Translation adds a large extra cost to publishing -- namely, paying the translator. Moreover, where there's a strong national language market a population of 5 million or under can sustain some activity -- but if the population is very English-literate, the market diminishes. (For example, I'm translated into smaller language markets than the Netherlands, but that market is very close to bilingual in English, so generally only best-sellers get translated.)
To make a living as a writer given current book prices and reading rates you either need government grants or access to a market with 100 million-odd potential customers.
]]>Wireless is currently $24.95 (but actually $16.47 after discount) on amazon, while the Kindle version is $10.79. I would gladly pay, say, $27.95 ($19.47 after standard amazon discount) for a bundle of both of them. (Leaving aside the DRM issues currently present on the Kindle; that's a topic for another comment.)
]]>(1) Electronic piracy of books often leads to horrendous, embarassing, meaning-changing errors. The "suspension of disbelief" can be extremely thin, at times — particularly for so-called "literary fiction"! — and getting thrown out of the story by errors can be extremely frustrating, and is more likely to push many readers away than to entice them to purchase the underlying book. (Sadly, the errors one finds in pirated e-books often reflect increasingly sloppy proofreading at commercial publishers...)
(2) Too frequently, undirected and/or fan-directed publicity efforts undermine author efforts. This might be as simple as the fan effort pushing toward a disfavored/completed series or work; it might be as complex as {name withheld due to client confidentiality}'s problems with fan activity undermining the author's ability to deal with accusations of defamation.
I'm not saying that giving a taste of an author's work is always an ineffective sales tactic; I'm not even saying that the other legal aspects dominate. Instead, I'm saying that fen should not assume that authors are too stupid to market their own works appropriately. (Go ahead and assume publishers are, though... <vbeg>)
]]>Five years ago.
That's when early-gen Palm IIIs got really cheap on eBay.
If it runs off AAA cells, can hold a dozen novels, and costs $40 or less, I'd say t's well on the way to being an ultra-cheap commodity.
]]>This isn't quite my view. I simply won't buy an ebook that I can't extract from its DRM. Where I am that isn't illegeal in itself, but I'm not sure if I'm protected from 'theft' due to breaking the supposed contract with the e-retailer. An ebook that I can crack typically has a value to me between US/UK e-retail plus forex fees and NZ pbook retail. The Aussie bookstores are about to launch stores with pricing to compete with Amazon (for AU delivery), they say. Remembering that if you order a typical mmpb on its own from Amazon that the shipping charges are more than the book, it will be interesting to see where the Aussies price things. I'm happy to give retailers their share, I'm a lot less happy about paying e-retailers a ebook price at a level designed to 'protect' sales that have to allow for significant shipping costs.
]]>There are useful and interesting works on a variety of subjects of interest only to a tiny, micro-focussed audience too small to attract a major publisher.
And there are also oceans of slush, published because it's now easy for an author who doesn't want to hear the message that they're not ready for prime-time yet to put their book on sale at their own expense.
The readers, as usual, are voting with their wallets ... for the commercial product, for the most part. (Honourable exception: fanfic, which by its very nature isn't sold commercially.)
]]>But this is something that obviously irritates him a bit, as he pulls his head away as well.
]]>I say "had" because (a) it became erratic after we starved her down to 50% of her original (morbidly obese) weight (under veterinary supervision, I hasten to add), and (b) she has osteoarthritis in her hind quarters and tail these days (a relic of being morbidly obese) so we're reluctant to irritate her.
]]>our cats are elderly and obligate indoors-dwellers, since before we adopted them from a cat shelter. (Previous owner lived in a flat; we live in a flat, too.) Mafdet isn't even interested in laser pointers ...
]]>(Or Norwegian Forest Cats, as they're known in English.)
Though it's plausible that some cats have tree sloth in their ancestry.
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