From the problems I wouldn't mind having department

Tor.com tries to inspire our pity with an article about fantasy and scifi authors whose fans are bothering them for their next book.

Umm, yeah guys, let me get out the world's smallest violin. But, honestly, forget about those of us who haven't even be able to sell our first book; maybe you'd all like to trade places with all those talented authors whose first books didn't sell well enough for their publisher to pick up their second.

I mean, congratulations to all of you successful authors out there. But why don't you take a moment to be thankful for your good fortune instead of bitching about it?

Tor is sending me free books faster than I can read them.

At least the first one, Scalzi's "Old Man's War," I've already read and blogged about. But I haven't started on Robert Charles Wilson's "Spin" yet before they sent me something else.

I'm not enough on the producer side of the writing market to have a strong opinion on the advantages & disadvantages of giving away content. I'm still mostly a consumer, and therefore my attitude is more along the lines of "cool, free stuff." What I haven't worked out yet is the practical mechanics of reading a whole electronic manuscript. I can't bring myself to sacrifice that many printer pages, reading them on the computer on the train seems lame, and I'm too cheap to buy an e-book reader. Well, maybe Heather can show me how to put it on my Ipod, I've seen her do it. But being the new-media download junkie that she is, I think she's already moved on to a Kindle.

Anyway, you want free electronic books, check out Tor's website. Why not?