Baen Books, about which I have unabashedly gushed for decades, has been selling non-DRMed books since day one, in multiple formats. In many cases if you buy the hardback of a new series, you get a CD containing all the rest of the series. You can even get all those CDs for free here, by permission. And they've prospered.

What prompted a big company to do it? Couple things. One, I believe the saner heads — if not the upper management — wanted it and finally presented the case. DRM doesn't prevent piracy. Any book you want, you can find a pirated copy if you try. No, DRM only annoys the legitimate buyer, who just wants to read the book she paid for how she wants to. Two, there's a huge public outcry against DRM. Three, J. K. Rowling, who probably counts as a Big Six publisher all by herself, finally released the Potter books in ebook form and without DRM. Not much of a danger for her, since she has a built-in, worshipful audience who wants to shower her with money and because people willing to get pirated copies already got them the weekend after each book came out.

And four, and this is a big one: the publishers are fighting Amazon and Apple for control over pricing. And if they can't win that, the least they can do is take away either of those companies' monopolies on their products. Buy a Kindle book with DRM and you have to read it on a Kindle or Kindle app. But without DRM, you can read it wherever you like.

So hooray for Tor! Now we just need to work on all the other problems. As someone who has been reading ebooks since they existed, and someone who has paid my actual cash for the thousands of books on my iPhone and Kindle and computer, I have only a few requests.

Pricing: I don't expect ebook prices to be absurdly low. You're a business, you have to cover your overhead, and successful books need to help cover the losses from less successful books. I get that. But don't expect me to pay hardcover prices, especially when no major retailer sells hardcovers at full price. Personally I'm comfortable at the $9.99 – $12.99 level for new releases. Remember, that seems low to you, but I'm paying for something that costs you nothing to replace, whereas I can't resell it myself. Procuring and editing and presentation still may be a substantial percentage of an ebook, but there is no print run. You can't tell me the 20,000th ebook sold cost you as much to produce as the first. You get a bestseller and ebook sales quickly become all profit.

Also, drop the price as soon as the paperback comes out. When the paperback has been out for months and the ebook is still hardcover price, it makes you look either incompetent, greedy, or contemptuous of ebook readers. Pay attention.

Quality: Proofread the damn things. The number of typos I've found in New York Times Bestseller books is staggering, much less the midlist books.Sir Terry Pratchett's "Snuff" was rife with errors. This month's "Sacre Bleu" by Christopher Moore has a duplicated page. The retailers can't fix them, only the publishers can, and unless there's an embarrassing outcry, for the most part you don't. You don't want to be in the position where the pirated copy is more attractive and dependable than the retail one. Yes, there's extra copyediting and that's another non-profitable position you have to fill, but reputation is important for a publisher.

Availability: Get me the ebooks when the printed book is published. Mostly this happens but occasionally there's a lag. The novelization for "The Cabin in the Woods," available in paperback last week, was available as an ebook in the U.K at the same time but not in the U.S., where it still shows a June 19 release date. I'm assuming this is a clerical error — and Titan, usually a company I quite like, is looking into it — but it's annoying. A few years ago Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, HarperColins and Hachette announced they'd be delaying their ebooks for four months after the print release, undoubtedly pleasing book pirates everywhere. How is that working out for them? (Oh, right, it's part of a price-fixing lawsuit against them now [PDF]).

The regional problem is a bigger one. If a book is released in the U.S., it might not be available overseas, even though the Internet goes everywhere. This gets really frustrating for readers who want to hand you fistfuls of money, but can't. However, regional rights are both more complicated and a significant source of income for authors, and existing contract can't be changed, but maybe you could look into speeding up the sales of those rights so a book can drop worldwide on the same day?

See? I'm not asking for much. I want a fair price for a quality product I can read on any device I like, when I want to read it.

Tor's off to a good start.

You have no idea how happy this makes me. Let me just say that of the comics I've collected over the years, "Groo" is the one I've followed across 4, maybe 5 different comics companies and will buy on sight.

From Comics Alliance, with more details here. Coming from Dark Horse this April.

But as soon as I picked up a Palm Pilot and found I could read books on it, dozens, hundreds of books I could carry around with me at all times, I've never looked back. I was very loyal to Palm's eReader for as long as it lasted, holding off on upgrading to an Apple device until they had something at least as good. (They did: eReader ported over and I bought an iPod Touch soon after).

But after awhile eReader wasn't as supported anymore, and more and more books were in ePub format, and I grudgingly, reluctantly began using Stanza by Lexcycle. And I also found Calibre, an amazing ebook management tool that Stanza could seamlessly connect to and download from, and the combination was everything I wanted.

I am not exaggerating when I say that Stanza was the app I used most often on my iPhone. More than the other apps (including the phone itself) combined, and probably multiplied. I read a lot, everywhere, and this made it so very easy. Stanza was designed for readers. Not to be a storefront, not to locked you into any particular format or layout or ebook management program; it was designed to load a book and get the hell out of the way. That's all I wanted. It connected easily to online catalogs like Gutenberg and Baen, and even let me add my own catalogs from other URLs or my own Calibre library with a minimum of fuss and an absence of wires. I loved it.

I also am not exaggerating when I say that when I upgraded to iOS5 this morning, my displeasure at finding out that Stanza no longer works was epic, loud and very likely offensive in a family setting. Just error after error, no way to open a book, nothing. Imagine a heroin user being told that needles don't work any more and he'd have to find another way to get the stuff into his veins, and you'd have the general idea.

A quick Google search revealed this was a known problem among beta-testers and that there is very likely no update coming since a) Amazon bought Lexcycle and doesn't really have any motivation to improve their competing product and b) the developers no longer work for Amazon anyway. I hope I'm wrong and it updates anyway, but now I have to find another ebook reader, and this is going to be tough because I've tried them all as they come out and not a single one combines the features I want as elegantly as Stanza, an app that hasn't had a significant update in two years.

Here's what I want in my ereader (your mileage, obviously, will vary): Let me add books in a variety of ways, at least one without syncing. Let me connect to my Calibre library, or download from online catalogs. Let me adjust the layout — font, font size, line-height, margins — to my own comfort. Let me lock the orientation. Make it easy for me to find and sort my own books. Display ePubs, and whatever other formats you see fit. That's pretty much it. But how tough could it be?

Here are my other options:

iBooks. Sorry, a non-starter. The default ebook app that ships with the Apple OS, it displays your books on shelves, connects nicely to the Apple ebook store and makes the books look very pretty. Sadly, none of that is what I want. What it doesn't do is allow me to reduce that huge page margin I don't need, turn off right justification if the ebook designer wants it, change line-height, or lock orientation so it'll stop spinning on the screen as I move around. It won't go full screen, forcing me to waste reading space on icons, the name of the book, page edges and page numbers. And adding books is either through their store, through iTunes (meaning I have to sync every time) or through email. No. But the books sure do look pretty.

Kindle. Probably the ebook reading app I use almost as much as Stanza, mostly because some books are cheaper or only available in the Kindle store. It's not bad, although it's severely limited just because it can't read any format besides Amazon's proprietary one and now PDFs. Most of my ebooks — and I have thousands — are not in those formats. I can convert them with Calibre, but it's slow and not always attractive and many of them are DRMed (which isn't necessarily a problem, but that adds another step or two). Also: can't turn off justification, won't connect to other catalogs, won't connect to Calibre. The Kindle app will stay on my device, but it'll never be #1.

Nook. Nah. Can't add books except by buying them from B&N, adding them through the Nook app or by connecting the device and dropping them into a folder. Won't connect to Calibre, won't add through email. And not a lot of customization possible; 5 font sizes but no line-height or margin adjustment. Not bad, but not exciting or convenient enough.

Kobo. I'm a little confused about Kobo. Didn't it have a lot more options before? Customization isn't far off from the Nook's, which isn't surprising since I believe they use the same code. But I had thought it connected to free catalogs and other sources, and I'm not seeing that now unless I'm just missing it. I know they had to kill their store connection to comply with Apple's new "we want all your money" rules, but what about the rest?

Bluefire. A lot of regular Stanza readers have moved to Bluefire and I'll give it a try, but so far it's been crashing on me. When it doesn't, it's slow. Not a good beginning.

MegaReader. A strong contender so far. Displays more or less the way I like, connects to Calibre, connects to free catalogs, and even features a cool heads-up display by turning on your iPhone's front camera and making the page opaque (customizable) so you can see where you're going as you read. Of course I read while I walk, don't you? It's not perfect — the page doesn't quite go fullscreen (the iPhone's status bar is still visible), sorting by author just rearranges the whole list by author rather than giving you a list of authors, which you can then click on to see the books (a big advantage when you tend to carry a few hundred books with you), there's no way to jump straight to recent books added or read, and it can't add more than one book at a time from Calibre or do it in the background. But better for me than the rest, so far, and I've heard the developer is working on those features.

There are plenty of other readers I dismissed long ago, or haven't tried yet because I read about problems with them (I2Reader doesn't look bad but people have reported memory issues with large collections). And all of these ereaders have features Stanza did not. Kobo has a whole social aspect, iBooks lets you move books around on your shelves, others have different ways of adding notes and such.

But Stanza was a book reader's dream. From the superior way it managed large quantities of books — you could search by book, author, collection, subject, and recently read, with a quick-jump alphabet list on the side to speed things up — to the way you could adjust the brightness by running your finger up the page while you were reading, rather than having to go digging around in settings, to minor tweaks you wouldn't think of. One example: I like the page-turn effect. It's not a deal breaker — I didn't mention it at all in my lists — but it contributes to a pleasant you're-reading-a-book environment. Several of the ereaders above have it, and I turn it off in almost all of them because it's awkward or too slow and or too disruptive to my reading. Stanza not only had a smooth page curl effect but you could adjust the time it took. Whatever Stanza lacked it made up for in personal customization and convenience, and that was the part I want.

I'd love to hear suggestions for replacements, or reasons why I'm wrong, or ways to emulate Stanza functionality. And I hope I'm wrong and Stanza gets an update. For one thing I wouldn't have to reload 300 books on this thing.

R.I.P Stanza. We read a lot of good books together.

(Image from lexcycle.com)

Superman is losing his red trunks and his wife — because making Spider-Man's marriage go away made so many fans happy over at Marvel — and he'll almost certainly get a new origin, again. Anyone who's ever been a (male) Robin will be out there somewhere in one of the dozen-odd Batman books. Wonder Woman will become… I don't actually know what she is now, come to think of it. Many heroes will change, or be teamed up differently. Everyone gets new uniforms created by Jim Lee, so they'll all be shiny, even the fabric ones. Possibly the most shocking change, Barbara Gordon will become Batgirl again after 20-something years of being the handicapped (and cool) Oracle. And forums and comics shops and Twitter have been on fire with arguments and accusations and praise and proclamations of doom.

My position: Hey, don't look at me. They lost my loyalty years ago the last few times this was tried. Or, rather, they displaced it.

I understand the need for reboots. When you write characters for decades, you get a lot of backstory. You get new writers who want to try different things, even though they violate continuity. You get a drop off of new readers because there's just too much history to understand before the new books make any sense.  But if you start over…

"Crisis on Infinite Earths" was DC's first attempt at full-scale restructuring, and it worked reasonably well, until writers kept sneaking back to use plotlines and characters from before and muddying the whole thing up again. And a few years later they tried again, and again… Both companies also fell in love with the huge summer crossover event, because fans will buy more comics if their favorite characters are pulled into a huge, complicated story arc, right? And sometimes those big events accompanied reboots.

And they lost me. Not completely, I still read comics. But the multiple-reset of characters and story arcs, the regular wiping of histories and the wholesale changes to comic lineups kicked me into a different appreciation of the art. Gradually, I stopped following the characters, and started following the writers.

I used to buy every Spider-Man book there was. After he got complicated and reset a few times and I had to keep track of which of my favorite Spidey stories now actually happened in whatever current reality he was in, I realized what I really liked was not any story about a web-slinging wiseass, but a good story about a web-slinging wiseass.  Ditto Hulk, ditto Batman, ditto all the zillions of other comics I read. And the range of good writers is much, much smaller than the number of books I used to buy. Why waste my time reading a mediocre book just because I like the hero? I'm not missing anything; any major plot points will be retconned away in a few years anyway. But I know if I pick up a book by Peter David or Mark Waid or Warren Ellis or a dozen others I know I'll enjoy it no matter who's on the cover.

I've also found myself, over the last decade, preferring creator-owned comics or comics with defined story arcs with endings (Terry Moore's "Echo," Brian K. Vaughn's "Y the Last Man," etc) because I get a complete story with a single vision and an ending.

Which sounds like a good attitude, but it doesn't help DC because now that I follow writers, I follow them everywhere. And sometimes they write for other companies…

So keep playing with your universe, DC (and Marvel). I hope it works for you, I have nothing against reboots — they worked wonders for Doctor Who and Star Trek — but I'll just follow Gail Simone to whatever book she's on now and give most of the rest a miss. Have fun! See ya next reboot!

A reinvented Spider-Man, with all the humor and relationships and twisty plots that I loved from my childhood but with relevance to today, an incredible ear for teenage language, and a fresh new look at the same old characters. Through all of the occasionally questionable decisions Marvel has made with their major books the last few years, "Ultimate Spider-man" has remained my always-buy favorite. This is a great way to get started with this amazing series.

Here are the first 5 hardcover collections, pulling together issues #1 – 59, plus extras, interviews, sketches and more. All of them are first printing and in excellent condition. Bought, read once, shelved.

Vol. 1: Collects #1-13 and Amazing Fantasy #15. Out of print.
Vol. 2: Collects #14-27. Out of print.
Vol. 3: Collects #28-39, plus the hard-to-find Ultimate Spider-Man 1/2. Out of print.
Vol. 4: Collects #40-45, and 47-53.
Vol. 5: Collects Ultimate Spider-Man #46, Ultimate Six #1-7, and Ultimate Spider-Man #54-59.

Auction's over tomorrow night, so don't delay!

"The Shepherd's Tale" finally opens up the life of Derrial Book. Written by Zack Whedon based on Joss' outline and drawn by Chris Samnee, it'll be 56 pages and published in hardcover.

One of Serenity's greatest mysteries is finally revealed in Shepherd's Tale, filling in the life of one of the show's most beloved characters–Shepherd Book!

Who was Book before meeting Mal and the rest of the Serenity crew, how did he become one of their most trusted allies, and how did he find God in a bowl of soup? Answers to these and more questions about Book's past are uncovered in this original graphic novel by rising stars Zack Whedon (Dr. Horrible, Terminator, Fringe) and Chris Samnee (Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps, Daredevil). A pivotal chapter in the ongoing Serenity saga, Shepherd's Tale is also a rollicking, action-packed epic in its own right!

$14.99 in stores, but TFAW is offering preorders for $11.99. You definitely don't want to miss this one. He don't give half a hump if you're innocent or not. So where does that put you?

Then they produced two Firefly Companions, which contained scripts from all the episodes as well as even more interviews and pictures and insider stuff, and they were also exceedingly good. So that was it, right?

Nope. On sale next Tuesday (May 25) is "Firefly: Still Flying," which has even more behind-the-scenes material, quotes from and about the actors, closeup views and histories of some of the most iconic props (and where they ended up), interviews with the stunt coordinator and the location manager and copies of the Serenity Valley battle storyboards and candid photos and a look at the wardrobes and, oh, I don't know what else.

Oh, right. Four new, original Firefly stories by some of the Firefly writers.

Some of you reading this have just left to go pre-order it, but for the benefit of those who have not (or, more likely, have already pre-ordered it), here's some pics.

Like the Companion books, Firefly: Still Flying is big, colorful, and beautifully presented by people who obviously love the material. And again, amazing for someone like me who spent years seeking this stuff out, many of the photos are new. Each actor gets a section filled with quotes from the actor — taken from interviews and convention appearances — and quotes about the actor from others. And alternating with those sections is an article about the production of the show, a story, or a photo gallery.

The section on props ("Objects in Space")  includes how each props was made and where they ended up afterward. The chair/table in the med center, Jayne's knife, the breathing masks hanging at every hatchway (did you notice those? did you notice they had call buttons built in?), even the cookware in the galley. There's even a separate essay on the whereabouts of the Jaynestown statue.

And then there's the stories. "What Holds Us Down" by Jane Espenson, "Fun With Dick and Jayne" by Ben Edlund (a two-page cartoon),  "Crystal" by Brett Matthews and "Take the Sky" by Jose Molina. The first new authorized Firefly stories since the movie. I'm not going to give plots or spoilers (I even blurred the photo above to hide the text) so I'll just give you my impressions: overall, not bad. Not as amazing and world-changing as I'd hoped, no new secrets were revealed, but solid stories told by people who know the characters inside and out. (My favorite was probably "Crystal," although the others got a smile out of me several times).

And the fans. We get our own section, along with a section on new merchandise. I had a (small) hand in quite a lot of that, and I'm proud to see it represented, and delighted to see so many friends mentioned.

I didn't even mention the lengthy section on the ships of the 'verse, or The Story of Monkeyshines, or Jane's essay on writing for a Joss show (Buffy, but close enough).

There is a slight sense of "what did we have that didn't fit in the first two books" in this one — die-hard fans may recognize a lot of what's in here — but what's here is well presented and fun to read and even if you've seen some of the interviews or already knew where Burgess' laser came from, it's nice to have it all together in a handy package and excellent gift idea, hint hint.

Available at Amazon ($13.46), TFAW.com ($15.96), and your local bookseller ($19.95 retail). 160 pages, softcover.

I don't have one to give away this time — you can't have mine — but several other sites are giving them out: Aint It Cool News, IESB.net, ForcesofGeek.com,  SciFiBlock.com, StarPulse.com, StayingInWithVlada.com, SyFy.co.uk, TVOvermind.com, and Whedonesque.com.

And if you haven't seen Titan's Firefly: The Official Companion 1, Firefly: The Official Companion 2, or the Serenity Visual Companion yet, go get them immediately.

I've mentioned here before my love of Jeanne and Spider's work, and any chance to help out (while getting new stuff to read at the same time) is a Good Thing. You can read about her ongoing battle (and her fight to continue producing a Stardancer movie) at http://stardancemovie.blogspot.com.

What's "Lord Dickens's Declaration" about? Think "steampunk/time travel/alternatehistory" and you won't be too far off. There are gentlemen and ladies and intrigue and SCIENCE and steamships and long discourses on the nature of time itself. Also, cavemen. Santaro usually writes horror fiction but he rises to the challenge here. The book is also beautifully designed and illustrated to look like an old and treasured book, which just adds to the steampunk feel. Nicely done.

While you're in the area, check out the StarShipSofa's podcasts. They're free, professionally done, and a welcome addition to your portable library.

At the moment I'm rereading Steel Beach by John Varley, for perhaps the 15th time. Hard to say why it appeals to me so much — along with its companion/sequel Golden Globe — without saying "everything," but it works for me on a lot of levels.

Quick synopsis: Humans occupy the other planets and moons in the solar system, which is good because the Earth was invaded by aliens so powerful they won in less than a day and may never have actually noticed we were there. A hundred years later on the moon, intrepid and increasingly dissatisfied reporter Hildy Johnson shares her time between the hustle and bustle of Luna City and the untamed wilderness of the fake Texas inside of the maintained Disneylands, tracking down stories and dealing with the near-godlike Central Computer that keeps this idyllic life going. No one is hungry, almost every injury can be healed instantly, gender choice is purely optional and as easy to change as buying a new car, and Hildy has amazing luck when new stories break. So in a world with virtually no death and no want, why does he (and so many others) keep trying to commit suicide?

A huge, rambling book, Steel Beach lets us listen in on the wiseass thoughts of a world-class cynic as he (and later, she) investigates the underbelly of the perfect world. Lots of sex but no real sex scenes, lots of philosophical musing, plenty of action, some great characters, a fully-developed and utterly believable future world, and the best opening sentence of any Hugo- and Locus Award-nominated book, ever: "In five years the penis will become obsolete!" There's a strong Heinlein feel here — along with some obvious homages to the master — but with more laugh-out-loud humor and people you might actually imagine meeting.

An excerpt: Hildy, flush from a big story, has decided to change genders to female, having been male for the last 30 years (he's 100) and has gone to see an old friend who is currently in vogue:

When you get the full treatment from Bobbie, no bodily detail is too small.  The big, gaudy, obvious things were quickly disposed of.  Breasts?  What are people wearing this year, Bobbie?  As small as that?  Well, let's not get ridiculous, dear, I'd like to feel a little bounce, all right?  Legs?  Sort of . . . you know . . . long.  Long enough to reach the ground.  No knobs on the knees, if you please.  Trim ankles.  Arms?  Well, what can you say about arms?  Work your magic, Bobbie.  I like a size five shoe and all my best dresses are nines-and thirty years out of date, enough time for some of them to be stylish again-so work around that.  Besides, I feel comfortable in a body that size, and height reductions cost out at nearly two thousand per centimeter.

Some people spend most of their time on the face.  Not me.  I've always preferred to make any facial changes gradually, one feature at a time, so people can recognize me.  I settled on my basic face fifty years ago, and see no need to change it for current fashion, beyond a little frill here and there.  I told Bobbie not to change the underlying bone structure at all; I feel it's suitable for a male or a female countenance.  He suggested a slight fullness to the lips and showed me a new nose I liked, and I went flat-out trendy with the ears, letting him give me his latest design.  But when I showed up for work after the Change, everyone would know it was Hildy.

I thought I was through . . . but what about the toes?  Bare feet are quite practical in Luna, and had come back into vogue, so people will be looking at your toes.  The current rage was to eliminate them entirely as an evolutionary atavism; Bobbie spent some time trying to sell me on Sockfeet, which look just like they sound.  I guess I'm just a toe person.  Or if you listen to Bobbie, a Cro-Magnon.  I spent half an hour on the toes, and almost as much time on the fingers and hands.  There's nothing I hate like sweaty hands.

I put considerable thought into the contemplation of navels.  With the nipples and the vulva, the navel is the only punctuation between the chin and the toenails, the only places for the eye to pause in the smooth sweep of the female form I was designing.  I did not neglect it.  Speaking of the vulva, I once again proved myself a hopeless reactionary.  Lately, otherwise conservative women had been indulging the most outrageous flights of fancy when it came to labial architecture, to the point that it was sometimes difficult to be sure what sex you were looking at without a second glance.  I preferred more modest, compact arrangements.  With me, it is mostly not for public display anyway.  I usually wear something below the waist, some sort of skirt or pants, and I didn't want to frighten off a lover when I dropped them.

"You won't frighten anyone with that, Hildy," Bobbie said, looking sourly at the simulation of the genitals I'd just spent so much time elaborating.  "I'd say your main problem here is boredom."

"It was good enough for Eve."

"I must have missed her last showing.  Can't imagine why.  I'm sure it will prove quite useful in the circles you move in, but are you sure I couldn't interest you in-"

"I'm the one that has to use it, and that's what I want.  Have a heart, Bobbie.  I'm an old-fashioned girl.  And didn't I give you a free hand with the skin tones, and the nipples, and the ears and the shoulderblades and the collarbones and the ass and those two fetching little dimples in the small of the back?"  I turned at the waist and looked at the full-body simulation that had replaced one of the mirrors, and chewed on a knuckle.  "Maybe we should take another look at those dimples . . ."

When you're looking for something to read, what are your fallback books, your old favorites you can read again and again? I have plenty more…

To celebrate the release of Terry Pratchett's 37th Discworld novel, "Unseen Academicals," Harper-Collins has placed the first Discworld book online for free.

The Colour of Magic introduces the Discworld as we know it, with Rincewind the "wizzard" shepherding about the Disc's first tourist and his homicidal luggage. It's much more obviously a parody of fantasy novels than the later, more satirical books became, but the style and hilarity are there in big lumps.

"Unseen Academicals" is out in hardback, as low as $14.95 at Amazon, although you can get the ebook version for just $9.99 at Barnes & Noble.