1) For a new ebook, the price is often more that I'd end up paying for a paperback released at the same time. They both have the same cover price, but stores will discount the paperback more than the ebook (if they discount the ebook at all). Why should I pay more for something that does cost less to produce (although I know it's not as much as many might thing), as well as something that is less flexible. Due to DRM I cannot loan, trade or resell an ebook which leads me on to...
2) I can't loan, trade or resell an ebook. Sure, I get that the publisher and author get no money from me loaning a book or reselling it to a second hand shop or whatever so want to restrict that if they can. However, why not produce a model where the DRM is transferrable. Digital editions already has the ability to do temporary licensing for borrowing from a virtual library. Why not produce a DRM that allows for this between people. Doesn't have to be free even. Put a small cover charge on each loan or sale and you can generate earning from a secondary market that you're denied from with paperbacks.
The one thing I'd really like to see though is a system that lets you pay a monthly fee and "borrow" x ammount of ebooks a month from a library. I'd happily pay a useful ammount of money for that.
]]>In everything but outdoor sunlight, I find the iPad easier to read than my Sony Reader Touch. I can read a book in my (admittedly relatively dim) living room light, or I can read the Sony -- in both cases, having a little LED booklight helps. But I can read the iPad in the same light, or in a dark room. (I do have to manually adjust the brightness level.)
]]>I have just opened the Novellas packet for the Hugos. And lo, verily, they have turned the nice ePub file I sent them (of Palimpsest) into a cruddy PDF!!!
A complaint will be issued. Too late for them to act on, but hopefully next year someone will listen.
Sigh. In the meantime, if you want Palimpsest in mungeable-to-other-formats HTML, You can click through to it here.
]]>To those of you in the UK who are complaining about ebooks costing more than paper books, BLAME THE GOVERNMENT.
Books are zero-rated for VAT (sales tax). But software and anything delivered electronically, be it on CD or over the internet, is liable for VAT. If it's UK standard rate VAT that adds 17.5% to the cover price. If it's international European sales-standard it's usually 19%, although in some jurisdictions it may be 21%.
]]>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.)
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