widelyred

Comment Threads

• Charlie Stross commented on Amazon surrenders
  fmackay @70: yes, there's less fiction on the fiction page. However, you'll find most of the stories in the collection "Toast" (which is downloadable, from that very page). The others will show up as links on the page eventually, when I get round to proofing them properly and reformatting the (circa-1993-95) HTML....
• Sean Eric Fagan commented on Amazon surrenders
  So there are a chunk of customers who buy hardbacks because it's the only format available and they want the book NOW, dammit ... and a bunch who want to buy and lovingly preserve the cultural artefact that is the pristine first-edition hardcover. And a number of us who buy hardcover because we're shocked by how little authors (or at least genre authors) make. Really, it's all of those reasons, in differing quantities at different times. The Malazan books, for example, I've been getting in hardcover because a 1200 page paperback... doesn't work. Your books, I tend to buy...
• kenzoid.com commented on Amazon surrenders
  @75 kithrup...agreed. I have a handful of authors (our esteemed host among them) that I generally buy in hardcover immediately as they come out, simply because I know the royalty payment is larger on a hardcover. Cory Doctorow is in the same list, and I haven't read any of my hardback copies of his books in years...I read on my phone (G1) or Kindle, since all of Cory's stuff is available under Creative Commons. With these authors, I usually also have at least one other copy (paperback, once that's out) that I consider my "evangelizing" copy...the copy I put in...
• Charlie Stross commented on Amazon surrenders
  Michelle Sagara: If the large publishers did attempt to pursue a similar model, they couldn't do it without cutting into the sales of their retailers, and their retailers -- necessary in the current environment -- would have a fit; why should a retailer put effort behind something that the publisher can sell in a cost-effective/profitable way for a much lower price? Very true. It also suggests to me that if the long-predicted collapse of the mass-market paperback comes about and coincides with the rise of the ebook market, we're going to see more wars between publishers and book chains (and...
• Charlie Stross commented on Amazon surrenders
  Let me just second what Mercedes Lackey said with this observation: I come from a long line of folks who were either self-employed or ran businesses. I know the difference quite well, thanks. And I, too, would rather stab myself in the eye with a fork repeatedly than set myself up as a publisher, with all that the job entails. Old joke: what's the easiest way to make a small fortune in publishing? Answer: start with a large fortune. Then go into publishing....