Trek Books for Kindle

[LightningStorm]

The flip side of course, is there's an issue of practicalities and process. Amazon own their own store-front. If they want to change their prices to have a Christmas sale or start doing stuff cheaper or so they just change the price. If the agency publishers want to do this, they have to ask Amazon to change the price. I doubt Amazon will be okay with getting a whole bunch of price changes from the publishers every week (nor would they want to give the publishers direct access to their store software).

With the way I think it should work, that wouldn't happen either.

I'm saying the way it should work is the same way it works for hard goods. The manufacturer (publisher in this case) sells a big bulk of items to its customer (the retailer) for a set price, after that transaction is over the manufacturer has no more say in the matter. Then the retailer sets his prices based on what they paid for it, how much profit (or loss) they intend to make off of it and then sell it to their customer (the people). To continue this we could point out that once a person buys something from a retailer that retailer can't tell that person how much to charge for it if they want to turn around and sell it too. Walmart, Amazon, Target, K-Mart, etc. don't have any say in how much things go for on e-bay for example.

e-books (or music or movies or whatever) should work this way too. And there are a few ways that a manufacturer could sell these things in "bulk". It's all about creating a contract with the retailer they are selling to. One option could be that the publisher says for X price you can sell Y number of copies of this ebook. Or the publisher could go the route of for X number of days/months/quarters/years you can sell this book and for each each copy you sell you have to pay me Y amount per copy. There are a few other ways I could see this working too.

To be specific: S&S could say for each copy of Star Trek: Zero Sum Game you sell you have to pay me $5.99 per copy. Then the retailer could go and sell it for 1.99 and take a $4 loss if they want or sell it for 10.99 and make a $5 profit. It would be up to the retailer not the publisher to set the final selling price. The silly thing with Agency is that publishers could still call for a $7.99 price on their ebooks, that would just be the price Amazon would pay for it then Amazon (unlikely to take a loss) would most likely sell it for that amount or more.

Given what I just said, this is my whole point that Agency is preventing the hiking of e-book prices just as much as it is preventing the lowering of them. Meaning that pricing isn't the problem with Agency, retailer freedom is.

 

[JWolf]

Given what I just said, this is my whole point that Agency is preventing the hiking of e-book prices just as much as it is preventing the lowering of them. Meaning that pricing isn't the problem with Agency, retailer freedom is.

The Agency 5 is preventing the lowering of eBook prices and they are the ones hiking up eBook prices. So the price they set is the price there is and the price they set is higher then most of the prices before the agency model. Especially with retailers no longer allowed to have sales/discounts/rebates.

 

[Deano2099]

^ It took until November of 2008 for digital music to finally outsell CDs, five and a half years after the iTunes music store opened

Different market really, at least currently. CDs are still generally seen as better than MP3s as the former can be turned in to the latter quickly, easily, and legally. And because it's gone that way with music and film, people expect the same from books.

You're right that ebooks are in many ways superior to a paper product. In other ways they're really not. But the consumer has been conditioned to expect to be able to get it both ways and only pay once.

 

[Deano2099]

Given what I just said, this is my whole point that Agency is preventing the hiking of e-book prices just as much as it is preventing the lowering of them. Meaning that pricing isn't the problem with Agency, retailer freedom is.

Indeed, my clumsily expressed point was that Agency prevents price elasticity in either direction, which is never good.

Plus of course, the biggest single bookseller in the world, Amazon, has a vested interest in bringing down prices in the short term so it can sell more Kindles and establish an iTunes-like hold on the market, which is probably why the Agency model was insisted up on. I doubt they did it to prevent Amazon hiking the price of ebooks, however nice the thought.

 

[JWolf]

Given what I just said, this is my whole point that Agency is preventing the hiking of e-book prices just as much as it is preventing the lowering of them. Meaning that pricing isn't the problem with Agency, retailer freedom is.

Indeed, my clumsily expressed point was that Agency prevents price elasticity in either direction, which is never good.

Plus of course, the biggest single bookseller in the world, Amazon, has a vested interest in bringing down prices in the short term so it can sell more Kindles and establish an iTunes-like hold on the market, which is probably why the Agency model was insisted up on. I doubt they did it to prevent Amazon hiking the price of ebooks, however nice the thought.

While some eBooks did drop in price due to the agency model, many many more eBook went up in price. And by not allowing discounts/sales, it means that they are more expensive then the cheapest pBook version available. So really, the agency model is just working to drive up prices of eBooks.

I would love to see the government take the Agency 5 to court for price fixing.

 

[unusualsuspex]

Back on the original topic, I too got me a Kindle 3 for Chrissymas and while I used to much prefer the pBook versions I now am frantically converting all my old .lit formats via Calibre (a truly God sent piece of software!)

Kindle really does rock. (That was the signpost back to the original thread in case you missed it! )

 

[label]

via Calibre (a truly God sent piece of software!)

Kindle really does rock.

Agreed. I love me some Calibre and Kindle. Match made in heaven for readers. (Though someone's bound to point out that converting an eBook from one format to another is illegal and therefore a path straight to hell. )

 

[Steve Roby]

Isn't there some other place where people can have discussions that have nothing to do with TrekLit? Please? And no, I'm not trying to usurp the role of the mod. This is simply a cri de coeur from a TrekLit fan.

 

[Deano2099]

Isn't there some other place where people can have discussions that have nothing to do with TrekLit? Please? And no, I'm not trying to usurp the role of the mod. This is simply a cri de coeur from a TrekLit fan.

There are, but this is of the few corners of the internet where I've ever seen a sensible mature debate on the topic (okay maybe three debates). Plus I'd take this over another thread about Janeway being dead any day.

 

[JD]

What if we just agreed to keep this to one thread. We're saying pretty much all of the exact same things in each of these thread, and TBH I don't even know which one I'm in half the time.

 

[JWolf]

Isn't there some other place where people can have discussions that have nothing to do with TrekLit? Please? And no, I'm not trying to usurp the role of the mod. This is simply a cri de coeur from a TrekLit fan.

There are, but this is of the few corners of the internet where I've ever seen a sensible mature debate on the topic (okay maybe three debates). Plus I'd take this over another thread about Janeway being dead any day.

Janeway is dead? OMG! When? Where? How? Why? I will have to start a new thread so others can tell me all about it.

Anyway, to sort of get back on topic, I've seen some of the more recent Star Trek eBooks come with errors. They used to be rather good in terms of no errors. But I now see things like Star-fleet and StarfleetAcademy.

 

[Deano2099]

Janeway is dead? OMG! When? Where? How? Why? I will have to start a new thread so others can tell me all about it.

No it's okay, it happens in Before Dishonor, I'll send you a link to a torrent site where you can read it

 

[Lee]

The agency model did increase prices and took away any chance of a discount.

I get lots of discounts for Kindle ebooks. I have an Amazon Visa card. Every purchase gives me points and when I have enough points they send me a $25 Amazon gift certificate which I apply to my Amazon account and can use for any Amazon purchases including Kindle books. Depending on how much you use the credit card, you can end up getting most or all of your ebook purchases for free.

Come on, JWolf, forget about that Sony and buy a Kindle. You know you want one!

 

[ST-One]

The agency model did increase prices and took away any chance of a discount.

I get lots of discounts for Kindle ebooks. I have an Amazon Visa card. Every purchase gives me points and when I have enough points they send me a $25 Amazon gift certificate which I apply to my Amazon account and can use for any Amazon purchases including Kindle books. Depending on how much you use the credit card, you can end up getting most or all of your ebook purchases for free.

Come on, JWolf, forget about that Sony and buy a Kindle. You know you want one!

Is that card free of charge?

 

[JWolf]

B&N has a card that give you points and if you get enough points, you get a gift card and that gift card can be used to purchase ePub eBooks which work great with my Sony since I know how to strip off the DRM. In fact, I'm getting a better return on my money then anyone buying Kindle eBooks. You see what most Kindle owners do not realize is that Kindle books are in an obsolete format.

 

[BrotherBenny]

B&N has a card that give you points and if you get enough points, you get a gift card and that gift card can be used to purchase ePub eBooks which work great with my Sony since I know how to strip off the DRM. In fact, I'm getting a better return on my money then anyone buying Kindle eBooks. You see what most Kindle owners do not realize is that Kindle books are in an obsolete format.

Stripping the DRM is a form of piracy, since you're creating a format of the file which could be shared illegally. I wouldn't advocate that so freely if I were you.

 

[label]

You see what most Kindle owners do not realize is that Kindle books are in an obsolete format.

On no!, whatever will we do.. if only there were a way to convert the kindle books into some other format...

It's ridiculously easy to change your Kindle books to whatever format you'd like using Calibre or any other similar program. My wife has a nook, I have a kindle......we share books all the time and both of our collections are stored in one place and managed by a single program that sticks whatever version is appropriate on the device you're targeting.

 

[Smitty]

You see what most Kindle owners do not realize is that Kindle books are in an obsolete format.

Not too worried about it considering that Amazon is the largest book retailer, not too obsolete if they are supporting it. Meanwhile B&N and near bankruptcy (unfortunately).

 

[LightningStorm]

You see what most Kindle owners do not realize is that Kindle books are in an obsolete format.

Now you're just making shit up.

Even if the Kindle and its format of ebook goes obsolete in the future, that doesn't make it obsolete in the present. It is, in fact, exactly the opposite of obsolete right now.

 

[Deano2099]

Stripping the DRM is a form of piracy, since you're creating a format of the file which could be shared illegally. I wouldn't advocate that so freely if I were you.

I don't think it is. It's arguably against the DMCA but as of yet we're not banning stuff because it has the potential to be used for illegal activities. Hell in the US you lot haven't even banned guns yet.