I just had a quick look at some of my the Trek MMPBs I’ve got on my shelves. I don’t think they’ve increased by the rate of inflation for years.
Yes, exactly. MMPBs managed to stay at a fixed price for an incredibly long time, maybe 15 years by now. If their prices had continued to increase at the same rate as in the previous 15 years, they'd probably cost at least $12 by now.
I can't speak for other passengers, but part of the reason I went ebook is because I couldn't fit enough books into my bag for an average holiday
Wordery are doing buy 2 books, get 10% off of the second. Expires tonight. If you play it right, you can grab the Picard hardback for £11.40.
Used to be like that too, but everybody in our house is a heavy reader, so shelf space started to become an issue too That said, I still grab a physical book from the shelf fairly regularly and get some more at Christmas.
I'm a Luddite when it comes to ebooks, but, in theory, I can definitely appreciate the advantages when it comes to long airplane flights and travel in general. I still remember being stranded for hours on the tarmac in Washington, DC with nothing but a borrowed romance novel to read, because I'd already finished the book I brought for flight, and I also recall traipsing across Italy with what felt like a small library on my back: guidebooks, phrasebooks, pleasure reading, etc.
I just looked though the Kindle and paperback/hardcover versions of the most recent Star Wars books, and quite a few of the Kindle versions actually are cheaper than the other versions. There were a few where the Kindle was more expensive, but that's just because the paper versions are marked down more. And with TV and movies, the digital version isn't always cheaper, I got the first season of Titans on Blu-Ray because it was cheaper than the digital version. EDIT: I looked at the Trek books, and right now on the American Amazon the e-books for Dead Endless and Last Best Hope are cheaper than the paperback and hardcover. Dead Endless is $11.99 for the Kindle version and $16.00 for the paperback, and Last Best Hope is $12.99 for the Kindle version and $19.93 for the hardcover.
There are definite advantages to ebooks. My vision is terrible, so I crank that font up! Plus, it is no hassle to carry extra books, in case I get bored with the one I’m reading.
One other thing I like about them I don't see mentioned a lot is that the devices you read them on are a lot easier to handle than books tend to be. I had some issues with my hands for a while, and it's a lot easier to hold an e-read or tablet one handed, or even propped up so you don't need any hands than a book is.
Developed a rather severe dust allergy as I got older so one of the first changes we made at the house was to (reluctantly) ditch nearly every book we had. I own a kindle now and wouldn’t trade it for the world.
I apoligize if this has already been posted and I forgot, but David Mack's website has the cover and description up for More Beautiful Than Death. The cover is OK, but the description sounds really good.
Such a bland publicity photo cover after the amazing Collateral Damage one. But still super glad this one is coming out at last.
I believe the authors have mentioned their word-count target is higher now with TPBs than it was in the old days, not that that was a hard-and-fast rule. eBooks can be discounted, but normally at the discretion of the publisher, not the store (since electronically-based stores generally take a percentage of the final price, rather than buying the books "wholesale" and adding on whatever margin they want as their cut, which allows them to sell below cost). I believe S&S does monthly sales with older Trek titles reduced to one or two bucks for the ebook, often on some kind of theme.
Yeah, our target range for MMPBs was generally 80-100,000 words, but our target for TPBs is 100-120K, at least in my recent experience.
I was curious as to how the Kelvin Verse novel covers would be arranged. Memory Alpha had the original covers from their initial announcement (I'm assuming just as a placeholder until something official came out). I see it carries the original series typeface (but without "The Original Series" subtitle). I was wondering if they were going to include some sort of description below the title to indicate it was a Kelvin timeline novel (though I'm not sure how they would accomplish that "A Kelvin Timeline Novel" or "Kelvin Verse" novel seems clumsy. I guess they decided to let the cover picture tell you what kind of novel it is.
At least these days the cover art does seem to be a bit more trustworthy than it was back in the earlier days of the books.
The blank cover art on the iBooks store calls ADF's novel (whatever title it has this week) "Untitled STR." I didn't keep track so it might be my imagination, but those seemed abbreviations seemed a lot more consistent with last year's preorders. The other purchasable-but-uncover-arted books have placeholder titles of "The Higher Frontier" for "The Higher Frontier," and "Untitled LBH" for "Last Best Hope," which is doubly inaccurate. In any case, I have no idea what "STR" stands for. Entirely possible it's just "STaR Trek." At least they didn't go for the always-confusing nickname that Tumblr seems to have settled on for the Kelvin Timeline, "AOS" (Alternate Original Series).
The working title of ADF's novel was Star Trek: Refugees, so that may be it. Thought it's now called The Unsettling Stars, after being announced under the title The Order of Peace a few months ago.