Got it, and Ancillary Justice. 2.99 € for us continental folks.

Now in the backlist, as I'm reading The Rhesus Chart that you so kindly released just the same day of my birthday :-P

Unrelated to this post, but I just read

http://online.wsj.com/articles/facebook-experiments-had-few-limits-1404344378 http://online.wsj.com/articles/furor-erupts-over-facebook-experiment-on-users-1404085840

and immediately thought of Project Athena. How does it feel to be THIS right about the near future?

Also on the Kobo store

Neptune's Brood [Kindle Edition] $4.08 ( amazon.com from Poland : )

(and some more SF for $4.08 : Alastair Reynolds, Ann Leckie and Mira Grant)

This doesn't apply to me ... I am a UK Citizen...but how about people who might be passing by at a convention or some such?

It does strike me that it is Strange that Publishers of 21St Century Stuff should lag the zeitgeist to the extent that they fail to realise that readers do move about the face of the planet and can access a variation of sources for reading /listening material regardless of where they might be at any given time. Indeed they might care to address themselves to the sad fact that the U.K s public lending libraries have been in a state of Meltdown since the various rightwing political incarnations of Power...See the Shinny Aircraft Carriers and bow Down to Our Power you pitiful peasants you!! ..Decided that the peasantry didn’t read and didn’t vote and thus didn’t count.

So our Gracious Hosts Publishers Empires of Blood... err, that is to say Empires of Admin really need to pay attention to the latest incarnations of ...

http://www.bl.uk/plr/

Hereabouts in the North East of England half of the local Public lending libraries, branch libraries, have been closed down whilst the remainder have had their opening hours reduced by half. This has become commonplace even in the wealthier areas of the U.K. I anticipate that in future a good deal of an authors income will come from ‘loans ‘by some sort of public lending libraries of e books. It is already appallingly easy for the not particularly scrupulous e book consumer to obtain the very latest books by means I’m not about to disclose here... honestly folks it is really easy for I’ve just researched it after I bought “ The Rhesus Chart is a brand new supernatural thriller from Charles Stross, and sees hacker-turned-spy Bob Howard take on the (literal) bloodsuckers running ... “ from an US of American source in Hardback and ..Oh all right but I was tempted, damn it!! And can afford it... in e book whilst I wait for the real thing to turn up by eldritch means from the far side of the world.

So the Future for E Books for the Simple Folks of the U.K.?

This is interesting ...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vaizey-launches-review-of-e-books-in-public-libraries

First you have to find your Public Library of course and that may not take the form of Public Lending Library that we have become accustomed to...I anticipate that Branch Libraries will vanish in the next ten years - save for those that are maintained as a hobby by middle class people in middle class areas as the later day equivilent of the middle class ladies rota for flower arrangments in the local Church of Cuthu ..er the local C of E church - whilst the standard will be for one Public Lending Library per town or city with access usually being by means of the internet ... which will be so inexpensive it will be virtually free to user on a device that is falling in cost by the day if not the hour and so, real soon now, will be crumpled up and disgarded when to scruffy to read ..just like an old time news paper made from dead trees.

I can’t be alone - can I? - in thinking that one of the stranger aspects of modern Science Fiction/Fantasy publishing houses is their inability to keep up with the future as it is, and will develop, rather that the future as she Was perceived back in the late 1960s. It couldn’t be that they are governed by the thought that... “Après moi, le déluge” ?

I have to allow for the fact that, until I took early retirement at the turn of the century, I worked in various aspects of business, management and Education for four decades and, that, up until I encountered OGH s work I did harbour the illusion that I represented the ultimate in realism ..Never Ever call it cynicism.

Right back to electronic chapter the Third of ' The Rhesus Chart '

And for Kobo owners, http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/neptune-s-brood-1

I note with interest that Orbit's other entries in the novel category are reduced, at least on Kobo. Am now a happy Hugo voter. :-)

Interestingly, Neptune's Brood is not available from Kobo in Canada.

From Apple, it's still $8.99 ($23.99 for audiobook version). Amazon lists Kindle version at $8.99, hardcover at $17.24, and paperback at $22.24.

Oh, it does suddenly occur to me - in betwixt and between checking my e mails before I resume my reading of The Rhesus Chart - that it might not be as obvious as I had supposed it to be that, in that previous post, I'm addressing our Gracious Hosts Publishers obliquely and in a non hostile sort of way? So, as a follow up? This is fairly typical of the U.K. of the past few years of Austerity Cuts and Local Government....

" A village library's shelves have been left empty after campaigners borrowed hundreds of books in protest at proposed budget cuts."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-28169519

Trying to get it from Waterstones (still at 4.99, but whatever, it's worth it). What worries me though is 'File type: EPUB DRM' description. Will the file be readable on vanilla epub reader (Aldiko on Android, to be precise)? Their site doesn't explicitly state, as far as I can see.

Will the file be readable on vanilla epub reader (Aldiko on Android, to be precise)?

Not without non-trivial dicking around.

You will need to do the following:

The only thing to be said about this process is that it's worst the first time you do it. Thereafter, it gets easier.

NOTE: I would probably be in breach of a contract somewhere or other if I linked to those DRM tools directly. And I am not encouraging piracy. But I think transcoding an ebook you bought for your own personal use so you can read it on a different device or in a different ebook reader is totally legit, and I do it myself. As Cory Doctorow repeatedly points out, all DRM achieves is to punish and annoy honest customers -- it's not even a speed bump to the dishonest.

Ref "Note", the same can be applied to "region encoding" on DVD players. It took me about 7 minutes to hack mine, including 3 minutes to find the handbook so I could get the exact model number.

My sole reason for doing this was so I could play legitimately purchased R1 titles that have never had an R2 release.

Or you can spend about 10 seconds and have it downloaded, in every format you could wish for, sans DRM, from the usual jolly roger sources.

Honestly, the book publishers are making all the same mistakes as the music industry - but without the excuse of ignorance.

Anyone want to bet when we will reach "right price, immediate gratification, no DRM" stage? And will Amazon own the industry by that point?

They aren't even trying to move their game on - they are still thinking dead trees on dusty shelves with themselves as gatekeepers.

Ended up buying the DRMed book, and then got a pre-DRM-stripped version from, well, alternative sources. Man, publishers do make it hard to give them money...

I found it worth the pain to install DRMtools. Makes it easier to square with my conscience, and although it's a pain in the neck the first time, once they're on your computer stripping DRM becomes a routine step.