In a day and age where most publishers are still not getting the "digital" thing, pricing their books as high as, or more than the paper versions, Baen always had a clue. Not only did they price their e-versions cheap, but they left them clear of Digital Rights Management and copy protection crap, so you could easily read them where and when you wanted to.
Better yet, they had a huge free library, often consisting of the first book or two in a series, allowing you to get to know pretty much all of their authors. Yes, Eric Flint proposed it, but Jim Baen, David Drake, John, and the rest of the authors went along because it made good business sense.
Sadly, much of the free library is gone, to meet requirements to sell on Amazon, though it is slowly being built back up.
No, this isn't a tease.
You see - one other thing they did was with a number of their hardcovers, they included a CD. These CD's had extensive libraries of everything in the current books series up to that point, and often at least one related series. You were expected to copy this and hand it to your friends. Just one hit and you'd buy Baen books forever...... which was close enough to the truth.
And they are still available for download.
Go check out the Fifth Imperium Baen CD archive.
Any damage to sanity from reading excessive Ringo or Weber or Drake (all for different reasons) is not my damn fault.
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