Venting about ebooks
- Thread starter Flogiston
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Pricing is my issue as well. I still want to read Slings and Arrows, but I wont pay 30 or 40 dollars to do so. They shouldn't be priced as full length books.
Or even seeing a print version of Slings and Arrows. Put it out for the DS9 anniversary!
This, I think, is what leads so many people to pirate the ebooks. Many years ago, people downloaded songs illegally through Napster. It was free and convenient. Flash forward a few years, and iTunes takes over the world. Suddenly, you can download the individual song you want (instead of buying a whole album for one or two songs you want) for a reasonable price - just 99 cents.
I read a statistic from one of those recording industry lawyers, who said in an interview that thanks to iTunes (and other, similar sites such as bandcamp.com and Amazon), music piracy had dropped by 75%, and their profits were through the roof.
If companies offer a decent product at a reasonable price, people will buy it. I know it's bad to assume, but still, I would assume that the majority of people would prefer to acquire their entertainment legally. They would be willing to pay a few dollars to download their copy of whatever the item is.
Unfortunately, most publishers are stuck in the mindset that says they have to maximize their profits and to hell with the customers. Guys, at the end of the day, it's an electronic file. A few weeks ago, a poster here talked about Trek titles he (she?) had purchased from an eBook seller. That site had discontinued selling the titles. As he'd not yet downloaded them, he was then stuck with vaporware. Paying for a product he would never get, and the files had been deleted from the store's servers.
Who is to say it won't happen again? Sure, Amazon is a big deal in the book world these days. So was Borders. What happens if they go out of business, or Pocket decides to flip the switch and not offer Trek books on their site? Or Amazon decides to reach into peoples' devices and delete the files, as they did not long ago with 1984, of all titles.
Since ebooks are not physical books, and they can be taken away at any time, they should not be priced the same - or, in some cases with Trek books - even higher than the physical book. The publisher has already paid the writer. It's already been edited, it's already in a digital form. It goes through a conversion with Calibre or something similar, and bingo, we have an ebook to sell.
Some of the prices are bizarre. When I checked a month or so ago, Jean Lorrah's Trek books were mostly 8 dollars. Except for Survivors, which was 11.99. And that's a 20 year old Trek book which has never been out of print.
I'm a poor college student. I have 4 bucks to my name. I want to read the new Trek book. Do I pay a reasonable price for it and be done with it? Or do I go to google and do a five-second search to download title X for free?
Since they tend to think of their customers as the enemy, they will continue to overprice their ebooks.
I read a statistic from one of those recording industry lawyers, who said in an interview that thanks to iTunes (and other, similar sites such as bandcamp.com and Amazon), music piracy had dropped by 75%, and their profits were through the roof.
If companies offer a decent product at a reasonable price, people will buy it. I know it's bad to assume, but still, I would assume that the majority of people would prefer to acquire their entertainment legally. They would be willing to pay a few dollars to download their copy of whatever the item is.
Unfortunately, most publishers are stuck in the mindset that says they have to maximize their profits and to hell with the customers. Guys, at the end of the day, it's an electronic file. A few weeks ago, a poster here talked about Trek titles he (she?) had purchased from an eBook seller. That site had discontinued selling the titles. As he'd not yet downloaded them, he was then stuck with vaporware. Paying for a product he would never get, and the files had been deleted from the store's servers.
Who is to say it won't happen again? Sure, Amazon is a big deal in the book world these days. So was Borders. What happens if they go out of business, or Pocket decides to flip the switch and not offer Trek books on their site? Or Amazon decides to reach into peoples' devices and delete the files, as they did not long ago with 1984, of all titles.
Since ebooks are not physical books, and they can be taken away at any time, they should not be priced the same - or, in some cases with Trek books - even higher than the physical book. The publisher has already paid the writer. It's already been edited, it's already in a digital form. It goes through a conversion with Calibre or something similar, and bingo, we have an ebook to sell.
Some of the prices are bizarre. When I checked a month or so ago, Jean Lorrah's Trek books were mostly 8 dollars. Except for Survivors, which was 11.99. And that's a 20 year old Trek book which has never been out of print.
I'm a poor college student. I have 4 bucks to my name. I want to read the new Trek book. Do I pay a reasonable price for it and be done with it? Or do I go to google and do a five-second search to download title X for free?
Since they tend to think of their customers as the enemy, they will continue to overprice their ebooks.
Yeah, the Slings and Arrows books have gone drastically up in price since I bought them and they were overpriced when I got them. A few of the reviews for the Slings and Arrows books are mine.
I have an odd question, and I'm not sure where to ask this, but...
I noticed that in my E-Book Copy of Mirror Universe: Glass Empires, the title page for "The Worst of Both Worlds" is printed as "fo tsroW ehT htoB sdlroW." Now at first I thought this was a coy little joke, but considering that it isn't a mirrored sentence, I have to assume it's a mistake in the e-Book. Can anyone clarify this for me?
I have an odd question, and I'm not sure where to ask this, but...
I noticed that in my E-Book Copy of Mirror Universe: Glass Empires, the title page for "The Worst of Both Worlds" is printed as "fo tsroW ehT htoB sdlroW." Now at first I thought this was a coy little joke, but considering that it isn't a mirrored sentence, I have to assume it's a mistake in the e-Book. Can anyone clarify this for me?
It's kind of a mistake, but not the kind you might think. The title in the print edition is written as:
Fo Tsrow Eht
Sdlrow Htob
So the e-book appears to have taken two consecutive lines and run them together the wrong way, as well as changing the capitalization and inverting the order of the last two words, apparently.
Fo Tsrow Eht
Sdlrow Htob
So the e-book appears to have taken two consecutive lines and run them together the wrong way, as well as changing the capitalization and inverting the order of the last two words, apparently.
I suppose it's a matter of perspective. The latest MMPB releases in ebook format are 7.99. In the MMPB collections of SCE there are four ebooks. So we're talking about 1/4 the content for 3/4 the price.
Or to put it another way, purchasing the equivalent contents of 'Have Tech Will Travel' will cost 24 dollars. Even the latest hardback releases tend to be twenty dollars or less in ebook form.
So I don't think it's miserly of me to find the price point a little steep.
Or to put it another way, purchasing the equivalent contents of 'Have Tech Will Travel' will cost 24 dollars. Even the latest hardback releases tend to be twenty dollars or less in ebook form.
So I don't think it's miserly of me to find the price point a little steep.
I can see that. I honestly never really thought about the actual math there. I just figured "hey, they're cheaper than full length books, that's good enough for me." But when you put it that way, it does seem like a bit of a rip off. But, the authors on here have pointed out that the final publication of the book itself makes up a very small percentage of the actually cost to make it. Maybe that is just the cheapest they can go and still make a profit?
It's sort of the wild west out there right now, in terms of ebook pricing and unfortunately it's going to take some time before the market and publishers work out a standard across the board.
Valeyard had it right I think when comparing the situation to the music industry and iTunes and it will be interesting to see what role self published authors play in the final standard. I know that when I set my book up on Amazon, (see that segue I made there?), pricing was an important factor to consider because I knew that some authors and published had seen a backlash because of high ebook prices. The last thing I wanted to do was alienate any potential readers by setting a high starting price, so after some research I decided on 3.99, which to me seems like a fair price. I could charge more, and I could charge less, but 3-5 dollars seems like a good middle ground.
Needless to say, until someone with enough clout like Amazon or itunes can work with publishers to set some sort of standard, the consumer will be at the mercy of individual publishers and whatever price they want to set.
Valeyard had it right I think when comparing the situation to the music industry and iTunes and it will be interesting to see what role self published authors play in the final standard. I know that when I set my book up on Amazon, (see that segue I made there?), pricing was an important factor to consider because I knew that some authors and published had seen a backlash because of high ebook prices. The last thing I wanted to do was alienate any potential readers by setting a high starting price, so after some research I decided on 3.99, which to me seems like a fair price. I could charge more, and I could charge less, but 3-5 dollars seems like a good middle ground.
Needless to say, until someone with enough clout like Amazon or itunes can work with publishers to set some sort of standard, the consumer will be at the mercy of individual publishers and whatever price they want to set.
Chris, as ever, you are the One Who Knows! Yeah, the capitalization is retained as if the words were written Left to Right. And they flipped Both and Worlds, which is a very odd mistake. I think I may have realized it was a formatting "joke" or "reference" if they had retained the two-line formatting. It displays as one line across all my Kindle/Kindle App devices.
My problem with something like Slings and Arrows, is that the story lengths vary incredibly with no reduction in cost. The initial story is something like 1/3 the length of a novel, but you get ones that are 1/6 or even 1/8 the length of an average Trek novel and paying full price just feels unfair. That, and quite a few of them were badly formatted for the Kindle. No chapter markers, I think #5 there were no paragraph breaks so scenes ran together, and it wasn't always obvious where one ended. I understand all the issues with "archiving" Books to e-Books for companies, but this was an E-book exclusive!
My problem with something like Slings and Arrows, is that the story lengths vary incredibly with no reduction in cost. The initial story is something like 1/3 the length of a novel, but you get ones that are 1/6 or even 1/8 the length of an average Trek novel and paying full price just feels unfair. That, and quite a few of them were badly formatted for the Kindle. No chapter markers, I think #5 there were no paragraph breaks so scenes ran together, and it wasn't always obvious where one ended. I understand all the issues with "archiving" Books to e-Books for companies, but this was an E-book exclusive!
When I bought the SCE books through MS's ebook system years ago, they were all 2-3 bucks a pop. Now those same ones are much higher on Kindle. I want to finish the series but it's just so pricey now.
One of the reasons I am reluctant to switch to eBook is pricing. I've often seen titles that are priced exactly the same for eBook or paperback. With a paperback, I can actually hold this tangible object in my hand and do with it as I please. I can read it, store it on my shelf, loan it to a friend, re-sell it later. Whatever I want. It's mine. With an eBook, I have surprisingly few options. I can read it. That's about it. It's digital and something could go wrong, in which case I lose the file and cannot retrieve it. I know that a friend of mine is able to share eBooks with her sisters (they all use a Nook) but I am not sure that this is something that everyone can do. So if I am going to have all of these limitations imposed on me for buying an electronic copy, why should I still pay the same price? If a paperback cost $7.99 but the same title in eBook was available for, say, $3.99, I think it would help sway me. But often times that is not the case.
In my experience, once you've bought an e-book from a given provider, you can download it from them again at no extra charge. Also, some offer the option to store it in the "cloud," i.e. the data is stored online and you purchase the right to download and read it on any electronic device you own.
Or, you could just make a backup copy or two, which is a good idea with any electronic file. I've been able to copy my e-books onto different computers and have simply needed to enter the number of the credit card I bought them with to unlock them. And Tor's e-books (including my upcoming Only Superhuman) are now DRM-free, so I don't think there'd be any impediment to making a backup copy (strictly for personal use, of course, since piracy is bad).
There are two drivers of eBook costs on the publisher side -- one psychological, the other intrinsic.
The psychological driver -- publishers like eBook sales, but not at the expense of print sales. They want to complement their print sales, not gut their print sales.
The intrinsic driver -- there are additional developmental costs in producing an eBook. It's not just a case of taking a digital file and running it through Calibre. For one's personal use, that's fine. For something you want people to pay for, not so much. Creating an eBook has more in common with developing a software application than it does with physical publishing. A poorly formatted eBook is not a victimless crime.
At the same time, it's not unreasonable for consumers to question why eBooks are priced they way they are. They're not buying a physical good, and yet they're being asked to pay something close to the same good's physical price. And unlike the physical good, the digital good cannot be resold. (A physical book has a value. A digital good does not.) Both of these factors, in my opinion, argue for lower eBook prices. Even though the eBook is more convenient than its print equivalent (portability, no need for storage space), the publisher is charging a premium price from the consumer for a less valuable format.
Personally, I think the "sweet spot" price for an eBook would be between fifty and sixty percent of the mass market price.
That's generally the case for retailers carrying books from the major publishers. At least, until the publisher decides they want to stop selling via that retailer (as Simon & Schuster did with a number of retailers in February 2010). Or until that format's no longer supported by new devices or software (Palm eReader, Microsoft Reader, and Mobipocket are all dead formats).
It sounds like you bought them in Palm eReader or Nook format, then. You can't do that with Mobipocket or Kindle formats (the book is tied to a specific machine), or Microsoft Reader (the book is tied to your account, but you can't authorize the software anymore) and you can only do that with Adobe ePub as long as Adobe's authorization servers are still up (at which point it'll be in the same state as MS Reader).
It's awesome that Tor's doing that. You don't have to worry about being unable to read the file, and you can use conversion tools to change your books to another format if need be. I wish more publishers would follow suit.
Agreed. $5.99 for Collective Hindsight Book One and $5.99 for Collective Hindsight Book Two.
$11.98 for the entire story and it's not even a full length novel.
The Signature Series eBooks with two complete novels are also $11.98.
Doesn't seem right.
I have a related b!@#h about Pocket/Simon and Schuster. I emailed them about a month ago and no response. I use the text-to-speech function often on my Kindle, usually while driving, doing laundry, or going on walks. I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a few books a month from Amazon, but I'm not as apt to purchase them since the text-to-speech function is not enabled. According to Amazon, this is a FREE option, and some publishers just choose not to provide it. Pirate versions of Trek books have the audio option. Guess which version I download?
I seem to recall that the reason that has been given in the past is that it's due to the audio rights on Star Trek books. Pocket can't just enable text-to-speech; there are other rightsholders involved. I'm not even sure who has the Star Trek audio rights now.
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