Baen Books has made three additions to the Baen Free Library — Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia, Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon and Cobra by Timothy Zahn.
The full press release follows the jump.
THE BAEN FREE LIBRARY GAINS EXCITING NEW ADDITIONS
Read Acclaimed, Best-Selling Baen Authors, Now for Free!
MAY 19, 2015—Baen Books has announced three all-new additions to its popular Baen Free Library, available now on www.baenebooks.com. Read the first editions of Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia, Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon and Cobra by Timothy Zahn, completely free!
Monster Hunter International, by Larry Correia: This first entry in a New York Times best-selling series features modern-day heroes armed to the teeth facing horrible monsters from myth, legend and beyond.
In addition to the best-selling Monster Hunter International series, Larry Correia is the author of the highly praised paranormal detective noir series, The Grimnoir Chronicles. His blogsite MONSTER HUNTER NATION is a fan favorite. He is considered an expert in the field of firearms, and has been called on by national media to comment on Second Amendment issues.
Fire with Fire, by Charles E. Gannon: A national best seller and Nebula Award nominee, Charles E. Gannon’s debut novel is science fiction adventure on a grand scale. A thrilling space adventure with sharp, intelligent political intrigue and daring spy craft, this is first contact like you’ve never seen it before. With an acclaimed sequel already in print, and an exciting third entry forthcoming, readers can get in on the ground floor of this epic series.
Charles E. Gannon is a Distinguished Professor of English at St. Bonaventure University and a member of SIGMA, the “SF think-tank” which has advised various intelligence and defense agencies since the start of the millennium. He has co-authored two novels in Eric Flint’s immensely popular Ring of Fire alternate history series and two novels with Steve White in the best-selling Starfire universe.
Cobra, by Timothy Zahn: Return to the roots of a great and ongoing military science fiction series. See where it all started for the Cobras, elite technologically enhanced human soldiers, designed and bred to fight a fearsome alien menace.
Timothy Zahn is best known for his best-selling Star Wars novels, and is a well-loved author of military and adventure science fiction, based on real, cutting-edge science.
The Baen Free Library is a free digital library established in 1999 to challenge the notion that giving away free ebooks without restriction or onerous copyright protection would hurt sales. The experiment has been a success! By trusting our readers, we allow them to share and read their favorite stories freely, and offer an easy way for new readers to discover Baen, and a way for longtime fans to discover new authors. With many best-selling titles, including the first novels of some of our most popular series, and all of the free fiction and non-fiction published on Baen.com, the Free Library has something for every reader. As they say, the first taste is free . . .
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I’m on the website right now and the ONLY FREE book out of the 3 listed appears to be “Cobra” by Timothy Zahn. Something isn’t right.
That’s just a good business decision. Especially if sales flag on older titles, making the first in a series low cost or free just helps spur audience growth. I’ve only read Zahn’s Star Wars novels so I’ll give him a shot for sure.
Try Amazon. I downloaded two of the three for free for my Kindle.
Cobra was the first Zahn novel I ever read (and one of the first military SF ones…) – and as such has a special place in my heart. Not sure if I want to revisit it…
@ charles, where are you looking? when I go to “free library” (bottom of the categories section on the left), I see all three
http://www.baenebooks.com/c-1-free-library.aspx
note that for some of these, there may be a “2nd edition” (added afterword by the author or similar) to keep Amazon happy (they don’t like permafree books)
From somewhat rusty memory, cobra is well worth the read, if you enjoy decently written MilSF. Not a must read, but you could easily do worse.
(minor disclaimer: I like Zahn’s SW books well enough that they’re part of my vague SW headcanon and the prequels are not. it remains to be seen if the new SW movies will do well enough to displace them)
All three are free on Amazon Kindle.
I think Baen is smart to offer this deal. I’ve downloaded all three and have turned them over to the kids. I suspect they’ll have gained a couple of fans by the end of the day.
Kudos.
Baen paved the way for a lot of indie writers with their version of “First taste is free…”
David Lang,
Thank you for the correct link. I followed the http://www.baenebooks.com/ link and “Cobra” was the only NEW free.ebook added for the month.
I downloaded Monster Hunter International from Amazon as soon as I saw it was free. Zahn and Gannon are also free on Amazon now. It seems like smart marketing to me (I encouraged my publisher to make the first third of my novel available for free, but they didn’t like that idea at all). Very happy to talk talking about books instead of author politics.
These are also available (make sure you look for the first editions as there are revised second editions which are being charged for) on Amazon for Kindle, also free. That opens up an interesting ‘feature’. In many cases, if you own the ebook on Kindle, Amazon’s Audible offers you the audiobook at a heavily discounted price. I got Monster Hunter International on audio for $1.99. (Not the case with the Cobra audiobook).
I really liked Zahn’s early stuff. Whether or not I’d still like Cobra I don’t know, but it’s likely worth a try as others have said.
The first “Fire with fire” book by Charles Gannon is really lots of fun. I wish he would focus more on the aliens in this series and less on the main character with the magic penis.
Sadly this becomes a much larger problem in the sequel “Trial by Fire.”
“Free Library Grows?”
I suppose so, after what appears to be a drastic pruning.
The last time I looked at the Free Library catalog there were a good number of other titles available.
I have a church acquaintance who was looking for some SF that she could send off to her progeny, but she wanted to be able to preview before buying the dead-tree editions to send.
I was going to point her to e-copies of some of the James Schmitz books that *used* to be in the Free Library. The local public library doesn’t have any of his work. Luckily I have a couple of the Schmitz stories scattered in different anthologies she can look through.
She has a pretty good idea of her son’s reading tastes, and I think stories like Agent of Vega and some of the HUB cycle would have fit the bill. But volumes like “Dangerous Territory aren’t available at all, and Agent of Vega now appears to be $7 in e-book form.
She may still try to buy “Vega,” (she can read some of the stories in my hard-copy editions) but is not going to find the Tuevala Effect, which I was really pushing (good story, fast action, strong female main protagonist).
@craig
Yes, there was a drastic pruning a few years ago when Baen started selling on Amazon. In the process a number of authors withdrew permission for their works to be in the free library.
For the modern “how technowar affects one man” story, Cobra was the seminal novel. If you’re interested in this type of MilSF, it is indeed a must-read. If you’re not, it’s still a pretty good book.