Starting on July 11th, 2016, sci-fi/fantasy community site Tor.com will be giving its readers free ebooks at the start of each month!
Tor.com is happy to announce the TOR.COM EBOOK CLUB, which we, as people who can’t stop reading, writing, and publishing stories, are very much excited about!
How it works:
- Sign up for the Tor.com Ebook Club on the Tor.com website.
- Receive a download link for the latest Ebook Club offering (in your preferred ebook format).
- Get super into the story along with us on Tor.com!
After every new Ebook Club offering, Tor.com’s non-fiction contributors will explore the book in the form of social media chats, Tor.com articles, and sit-downs with the authors. We’ll get granular (“But how fast can your dragons fly?”) and silly (“If they were space dragons then here’s what their space dragon space suit would look like”) and cultural (“Did the dragons’ society calcify once they moved from three genders to two? Would humanity benefit from intellectual innovation by moving from two genders to three?”), and more.
The Tor.com Ebook Club’s first offering is THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM, the first volume in Cixin Liu’s substantial sci-fi epic!
Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. The result is a science fiction masterpiece of enormous scope and vision.
Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem is a tremendous cultural sci-fi touchstone in China; one that has only recently found its way to North America thanks to the translation efforts of Ken Liu and Joel Martinsen. Readers interested in first contact stories, and curious about how culture spreads on an interstellar level, will find plenty to love in this series, and plenty to surprise them. Where you may think the story is going is certainly not where it ends up!
Readers can follow the latest discussion at any time through Tor.com’s “Tor.com Ebook Club” tag.
The Three-Body Problem download window is open from July 11-17. Once you download the ebook file, it is yours to keep. Come back August 1st for our next offer!
This offer is only available in the US and Canada. We apologize for the geographic restriction, unfortunately it is required for various legal reasons.
Great idea!
I love you guys so much.
Wonderful! But why can’t it be extended to the rest of the world?
Awesome! Thanks for putting this together!
> This offer is only available in the US and Canada.
I still remember the giveaway when Tor.com was just launched, with no restrictions. So it’s kind of stings a bit.
This is an awesome birthday present!
This is a terrific idea! Thanks so much!
Awesome:) Thank you for including Canada!
This sounds fantastic. It’s a pity you’re excluding all of us outside of North America :-(
Awesome!
I was going so fast I hit that last paragraph like a one-foot-thick wall of bricks.
Oh. Wow.
Still, get with reality, Tor. The only reason there are “legal reasons” that you can’t offer this to the world is because you (and other publishers) continue to force this broken system on the authors.
Negotiate world-wide e-publishing rights with your authors, and stop this insane (and unworkable) geoblocking.
I’m in Canada (and sorry though I am that it’s restricted at all, thank you SO MUCH for making this available to your northern neighbours – so many things aren’) and I signed up and got the download link – and then a page of weird code and my computer crashed. I did get the confirmation email, but there doesn’t seem to be another link there; is there any way to access the link again?
@13: If you go back to the club URL (linked at the top of this page) you should see an “Already Registered?” section at the bottom-right, with a “Confirm Details” button. Click that and re-enter your email address and (I’d think) you should be good.
Next time, please could you put the “only available in the US and Canada” at the beginning of the post?
I read this, got terribly excited and then found out I was excluded, which was rather a let down.
That said, those of you that can get the books, have fun and enjoy them.
What if I have citizenship from one of the permitted nations but currently don’t live there? Does that count?
Thought not.
Well you can’t fault an SF fan from trying.
Non-North American people: It sucks that you can’t get the free ebook, but you CAN still read along and join the discussion. Were you more interested in this initiative because of the free book or the fact they’re launching a book club?
Oh wow, another giveaway that most of the world can’t enjoy because of the “free” market. Being an English reader outside of the US sucks.
Oh man that US and Canada thing was a gutpunch
Yeah, that was a downer.
This sounds like a great idea. Tor. you are quickly becoming my favorite publisher. Excited to follow along with this book club!
Since I don’t own this book, have heard good things about it and like Tor.com, I was excited for both the free book and the book club. Unfortunately, I too live outside North America. True, I could buy the book and read along, but I already have a bunch of things to read and wasn’t in any particular rush to read this one. As for buying it now for a book club mostly populated by those who got it for free…No thank you.
I would also like to pile onto the suggestion that noting (Only available in the US and Canada) at the very beginning of the post, rather than at the end, would likely prevent some disappointment/disgruntlement.
Outstanding! Thank you!
This sounds like a great idea. Looking forward to participating!
I signed up, but cannot open either ePub or Mobi files :(
Wonderful. Thank you!
“We’re sorry, this promotion is only available in the US and Canada”.
Sou brasileiro – I’m from Brazil. :-(
GREAT!!!! I’m so happy :). i’ve started this one three times, but now I’ll have the motivation to carry on. I’m looking forward to what’s in store…
What the what! I’m so excited about this. Thanks, TOR!
@26 If you don’t have an e-reader program, you’ll need to download one of those, too. Calibre is a popular choice.
I’m really excited about this program. Should be fun!
Yup. Wish you could at least make a deal with Tor UK on this kind of thing. I can understand that when you don’t have an operation in a zone then you’re limited, but it’s a shame that the different bits of Tor can’t work together.
This is really awesome. Thanks so much!
It was cruel to promote this t everyone then say at the very end that it is only available to US and Canada. Lucky them but a poor joke on the rest of the world to get your readers excited then pull the rug out from under us. Badly done Tor, badly done.
How unfortunate and disapointing!
@17 It’s not a matter of getting a free book, it’s just disapointing to receive the newsletter, get excited and after reading all the instructions in the post to discover at the end that you can not get the book at all. It would be nicer to tell it at the beginning of the post.
“Negotiate world-wide e-publishing rights with your authors.”
Right, because all authors and all their agents are totally looking to put their e-publishing rights for all territories, worldwide, in the hands of one publisher. And doing so is an absolute guarantee that those books WILL be published globally.
This is awesome, but please put the bit about it not being available outside US and Canada right at the top??? I nearly cried here in my sunny Australian winter when I reached the bottom.
Got to agree with the other international people requesting you put the information that this is USA/Canada only ABOVE the link, so that we don’t click first and find out later. ;) It’s okay to leave such details for a while, but any info we need to know before clicking a link should always be placed before a link as a matter of good website post composition.
That said, I hope that everyone in North America enjoys the book club. :)
@37: They can negotiate non-exclusive publishing rights too. Especially since, with the exception of a few nations, foreign publishers won’t even publish the English version but one in the local language.
It would be friendlier, and better practice, to make it more obvious that this is only available to people living in specific parts of the world.
Thanks for putting this together :)
Yay!
Looking forward to the discussion!
Thanks for the eBook Club and I look forward to discussing The Three-Body Problem!
I am having problems downloading the book!
I signed up earlier, but when I returned and typed in my e-mail to confirm, a “runtime error” message came up.
Would someone look into this? I would be very disappointed if I missed a download
Funnily enough, on forums where US viewers complain about media they can’t get for free in the US, the usual response from International viewers is that Americans are arrogant have-it-alls.
@47 : While I’ve never seen that kind of complaint, it may stem from the fact that US people can pay for cable/streaming content if they want to, whereas internationals often don’t even have that option. Content services like Netflix offer less titles in different nations while asking for the same price as the US.
And it’s really just the other side of the same coin: the same laws that prevent global giveaways are those that prevent global distribution of paid-for media.
Lovin this!
I’ve downloaded and have been reading The Three-Body Problem, but I haven’t found anywhere on this site to discuss the book. No forums, no chats, nothing. All I’ve seen is one blog post with a few comments and that’s it. Where is all the actual book club discussion taking place?
the link does not work :/