Template:Baen DOI

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A note about Baen Books "DOI" and Release details

Baen Books has since 1999 been releasing electronic versions of forthcoming books by subscription as e-ARCs ('electronic Advanced Reader Copies'), released in roughly, one-third of whole installments, the last coinciding with the print release, and incorporating the installments, as a full e-book. Later marketing innovations have seen Baen include copies of the e-books as free material on CD-ROM discs, bundled with a hardcover book release.

These electronic versions, whether full or partial releases, are produced by Webscriptions under contract for Baen Books in various (at least five) common digital formats which complicates the issue of identifying electronic versions, so that Baen and Webscriptions do not use the DOI registration system, though until circa 2005, webscriptions still listed DOI identifiers, and Baen's website continues to use the abbreviation into and as of 2008. Under the registered DOI system, each installment release, and the final e-work, in all the formats produced should have a unique and specific Digital Object Identifier, which in terms of economic costs, is simply too high to bear.

The electronic e-ARC practices also complicates things in "publications dates", since the first released text starts two to three months before the release of the print copy, though the released text is not guaranteed to be fully copy edited—and so occasionally differs from the final released fully copy edited versions.