Neil Gaiman Book "American Gods" Free Online

Denial93 writes "Geek favorite author Neil Gaiman has just made his multi-award-winning bestselling novel 'American Gods' available online for free. It's a trial by the publisher, and runs for one month. Gaiman writes in his blog: 'If it works, and people read it, then a) we may be able to put up another book and b) sooner or later they'll simply let us give away the book in electronic form....' It's an excellent book and much deserving of the many prestigious awards it has been getting."

Online Ebooks are good, but...

Excellent!
I'm glad to see that publishers are trying this out. Tor has a promotion running, in which they email you non-drm'd books (usually book 1 of a series) every week.

And, ever since I bought my prs-500, it has been difficult to stay legit - I have a hard time buying a book online for the same (or very similar) price to a real, dead tree paper book. Sure, I could feel good about saving the environment, but why does it cost the same to deliver an electronic book as it does to sell a hard copy? I thought shipping and handling, stocking and middle men markups had something to do with the high price of the written word... *sigh*

... and back to the topic at hand, this is an excellent book!

Greed.+ buzzword bingo

hy does it cost the same to deliver an electronic book as it does to sell a hard copy? I thought shipping and handling, stocking and middle men markups had something to do with the high price of the written word.

"If we can disintermediate effectively, t

I got "American Gods" in hardcover back when...

My knowledge of mythology comes from the standard Greco-Roman stuff in high school plus whatever Norse you can pick up by reading "The Mighty Thor" comic books.

While most of reading "American Gods" was fun, I could see many references going over my head, and it was kind of like low-level overflights by a jet fighter. Whooooooosh!

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It'd be well worth your time to go take a quick scan through the basics of Norse mythology. You'll understand much much more of the book that way.

I laughed my ass off when Wednesday introduced himself as Wednesday, as I was already suspecting him to be at

It's a hell of a book

The kind of stuff he does here, if other people did it the reaction would be "Gee, isn't he full of himself, 'look, ma, I'm writing real good!'" It would come of as affected and hackish. But the reality-bending stuff he does in here, it's just real weird good. Been a fan of his since Sandman. He has a way of turning reality sideways, making you suddenly aware of the audience before you and the stage machinery behind -- that literally happens in a few places. Strange, chewy brain candy.

I would also highly recommend Good Omens, a collaboration between himself and Terry Pratchett. How to describe it? "Imagine if Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett wrote their version of the Omen and Rosemary's Baby, the Christian Apocalypse before Left Behind became so cheesy-popular. Yes, it's exactly like that. Go read it."

Re:It's a hell of a book

I describe Good Omens to people as "Think of the movie Dogma, only opposite."

I've never seen the appeal

of reading entire novels online. I mean, lets be honest here, American Gods isn't exactly a slim book, that's a lot of text to scroll through, using a reader or not.

I know there are a lot of people out there that seem to prefer the format, but for me

Excitement followed by disappointment

I thought I would be able to download a TXT file or a PDF of this book. Nope, no download. Instead I can browse it through the publisher's site, which is not only a bit slow, but also eye-straining. The images of the pages are so compressed it makes it unenjoyable to read. If only there was some way to rent books locally.

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If only there was some way to rent books locally.

I believe it's called a Library.

Re:Excitement followed by disappointment

When you made that post, did you, perchance, notice a strong "wooshing" sound directly over your head?

This book earned me a smack

I was reading this book some years ago and my mother saw the cover and asked me 'American gods? Like money and power?' to which I responded 'No, Odin and Thor'. She gave me a smack for being a smart ass.

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Of course, the point of the book may indeed be that things like Money, Power, Consumerism, and Technology *are* the American Gods.

Seems to be missing the point...

The way they're releasing it requires a fairly large high resolution screen even to read, due to the way the web page is laid out and the image-based page viewing. I can't imagine reading this even on a full-time connected handheld... so it's missing the l

American Gods and Neverwhere

As far as Gaiman's books go, I found Neverwhere to be much more satisfying read than American Gods. The latter felt more like a cross between the old "Sam & Max" PC game, and the second Dirk Gently story, Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, from Douglas Adams, and not as polished or tight (or funny) as either one.

Funny enough...

...I didn't actually like American Gods. It just felt like there wasn't anything particularly new or interesting in the story that I haven't seen in territory covered by other writers like Douglas Adams , Tom Holt, etc. Maybe a bit 'darker' but I wouldn'

SUMMARY

Lunch is not free. Authors and publishers have mortgages too.

The book is available online for reading online only - not for download - and the online version looks like a series of highly compressed JPEG images given the "noise" surrounding the text. You would have to be fairly frugal to read the entire book on that site...and that is most likely by design. Read a chapter or two and then buy the book if you like it...and like your eyes.

Online = good, but done horribly

Has anybody actually tried the link? It's awful. They made a single web page with hundreds of JPEGs, one for each page of the text. The images aren't sharp or fully black, so they are hard to read. And it takes forever to load. They added a nice AJAX "loading..." message over the top while you scroll, but sheesh - I'd far rather just go to the library or buy the book.

Can't download

As more than a few people have pointed out, you can't download it. According to his blog, Neil is aware of this and is attempting to get the publisher to actually place a pdf/lit etc version on there for downloading. Those who read his blog would also know that there was a poll last week to choose which book of his would be available. Unfortunately, Good Omens wasn't an option, probably because of the dual copyright.

I have to say, I find it hard to see how he ever gets any books written - he's one of the more prolific bloggers I've come across :)

Re:slashdot users.

Looks like you forgot to check the anonymous box there, bud...oops.

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Well, we like you. [hugs]

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It looks like what's free is the ability to leaf through the book online through a browser, not download an e-book (although that doesn't cost much, something like $7).

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From the mosquito noise, it looks suspiciously like the applet downloads a bunch of JPEGs. Doing a bit of analysis with tcpdump shows that it requests URLs of the form: http://browseinside.harpercollins.com/Services/GetPage.aspx?isbn13=9780060558123&pa [harpercollins.com]

Re:Read this book.

Like most /. comments, the above adds nothing to the conversation, fails to inform, enlighten or educate. It also improperly uses a semi-colon. However, I still urge you to read American Gods.

Spoiler: Shadow kills Snape.

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Like most /. comments, the above adds nothing to the conversation, fails to inform, enlighten or educate. It also improperly uses a semi-colon.

I would consider this an improvement over the improper use of a colon, which is also quite common on Slashdot (and involves JPGs).

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I think the new offering, while cheaper, is rather inferior to the product you bought. Thoses iPhones where the same phones before and after the price reduction.