First 20 Pages of The Struggle Within Avaiable on S&S.com

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by JD, Sep 10, 2011.

  1. Idran

    Idran Commodore Commodore

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    It's incorrect enough just to say there's no such thing as a wrong or bad question, silly platitudes aside, but it should be obvious that there's many possible examples of an unreasonable question. It's trivial for me to come up with about a dozen or so hypothetical examples off the top of my head of a question that would be considered unreasonable: one that invades a person's privacy, one that includes implicit false or overly strong assumptions and so can't be answered in a reasonable manner, one asked in a panel discussion or lecture on a subject completely off the intended topic and beyond the purview of knowledge of the speakers. It just takes a moment's thought to come up with examples of unreasonable questions.
     
  2. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Then maybe they should price it as such - it's impossible to justify paying $6 for a 25,000 word novella when I can get a full 100,000-word Trek novel for the same price.
     
  3. TerraUnam

    TerraUnam Commander Red Shirt

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    We are still in an age when physical pages constitute "reading" and things on a screen constitutes "writing", regardless of PADDs, sorry, iPads and Kindles. Reading still equals paper.

    It will change in time. E-published books and Kindles are popular among people over 65 I know because they can change the font size easily to accommodate deteriorating eyesight.

    Give it ten years and a generation of elderly people who want changeable print size and a publishing industry who can accommodate that easily with e-books.
     
  4. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    People read plenty of stuff on screens. They read e-mail, they read blogs, they read news and magazine articles, they read Wikipedia, and yes, they read fiction. There are now more genre fiction magazines online than there are in print.
     
  5. fleetcaptain

    fleetcaptain Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Got me craving more now too, lol. I honestly don't mind e-books myself. I did buy the first 4 novels and haven't read them all completely yet. So I don't mind either format at all.
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^Be aware that The Struggle Within does contain some spoilers for other Typhon Pact books, particularly Paths of Disharmony and Rough Beasts of Empire.
     
  7. j3067

    j3067 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    I read the sample. It was neat to see Jono and his people included again. I can't say I am too enthused about the set-up for the Chen/Choudhury plot. It seems like they are going to help nail a 95 theses to the Kinshaya's church door with a wink and a nod to the Prime Directive.
     
  8. ToddCam

    ToddCam Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Star Trek fans are just as susceptible to technophobia as anyone I think. Many years ago, when the Lost Era came out, I found it odd that in the 24th century it was so hard to track down a single civilian on Earth because personal communications devices seemed to be solely Starfleet's purview, especially since the cell phone was already quite common by that time. I got a lot of responses disdaining the cell phone as a nuisance. I'm sure most of those people now have cell phones, but it seemed really odd that a bunch of Star Trek fans were afraid of the future like that.

    Also, I still want to know why civilians don't have a cell phone equivalent!
     
  9. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    That was not the historical referent I was guided by. More like the Indian independence movement and the Arab Spring.
     
  10. JWolf

    JWolf Commodore Commodore

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    S&S needs to learn how to price eBooks. Look at the prices of the individual SCE eBooks.

    http://books.simonandschuster.biz/A...ek-Starfleet-Corps-of-Engineers/9780743475921

    76 pages at most and it's $5.99. This is way out of line.
     
  11. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    "Way out of line?"

    It's not like there's an objective standard for what is or is not an appropriate price for a minor luxury item such as a Star Trek novella.
     
  12. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    ^Exactly. And it's still $2 cheaper than the $7.99 we pay for novels. I really don't get why people get so pissed over the pricing of digital stuff. You get the same thing as you get when you buy a physical copy, so why shouldn't you pay the same price for the same thing. Sure it would be nice if they were cheaper, but I don't see where them not being is the horrendous crime against humanity so many make it out to be.
     
  13. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    25% discount in price (or 0% if you buy using Amazon's 4 for 3 discount), 75% discount in content...
     
  14. Sci

    Sci Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, but you've got to factor in that S&S needs to be able to make money at this if they're going to continue doing it. They're a business producing luxury items, not a charity producing essential services. If it's not worth their while to publish something for less than $5.99, then I say they should keep pricing it at $5.99.
     
  15. Turtletrekker

    Turtletrekker Admiral Admiral

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    I agree that the price is a little steep, but after reading the preview, I will most likely be buying this, and I rarely buy e-books.
     
  16. Judith Sisko

    Judith Sisko Commander Red Shirt

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    I haven't purchased any of the Typhon Pact books and I doubt I'll get this one because of that, but I hope we see more e-books.
     
  17. ATimson

    ATimson Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    True. My problem isn't that they're trying to make money, it's that they're making more money while providing less value.
     
  18. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: First 20 Pages of The Struggle Within Available on S&S.com

    Agreed.

    Peter David's The Camelot Papers eBook was 100,000 words and $4.99. Jennifer Pournelle's Outies (a sequel to The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) was 110,000 words and $2.65. Tony Lee's Dodge & Twist eBook was 85,000 words and $2.99. All eBook originals. (They're the last three that I bought.) All significantly longer than Struggle, all priced less.

    I admit that the economic model is different for these eBooks than for a Star Trek eBook. All three of these are, essentially, self-published, and the writers worked without an advance, so the overhead costs are less. And they don't have the licensing fees and such built in that a Star Trek book would have.

    I think $2.99 would be a more realistic price point for Struggle; a publisher can charge a little more for an established property. $5.99, however, isn't competitive on price or content, and if Pocket is attempting to put a toe back in the eBook pond, that price point may not get enough nibbles for them to continue.
     
  19. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Re: First 20 Pages of The Struggle Within Available on S&S.com

    Hmm, now that does kinda change things. I didn't realize there were that many e-book exclusives that were so cheap. And don't forget the e-book exclusive Star Wars novellas, Lost Tribe of the Sith, that are available for free.
    And I just found two e-book novellas in the Women of the Other World series, Angelic is 104 pages for the hardcover and $2.99 for the e-book, and Counterfit Magic is 141 pages in hardcover and $4.99 for the e-book.
     
  20. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: First 20 Pages of The Struggle Within Available on S&S.com

    Amazon's Kindle Singles, which are eBook originals, are similar in length to The Struggle Within -- the target length is 15,000, though they do range down to 5k and up to 30k -- and they're priced between $0.99 and $4.99. The first one I bought was Frank Delaney's Undead, an interesting and atmospheric essay on the writing of Dracula, and it was just under a dollar, and I think it ran 15k.

    I can see reasons why 99 cents wouldn't be a viable price for a Star Trek eBook original. There are a lot of built-in costs, such a Pocket's licensing fees, editing, and formatting the eBook for multiple platforms. (With Kindle Singles, there's only the single format.) But I think $2.99 would be a feasible price, though I suspect that the Kindle Single 70% royalty rate wouldn't be doable.

    There's still a lot of madness out there in eBook pricing and not a lot of reason. I've always thought, going back to the days of Microsoft Reader and the first S.C.E. novellas, that the pricing tiers should adhere to a simple logic -- from top to bottom, hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market, eBook. And since for the first three, the next level down is approximately half of the level above it, then the eBook should be about half of the mass-market price, which these days would make it about $3.99 for an eBook. Publishers, though, are reticent to price eBooks at that level, because they're afraid that doing so would gut their print sales. And that, of course, doesn't account for eBook originals; where should they go in the pricing? Publishers are still working that one out.