Trek Books for Kindle

[Claudia]

FWIW, Ktrek made my point for me. As long as ST-ebooks are not deemed to be worthy of the same kind of attention to details given to printed books, I'm not willing to pay the same amount of money or more. (And I still have enough shelve space left, so I don't need to consider alternatives for that reason yet. )

What are your experiences with other publishers, aside from ST-books (S&S)? Are the formatting issues unique to ST? Or is this a problem prevalent in e-books in general?

The last 3 Star Trek books to come out on Kindle in the UK (DTI, Indistinguishable and forthcoming Voyager book) are all priced at £3.99 on Kindle, when the paperback is £6.99 . This is proper pricing, and I've got no problems with adding ebooks to my basked when they're £3 cheaper than the paperback.

Hm, I just looked on amazon.co.uk - and the PB of i.e. Indistinguishable is offered at GBP 3.69 right now, so it costs less than the Kindle version (they're both reduced now, normal price is, for both, at GBP 6.99)...

I browsed through a few other ST-titles, and the Kindle price was usually higher than the PB-one (with the exception of DTI).

 

[Kataaran]

^ One thing to remember in the UK is that you're paying VAT on an ebook but not on the paper version.

 

[Deano2099]

The hole in your entire argument is that people ARE paying for e-books at their current prices. Even with the piracy option, even with the the fact that there does exist a lot of people who won't pay that much, there is quite clearly a lot of people who WILL.

And how much "better" something would sell isn't relevant either. Everything would sell "better" if it were cheaper. That doesn't mean that just because it would sell better at a cheaper price that the supplier should sell it for that price.

And the hole in yours is that you're treating "people" as a binary condition. I could release my own ebook for $100, say a collection of my blog posts, and do that tomorrow. "People" would buy it. My mum and my best friend.

By your logic, $100 is a fair, good and sensible price to be selling my eBook at because people are buying it. "People" will pay that price for it and so that's the price that should be set. Even though it's just two people.

To give a more sensible example, I think 90% of people on here are invested enough that if the paperback prices of Trek novels doubled overnight, we'd still pay that. So why haven't they?

And if your answer is "Duh, because loads more people wouldn't" then: exactly.

 

[LightningStorm]

And if your answer is "Duh, because loads more people wouldn't" then: exactly.

Where, exactly, do you see me arguing about a minority? This has been my whole point all along. See the bell curve argument I made before. That's what you're arguing here. Just because there are a few people willing to pay a ridiculous amount for something doesn't set set the GENERAL willing to pay amount no more than a minority of people only willing to pay a very small amount for something does.

The premise I have opposed all along is that the current price of e-books is "too much" and that people aren't willing to pay it, and as I've already clarified earlier, by "people" I don't mean two people, I mean the general average of the whole target audience. The people who fall in the MIDDLE of the bell curve, the majority.

Also, in your example, if your target audience is those two people and they are willing to pay $100 for it, then yes that is absolutely the right price for it. Because your consumers are in general all willing to pay that much for it. If your target audience is the whole general population then you'd have to come down in that price to sell more than two of them. But by contrast you wouldn't have to come down all the way to say $1 per book either just because there are are couple of people who wouldn't pay more than that. If most people are willing to pay as much as $20 for it then that's probably the best price for you. Sure you could opt to sell it for less, but that's on you if don't want the extra profits that you could be getting.

 

[JWolf]

FWIW, Ktrek made my point for me. As long as ST-ebooks are not deemed to be worthy of the same kind of attention to details given to printed books, I'm not willing to pay the same amount of money or more. (And I still have enough shelve space left, so I don't need to consider alternatives for that reason yet. )

What are your experiences with other publishers, aside from ST-books (S&S)? Are the formatting issues unique to ST? Or is this a problem prevalent in e-books in general?

I've never had such formatting issues with eBooks. Only the Star Trek eBook have had a botch job on the embedded fonts. Missing italics? Only Star Trek. But I have had other issues with other eBooks like run-on italics where the next word on the same line after something italics was missing a space. I've seen more words in Star Trek eBook that have a dash in between as in Star-fleet. So really, it's been pretty constant since sometime during Destiny when S&S decided to drop MS Reader in favor or ePub.

 

[UncleRogi]

And if your answer is "Duh, because loads more people wouldn't" then: exactly.

Where, exactly, do you see me arguing about a minority? This has been my whole point all along. See the bell curve argument I made before. That's what you're arguing here. Just because there are a few people willing to pay a ridiculous amount for something doesn't set set the GENERAL willing to pay amount no more than a minority of people only willing to pay a very small amount for something does.

The premise I have opposed all along is that the current price of e-books is "too much" and that people aren't willing to pay it, and as I've already clarified earlier, by "people" I don't mean two people, I mean the general average of the whole target audience. The people who fall in the MIDDLE of the bell curve, the majority.

I enjoy my Kindle, and find I enjoy the convenience of pushing a button to buy a book. If it costs a bit more, it's because I PUSHED A BUTTON. ON MY COUCH.

)

 

[Thrawn]

And if your answer is "Duh, because loads more people wouldn't" then: exactly.

Where, exactly, do you see me arguing about a minority? This has been my whole point all along. See the bell curve argument I made before. That's what you're arguing here. Just because there are a few people willing to pay a ridiculous amount for something doesn't set set the GENERAL willing to pay amount no more than a minority of people only willing to pay a very small amount for something does.

The premise I have opposed all along is that the current price of e-books is "too much" and that people aren't willing to pay it, and as I've already clarified earlier, by "people" I don't mean two people, I mean the general average of the whole target audience. The people who fall in the MIDDLE of the bell curve, the majority.

I enjoy my Kindle, and find I enjoy the convenience of pushing a button to buy a book. If it costs a bit more, it's because I PUSHED A BUTTON. ON MY COUCH.

)

I really find it hard to disagree with this. I actually have often found myself buying things for kindle that I already own, because it's worth a few bucks for the convenience. Even if ebooks stay more expensive, I'll pretty happily buy them.

 

[JD]

I agree. And I don't drive so it also means I don't have to bug my mom to take me to the bookstore every time I want something new to read. I also switched over to digital comics for that same reason.

 

[JWolf]

What I mind most of all is paying more for an eBook that gives me less quality then the pBook. I'm almost finished with DTI and I'm finding a number of errors in it as well as having had to do major repair work just to be able to get it to be readable. All this at a higher price then the paperback.

 

[Art Vandelay]

An update on the Vanguard situation... Reap the Whirlwind is back on Kindle, but Summon the Thunder vanished for three days. Now it is back as well, but is still unavailable to European customers (I thought they took it down to fix just that, but no). Can't they (whoever "they" is) just see to it that they're all available - like everywhere?

 

[Daddy Todd]

Interesting article about the formatting of e-book texts.

H/T to SLOG.

 

[Zorkel567]

Quick question- Would it be easy enough to get into Vanguard without having muc prior Trek background knowledge?

 

[LightningStorm]

Interesting article about the formatting of e-book texts.

H/T to SLOG.

I couldn't read beyond the first two sentences of that. Because he noted that one thing that is the same as another will not replace it because a bunch of not same things didn't replace each other.

 

[JD]

Quick question- Would it be easy enough to get into Vanguard without having muc prior Trek background knowledge?

As long as the reader has some basic knowledge of the universe, I think they would probably be OK.

 

[JWolf]

Interesting article about the formatting of e-book texts.

H/T to SLOG.

I couldn't read beyond the first two sentences of that. Because he noted that one thing that is the same as another will not replace it because a bunch of not same things didn't replace each other.

I read past that and it didn't get much better.

 

[lstyer]

Something interesting I just ran across, and germane to the topic of cost of ebook vs. cost of print:

Publisher Credits Low Production Costs To High Ebook Profitability

The publisher in question? Simon & Schuster. The guys who publish Trek novels.

Here's the relevant quotation:

“We got out of the gate faster than usual,” said S&S CEO Carolyn Reidy led by sales of e-books that doubled in the quarter and accounted for 17% of revenue with digital audio adding the other one percent (about $28 million). The steep increase in profits was attributed to lower shipping, production and returns costs as well as the “painful” belt-tightening that S&S has implemented over the last 18 months plus the higher sales, Reidy said.

Emphasis supplied.

 

[Thrawn]

^ I guess you can be cynical about that if you want to, and I'm sure some people will, but I'm actually just really happy that ANY kind of book publishing is experiencing a "steep increase in profits". If equivalent ebook pricing makes that happen, that's fine with me.

Don't forget - if something is more profitable, then companies get to make more of it. Huge profit margin = more books published. To me, this is good.

No, I'm not going to pay $30 for an ebook, but the current equivalent pricing just doesn't seem that bad to me. I'm eagerly awaiting the "PUBLISHERS ARE EVIL AND JUST SCAMMING US OUT OF EXTRA MONEY 'CAUSE THEY'RE EVIL" posts, though.

Either way, thanks for posting that

 

[ATimson]

^ I guess you can be cynical about that if you want to, and I'm sure some people will, but I'm actually just really happy that ANY kind of book publishing is experiencing a "steep increase in profits". If equivalent ebook pricing makes that happen, that's fine with me.

I think most people would be fine with equivalent ebook pricing, it's charging more for the ebook than for the print version we detest.

^Don't forget - if something is more profitable, then companies get to make more of it. Huge profit margin = more books published. To me, this is good.

That depends on how they're getting their profit margin. After all, shorter books that aren't copyedited will have a higher profit margin than longer ones that were. Be careful what you wish for...

(We've been fortunate in that Trek has been increasing the wordcount limits over the last decade; they have further to fall unlike the last line I saw gradually gutted.)

 

[JWolf]

Lower production costs because they don't bother to proof them vs the pBooks which they do proof.

 

[lstyer]

I guess you can be cynical about that if you want to

I don't think I'm being cynical about it, but I think it vindicates my point that ebooks cost less to produce than do print copies.

I'm eagerly awaiting the "PUBLISHERS ARE EVIL AND JUST SCAMMING US OUT OF EXTRA MONEY 'CAUSE THEY'RE EVIL" posts, though.

I don't feel that publishers have any obligation to pass that savings on to customers, but I'm not sure that customers won't, ultimately, demand at least some of that savings be passed on.