gardner of Martian Monastery has sent us a link to the Orthodox rite chanted in time of attack by aliens. Seems like a handy ritual to me. In particular, I like this part:

With thy mighty arm destroy the army of aliens which now besetteth us, O Mistress, as the army of Sennecherib was destroyed.

Also, Simon Owens of the interestingly named Bloggasm has noticed our post on free online books. He has a more extensive article on why Tor is offering free books and what that might mean for online publishing.

Free Books Online

Who wants free books? You look like you do. That girl over in the corner looks like she does. That guy in the back who's chewing gum and talking on his cell phone isn't paying attention, but he probably wants free books, too. I know I want free books.

You may notice on our sidebar a link to science fiction texts at Project Gutenberg, which collects public domain and Creative Commons-licensed texts on the Internet. In particular, I notice they have a link to Nick Mamatas's Move Under Ground. I strongly suggest you stop reading this post and start reading that novel, seeing as how it is much better written and has the potential capability of, like, totally blowing your mind.

Cory Doctorow makes his books available on the Internet and writes in Forbes that he believes it paradoxically causes them to sell better. Doctorow also notes that science fiction is more frequently copied illegally than any other form of literature and argues that anyone well-known enough to be ripped off is probably doing alright in sales and marketing. Snuffles, who is sitting across the room, has just pointed out that, back when anime was more obscure in the U.S., fans got the word out largely by ripping off their favorite shows and movies and passing them around.

Recently, the publishers Tor and HarperCollins have announced that many of the books they sell will be publicly available on the Internet. Tor appears to be doing this in a limited fashion and demands that people who get free books also get Tor's newsletter, as reported in FantasyBookSpot. Tor's website for the free book sign-up is here.

The Huffington Post has reported that HarperCollins, too, is making books available free online in the hopes that it will encourage people to buy those books. A visit to the HarperCollins website reveals that it's true. Doesn't look as though they're demanding newsletter subscriptions, either.

So what's the point of making books available online? Well, in the case of public domain texts, the copyrights have run out and the books are fair game, but as for the others, the publishers and writers are guessing--and Doctorow suggests they're guessing correctly--that many or most people would still rather read a book on paper than on a screen, so after seeing a chapter or two of a novel they might like, they're likely to buy the physical book.

Update: Jeff Miller of The Curt Jester has just pointed me to the Baen Free Library, which has plenty of Baen titles to choose from.