Principles
Baen Ebooks, like its predecessor, does not use DRM (i.e. copy protection), in accordance with Jim Baen's belief that DRM "just made it hard for people to read books, the worst mistake a publisher could make." Eric Flint, writing soon after Baen's death in 2006, noted that "in his fight against DRM, Jim stood alone as a publisher" and argued that Baen Book's success "demonstrated in practice that all the propaganda DRM is, in addition to everything else, so much hogwash even on the practical level of a publishing house's profits and losses."
Jim Baen also believed in giving away e-book versions of older titles in order to sell newer titles, especially later titles in ongoing series. Because the cost of shipping e-books is essentially zero, it is cheaper for a publisher to give away entire books than to buy advertising, leading Baen to establish the Baen Free Library alongside Webscriptions. As Wired noted, the Free Library has "no conditions or strings attached ... not even requiring readers to give their e-mail addresses, which must have the marketing department turning green around the gills." Baen also include CD-ROMs with some hardcovers carrying dozens of the author's earlier books in multiple formats, all DRM-free. Charles N. Brown, whose Locus magazine tracked sales figures, noted in 2001 that "Baen has shown that putting up electronic versions of books doesn't cost you sales. It gains you a larger audience for all of your books. As a result, done quite well."
Jim Baen also established a policy of making all Baen e-books free to the disabled.
Read more about this topic: Baen Ebooks
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt’s and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your “emancipation.” You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields—discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West—superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.”
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906)
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)