Martin's updated 'Access.htm' for organising Baen's WebScriptions eBooks, and lists of all Baen's eBooks

Last Updated June 2007 - includes months from December 1999 to September 2007

Contents
1. Don't know why you are here ?
2. Brief Glossary
3. Download Links
4. Instructions
5. Alternative Lists or Indexes from other people

Don't know why you are here ?

Baen is a major publisher of Speculative Fiction in Dead Tree and eBook formats. Many would say that their books are addictive, so you can delete the 'bli' from publisher

Jim Baen and others believe that currently eBooks help to increase the sales of dead tree editions, so Baen gives away a number of eBooks for free in the Baen Free Library and on CD-ROM's (eight so far, with two more soon) included with selected Baen Hardcovers. The Publisher has also granted permission for these CD-ROM's to be legally downloaded from the Web and duplicated and given away (but not sold).

Almost every book that Baen sells in Dead Tree Format, and more besides, are available at very reasonably (i.e. cheap) prices as Unencrypted eBooks in multiple formats. Baen sells their eBooks via the WebScriptions site run by Arnold Bailey of Webwrights. Arnold is responsible for all of Baen's Web Presence.

Baen's Bar exists as a discussion forum for fans of Baen's eBooks.

When Arnold and Jim started selling eBooks in September 1999 (in monthly bundles only), the WebScriptions site generated a nice single page hyperlinked list of the books you had purchased, called "access.htm", which could be saved and worked as a very useful contents list for the html format eBooks from Baen that had been downloaded and unzipped into monthly subdirectories.

Eighteen months or so later, Arnold improved the WebScriptions site, satisfying the demands for single eBook sales, and adopting the current grid format with months in the left column, and years in a horizontal row. This also meant the demise of the useful "access.htm"

Personally, with permission from Arnold, I have continued to use my updated and enhanced versions of that page to access the eBooks I have bought from Baen. Other people may or may not find them useful. This page links to my updated versions of Access.htm so that you can save them to your local hard disk to help organise the Baen eBooks that you have saved there.

Brief Glossary explaining the two letter codes

• WS = WebScriptions eBook - purchased as part of a monthly bundle of all of that months four to eight books
• SW = Single WebScriptions eBooks not originally included in a Monthly bundle
• AR = eARC - an eBook edition Advanced Readers Copy
• FL = Free Library eBook - free download from the Free Library
• CD = CD-ROM eBook - included on one of the Baen CD-ROM's

Download links - eBooks upto December 2006

All of the following files compressed in one Zip Access.zip

The contents separately

• Access_new.htm A htm list of all eBooks sold by WS sorted by month with links.
• Access_sort.htm A htm list of all eBooks from Baen (WS, SW, AR, FL and CD) sorted by Series and Author with links.
• Access_text.txt A text list of all eBooks from Baen (WS, SW, AR, FL and CD) sorted by Series and Author.
• Access_fl.htm A htm list of Baen's FL eBooks with links
• Access_cds.htm A htm list of Baen's CD eBooks with a key to which CD books are located on and links.
• Access_cd2s.htm A htm list of Baen's CD eBooks with links to the directory and to each of the formats.

The zip also includes access_cd and access_cd2, versions of the above two files where the links require a directory named CD.

Instructions

The major limitation is that at present this only helps to organise the downloaded html format eBooks.

Check out the 'other format CD list' for a version with links to books of all formats - I could generate such lists for the Webscription books if anyone is interested.

Note the directory list in the zip hasn't been updated for a while. This was intended as a way of automatically creating all the subdirectories. Does anyone want an update of this ?

The Access_new.htm and Access_sort.htm files expect to be saved in a directory on your hard disk. This can be called anything, I call mine Webscription.

This has subdirectories for each month, into which that months html zip has been unzipped.
The subdirectories are named as Arnold does, in the form "Wyyyymm"
where yyyy = year, mm= month e.g. W200212
(concerning my terminology 'folder' is a synonym for 'directory')

Then open one of the htm files in your Browser. There are links between them.

For the Free Library and CD eBooks there should be two other directories at the same level as the Webscription directory.

... \anything\CD 

... \anything\Free Library 

... \anything\Webscription 

Access_FL.htm expects to be in the Free Library directory.
The Free Library subdirectories that contain the zip contents should be named with the ISBN, just as Arnold does.
(See the directory list text file in the zip for examples)
(Personally I duplicate these directories, with a second empty directory named for the ISBN, with the proper text name of the book appended, so I know which ISBN contins which book when using a file manager.

That is CD contains 91 subdirectories
... \anything\CD\1632
... \anything\CD\1633
... \anything\CD\A Hymn Before Battle
... \anything\CD\A Plague of Demons
etc etc 

The following more detailed text is also unchanged from when I last posted it publicly.


INSTRUCTIONS
Organising Baen's eBooks - successors to access.htm - and a txt list of all Baen's eBooks.

I have previously posted an updated version of "access.htm", and now do so
again. I remain very grateful to Arnold for the original html, and for his
acceptance of me modifying and reposting it.


For the first 18 months or so that Baen sold eBooks via their WebScriptions site,
there was a single page "access.htm" that linked to all the months that you had purchased.
This went away when WebScriptions got the major upgrade that allowed single book purchases.

That page could be saved and used as a hyperlinked contents page for the offline html versions of the webscription books.

I have continued to use an updated version of that page to access the eBooks I have bought from Baen.


Note that the latest modifications to access.htm include two versions.

"Access_new.htm" indexes the webscription monthly bundles of eBooks,
sorted by month with hyperlinks to the monthly default pages.
It also has hyperlinks from the titles direct to the books.

"Access_sort.htm" is SORTED by Author and Series, it now includes:
(WS) The Webscription monthly bundles,
(SW) The few single Webscription eBooks not in a monthly bundle,
(FL)  The Free Library eBooks, and
(CD) The eBooks on the Baen Honorverse CD-ROM.

There is a text version "Access_txt.txt" of the sorted list without the
hyperlinks, but with the ISBN's. This is a list of all Baen's eBooks.

Also there is a companion list of just the Free Library Books, "Access_FL.htm"


[ Those who only read the Free Library books may want to skip to "Concerning
ACCESS_FL.htm" ]


If anyone wants me to post a version directly in a database or spreadsheet
form please ask.

"WS" = Webscription month, "SW" = Webscription single book,  "FL" = Free
Library, "CD" = Honorverse CD-ROM.
By the Way - do feel free to comment on the choices I have made in sorting
the Authors and Series. Feedback may affect future versions.

Concerning how the hyperlinks work.
These work just like the original access.htm.
Bookmark the htm files in your browser for rapid access.

I assume that when unzipping the zipped html files people duplicated the
directory structure Arnold used.

The two Access.htm files should be in a directory (I call it Webscription - but that
doesn't matter) that has one subdirectory for each webscription month.

Each unzipped month is in its own subdirectory, named in the form "Wyyyymm"
where yyyy = year, mm= month e.g. W200212
(concerning terminology  'folder' is a synonym for 'directory')

Concerning the single Webscription Books - these should be unzipped into
folders whose name is the same as the ISBN number.

I keep the html version of the Free Library books unzipped in folders named
for the ISBN in the same manner as the single webscription books.
However these are subdirectories of a directory called "Free Library" that
is next to my "Webscription" folder (both are subdirectories of a higher
level folder).

If you instead keep the Free Library html directories in the same folder as
the Webscription books, you can edit the html files - do a global replace to
change "../Free Library/" to "./" 
Note the two periods in the first and one in the latter.
A similar technique works if the directory is called something different.

If you use a wildly different directory structure, I would be interested in
knowing - perhaps there are better ways of doing things.

The links to the CD books also assume that there is a sibling directory called CD

e.g.
... \anything\CD
... \anything\Free Library
... \anything\Webscription

In my case 'anything' is "C:\Books\Baen Ebooks\" so 

C:\Books\Baen Ebooks\CD
C:\Books\Baen Ebooks\Free Library
C:\Books\Baen Ebooks\WebScription

Each of which has numerous subdirectories
(see the list of all folders that is also in the zip)

Access_new.htm and Access_sort.htm expect to be in the Webscription directory.
Access_FL.htm in the Free Library directory.


Concerning ACCESS_FL.htm

This is a modified version of "Access_sort.htm", that only contains the Free
Library books.
It is inteded to reside in a directory whose subdirectories contain the
unzipped html versions of the free library books, one book per subdirectory.
The names of the subdirectories match the ISBN that is also the basis of the
filenames for each book.
The title hyperlink is to the local copy of the book. The authors name
hyperlink is to that authors Free Library page where the books can be
downloaded if you are missing some.

Alternative Lists or Indexes from other people