Free Novels for Hugo Voters
April 1st, 2008 by Editors
Tor, Ace and Pyr, though sadly not HarperCollins, have got together to offer a free package of DRM-free ebook versions of this year’s Hugo-nominated novels. That means you can get Brasyl, Halting State, The Last Colony and Rollback all for free. But there’s a catch. They are not going to give away these books to just anyone. You have to be eligible to vote in the Hugos. And that means that you need at least a Supporting Membership in Denvention 3. But hey, that’s only $50, right? So now for your money you get not only the Denvention 3 Souvenir Book, the right to vote in the Hugos and Site Selection, and at least one progress report, but also four free ebook novels.
So, buy your Denvention 3 membership here, and register to get your free ebooks here.
Why yes, that is Mr. Scalzi’s web site we’ve just linked to. Good at this marketing stuff, isn’t he.
PS. if you live outside the US, you won’t get Halting State because Orbit has not signed up to the deal, but Gollancz are on board, so you will get Brasyl.
This is easily one of the coolest benefits my Denvention membership has turned out so far. I would love to see authors and publishers do this in the future as well. I know it’s been going on for years with the short fiction, but the prospect of getting to check out whole novels is very appealing, especially when I can’t always afford hard-cover editions.
I haven’t taken advantage of the free book offers in previous years because it didn’t seem right to read them without an intention to vote, which I don’t have unless I’ve read/seen all the nominees in a category. Unfortunately, I haven’t read *any* of the Best Novel nominees this year.
No need for sympathy, though. The Endeavour Award has a record number of books submitted again; it’s allowed me to read 17 free books so far as one of the first-round readers, and I just picked up three more.
(Obligatory plug: Portlanders, if the idea reading recent books for free sounds like fun, there’s still time to volunteer to help share the load! You are not required to read 20+ books, just whatever you can do to help out in a reasonable period of time. Though you do have to give the books back afterwards.)
[...] Voting for the Hugo Awards. For this you need to pay, it’s $50 but you also get four free ebooks, the convention book and the right to vote in the Hugo Awards and on site selection, so I think it works out. [...]