Tor.com Launches With DRM-Free eBook Givaway

Tor Books opened their new Tor.com site yesterday. It mostly seems to offer free SF&F short stories, blog posts by authors and others in the business, and reader comments. Until Sunday, July 27th, it also has non-DRM ebooks available for download. The Tor titles include Old Man’s War by John Scalzi, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, and Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Twenty-four ebooks total, most in PDF, HTML, and Mobipocket format — take your pick.

Be sure to pick up some before Sunday. You’ll never find a better price.

In other news, it appears that Tor will be rejoining Baen Books’ online bookstore soon. That’s Webscription.net, where none of the ebooks have copy protection/DRM restrictions and the prices are actually rational: typically $6 for something in paperback. They do quite well at that profit margin, without DRM, and have done so for most of a decade now. It’s my first stop when looking for something new to read. Unfortunately Baen’s current stable of authors mostly write military SF, which isn’t my favorite thing in the world unless it’s Honor Harrington (for some reason). Tor’s ebooks will really help to broaden the selection there.