With the news that Random House has adopted the Agency model effective tomorrow, I have one thing to say.
Cee Lo Green “Fuck You”
Uploaded by Push36. – Link to the original video.
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Yes, it is. For example, when Louisa Edwards came out with her first book, Can’t Stand the Heat, I read the excerpt and wanted to try it. But when I went to get the book, it was priced at $12.99 for the ebook. I could have gotten the paperback format for $7.99 + $3.99 in shipping, but I wasn’t going to pay that for a book by a new author, either. At that point, I decided, “Fine, I’ll pick it up in paperback somewhere, if I find it.” However, since she was SUCH a new author, my regular sources for books I can afford—ie, Walmart and Krogers—didn’t have her book and I actually forgot all about it and her. Yeah, I suppose I could have gone into an independent book seller—but then, they want anywhere from $7.99-8.99 for a paperback and half of them employ people who look at me like I’m sullying their store with my dirty romances if I buy from them, so even if they’d had it, not really an option for me. So, until I stumbled across Edwards’ book at the library one day and remembered that I’d wanted to read it, I was a lost sale. I’m betting I wasn’t the only one. Of course, you could say, “Well, that’s just one example.”, but all these “just one examples” seem to add up to a whole lot of publishers telling ebook readers that we’re somehow lesser than people who read “real” books and should pay more for the privilege of all that suspect ebooking we’re doing. When I can’t get a haircut for over 6 months because I flat-out can’t afford it, I don’t really appreciate some publishing CEO, who makes about 100 times more than I do, wanting to shake me upside down for my last dime while telling me that it will all be so much better for me. Nor do I appreciate someone else telling me that I have a duty to support my local stores and this is just a way of making sure I do that. I’m sorry if times are tough for the local bookseller, but I don’t have any particular duty to support any particular place other than the one I’m living in and I do that by spending what meager discretionary funds that I have in the most economical fashion available to me. Raising the prices across the board so that I’d pay the same for it anywhere doesn’t bring me into your store. (Hell, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t afford to support my book habit that way!) All it does is send me to the library for more and more books and put the “I have to own that” authors on my “to buy later” list for a whole lot longer.
My husband got a Kindle a couple of weeks ago. He’s a voracious reader and thought an ereader would give him access to more books and be easier on his wallet. Ha. When he went looking for his favorite authors on Amazon, he got quite a shock when he saw the agency prices. He ended up looking for and buying alternative reads from small press and indy authors. It would seem the Big 6 are trying to force us to buy paper. Don’t they realize there’s an economic crisis going on out here? All I see them doing is shoving us toward the competition, the small presses and self-published.
I totally agree Sarah – what’s even worse, is that if I am inclined to buy an Agency ebook, I also have to pay tax on it. So, I can buy the same book in paper form with a pretty cover and no (or less anyway) errors, which I can then lend, sell or colour in if I want or I can pay more for an ebook version AND tax!!
The big winner out of this for me is The Book Depository and the smaller publishers – Dreamspinner, Loose ID, Samhain. Also the other big publisher who seems to actually like it’s customers – Harlequin (including Carina – who awesomely, don’t DRM their books. Yay Carina!).
Agency pricing has made me think twice about how many and which ebooks I purchase; however, I wonder how the average e-book reader approaches the Agency model. E-Readers such as the Kindle and the Nook, and e-book apps have only taken off within the past year or so, and a consumer who received a Nook for Christmas or a Kindle for their birthday in January most likely has no idea that two or three years ago, an ebook-tailer like Fictionwise and Books on Board offered discounted prices and credits. Not to mention that there is a chance many new e-book adopters shop only in the store attached to their e-Reader, so they don’t or don’t know to price shop. Agency pricing is screwing with those of us who have been reading e-books for years and those of us who pay attention to the industry, but it’s Score One for publishers because they know new e-book consumers are largely ignorant of past workings.
Want to hear something really annoying? The Australian dollar is currently about on parity with the US dollar. However, local publishing protection laws mean that Australian versions of the same book are sometimes released earlier than in other countries (Lee Child and Jeffrey Archer’s latest books are the last two I know about for sure).
The average price of a new paperback (romance)? $15.
Average price of a new hardback? $35. And that is DISCOUNTED, at TARGET. (I don’t HAVE a local bookstore. THe nearest one is 25 minutes drive away in a nasty mall and about to close down because it’s a subdivision of Borders).
No joke. So, to be honest, I read about your $9.99 complaints and laugh my ass off, really, I do. In this country I buy 3 times as many books as I used to now I have a Kindle and I have exactly the same budget.
(Because I cannot bear the concept of DRM I buy and crack, but that’s my business).
Geographical DRM is the one thing that seriously pisses me off. But pretty often I can just hunt around the ebook sellers and find someone selling it without.
My ebook dollars are now entirely spent at the indie epublishers and Baen. I used to buy a lot from Fictionwise but it appears that a lot of the publishers that I used to buy from there are now pimping their books through their own websites and the STUPID TWITS are putting geographical constraints on orders. And then behave like gits when you contact them.
Example- I wanted to buy Treason’s Shore- the last of the Inda series by Sherwood Smith, no longer available on Fictionwise. Penguin USA will sell it to you the paperback for $7.99, the hardcover for $25.95, and an electronic copy for
$18.99.* As long as you have a US based credit card. If you’re in Australia, you can’t actually buy from them and Penguin Aus doesn’t have non-Aussie authors for sale.
My book budget is $200 A MONTH and none of it goes to the major publishers now. It’s indies, the local manga shop, and book depository.
*No really, and when I emailed them to ask if this price was correct, I got an email telling me I had to register an account first, did this, resubmitted my WTF PRICE query, and then got told that my query would be forwarded to the Sales team and I wouldn’t get a response, my query was closed off and I wasn’t allowed to re-open it. WIN!
Blah to agency pricing!
I did enjoy the literate and informative comments above. I learned a great deal.
Nothing I learned, however, mitigates the horror of having to pay damn $12.99 for a Sarah Waters on my nook so I can participate in the book club. Honestly, I’m being much more selective about what I read because of the sometimes staggeringly high ebook prices. One cannot sample as many authors or stories that simply sound engaging when it’s tough to find a $4 title that appeals. I shelled out $9.99 for a Paula Walls and panned it in my blog review, in part because a lot of it seemed anti-feminist, but in part because I felt royally screwed over having to pay that to read what should (in my opinion only ) rightfully be a much less expensive e-book.
I, too, have a couple Meg Cabots and others on my wish list languishing with their $10 price tags, unbought.
Barnes & Noble better start offering the discount on e-books now. (Currently the B&N card does not give the discount on them.)
Thank you for playing the Cee-Lo Green song. Love it. Takes the edge off the pain of gold diggas’. (I still remember the last time I heard it—I think on this site—the sign language class final. It’s such a good song!
I think the agency pricing model is most detrimental to the discovery of new authors. My preferred method of discovery would be to immediately download a reasonably priced Kindle copy of the first book in the series.
Three years ago I’d read a review and decide that maybe I would like an author I hadn’t read before. I tended to go to my local B&N about every week or two so I would make a mental note to check out the author. I’d pick up the book, read the first chapter or two, and make the decision whether to buy.
Now, I go to B&N about once a quarter. I don’t remember the names of that many new-to-me authors, and even when I remember sometimes the new books are gone. At least for hardcover books, I still have the option of logging into the system of our Really Excellent Public Library and placing a hold, but they tend not to get all the paperbacks I might want to try.
I am actually pretty cool with $13 for a newly released hardcover, until I go to Amazon and find out that I can get the new black jewels novel in hardcover for $0.65 cents more than the e-book. Then I add a book from my saved list of books to get the free shipping and wait a week.
Excerpts on author sites tend not to work for me, unless they are really long excerpts, and they start with the first page of the first chapter.
Needless-to-say, all this really works against impulse buying.
Word: past33 – Odd to think how much things have changed in the past three years.
I sat in the Burbank airport last Friday and looked around- every person had something digital- a phone, laptop, ipad or ereader of some type. Two years ago when my daughter moved out there, I was the only one with an ereader. People would stop and ask my what I had. Now everyone has something. And they don’t realize the difference in the pricing points I’m going to assume either.
I bite the bullet and pay the price for two reasons. 1) I can’t hold onto a book to read and 2) I can’t bring myself (yet) to going for the pirated versions. But it’s coming. Hubby may be laid off and there goes my budget for books. Now I just have to figure out where and how.
I try to compile a list of indie booksellers but so much of what I want to read isn’t going to be on them. I like my author’s and want to read their books. I hate being punished for wanting/needing to do it on an ereader. And the library doesn’t keep a good enough collection for me to be bothered to want to “borrow” from them. If I can figure out how to get the stupid program to work.
My daughter is a college student who has resorted to pirated books. And she hates it but it’s the only way she can read something she wants to read because the library where she is doesn’t have a great selection. And she doesn’t have time to run around looking for USB’s or shopping for the best price in a store.
Maybe there should be a week where all digital readers get together to protest the publisher’s and their greediness and don’t buy anything. (Yeah, like that would happen)
While talking to Hubby about this whole issue this morning, he asked me why I get so irate about decisions like this.
Why, because I like getting angry about things I have absolutely no control over, of course!
Snort.
It’s really irritating and yes, I do take it personally because reading is a truly personal and exceptionally important experience for me. Reading is one of the most important things I can do for myself, my happiness, my well being, my ability to recharge. I can’t understate how much reading means to me.
So to see Agency publishers stand between me and my books and erecting an innumerable series of roadblocks between me and the books I want to read, whether it’s price, DRM, geographic restriction, delayed digital release, or what have you, I take it very personally, because… holy crap do Agency publishing executives have ANY IDEA how many OTHER THINGS there are that I could do with my leisure time? Things that are EASY and FREE or LOW COST and instantly available to me? From gaming to watching movies or television shows. I’m surprised that at this point I can’t stream a movie onto my dog’s backside, the technology is so ubiquitous.
But with buying an ebook, there’s a repeated message of, ‘You don’t really want that,’ built out of all these little obstacles, and I feel, irrational as it may seem, that the books which are so important to me, are being moved farther and farther away, while… hello there… lots of other instantly and easily accessible entertainment is crowding the sidelines hoping I’ll detour.
And that makes me very, very angry.
@cathy B OMG. O.M.G. The tales of $35 Australian books breaks my heart. That’s just… holy shit.
@Evangeline Holland:
Oh, Lord, you so nailed it. There’s fewer of us who remember the former scope of digital shopping… and more who are adopting now, and buying more immediately, regardless of the prices. The penalty for early adoption is as bad as the penalty for early withdrawal.
I’m not happy to see that agency pricing is starting to take over. I keep telling my friends that my threshold for buying ebooks is 30% below MMPB pricing, its hard to find, but I’ll do it or I’ll buy it at the store where I can get a discount on the actual book.
My issue with industry pricing is that it doesn’t seem (and I use that term lightly because I don’t know what goes into the back end of ebook creation), fair to charge full price for something that takes less time to produce than the paper version of the book.
Telling me that the same book I can pick up off the shelf is just as valuable, when its not a tangible object is not correct. In my opinion the words retain their value, but the physical body is lacking and thus deserves a discount.
The book industry is make the same mistakes that the music industry made and if they’re not careful they won’t be able to bounce back as well as they did either.
I would love to see an open letter to the Big 6 telling them that they are gutting the ebook industry for their own greed and are going to slow an already sluggish economic recovery with their attempts to make a dollar on something it cost them a 1/20 of that to make.
I see what you’re saying, Black Velvet, but I disagree. Here’s why: up to the point of making it print vs. making it digital, a book (one hopes!) goes through all the same steps: editing, copy editing, cover design, marketing plan, etc – and all those steps involve hardworking people (hi folks) who should get paid. So up to the point of manufacturing a digital book vs. manufacturing a print book, some costs are already present.
The difference comes with the cost of digital creation and distribution (often done by a third party) vs. print creation and distribution (again, often a third party). Those two processes also have costs, and while no one shares all their costs of production (snort) I suspect that digital isn’t a bargain compared to print, especially when there’s DRM to license and use (woe!).
What infuriates me about cost is that the digital book, with DRM, is often, and I mean frequently not equal to the print: no cover, bad metadata, typos, formatting wonk, no front or back material or missing extras – and that is inexcusable.
The digital editions of my books, published by Penguin (Berkley) cost less than the paper editions, typically $1 less. Always have. Also, I personally haven’t run into any ebooks of MMPB originals priced at 9.99. Ebooks of trade PB originals, yes—even when the book moves to mass market, which is really dumb, Publishers—but not mass market originals. I’m not saying they’re not out there, but I haven’t seen them.
I’ll admit I’ve purchased more physical books than ebooks since getting my ereader – and that’s mainly because I do my book buying on my lunch hour at work with the mall book store 5 minutes away.
And pretty much all of my ebook purchases have been from Carina Press. (whatever that says about me…)
While I have a decent “for fun” budget, I’m also not going to blow all of it on one title. My favorite fantasy author came out with a new book last year. I really really wanted it, but the $30 hardcover and $16 ($15.99) ebook prices put it on the wait and see list.
I can either blow my budget on one or two books, or I can get 3-4 depending. And I will flat out refuse to pay more for an ebook—and it won’t entice me to pay for the physical book either. Such pricing tactics will have me only spending money on my mangas and the occasional WW comic (okay, and Batman) and nothing else.
head77 – haven’t had enough caffine just yet for something super witty.
This ^ quote (from meoskop) is true for me. Unfortunately this quote (Evangeline Holland) is probably also true:
Pre-Agency, I loved shopping at Fictionwise for ebooks. I tried new authors, I spent extra money, because of the credits and feeling like I got a good deal. Now it sucks that I get coupons to use for paperbooks but that’s just not allowed for ebooks. I think I probably buy about 1 book/month (all ebooks). And in December when Harlequin has good sales I buy another dozen books. I have much love for Harlequin and Carina, as they seem to still value me as a customer.
SB Sarah said:
And even after paying to download the book, it’s not clear that the reader actually owns the copy of the book they just paid for. Can they loan the book to friends? Maybe. Read it on another vendor’s device? Maybe. Donate it to charity? Nope. Re-sell it? Nope.
I’m another reader for whom reading paper books is uncomfortable. Since the nature of my disability is progressively degenerative, I’ve been spending my time lately reading out of print romance “classics” in paper while I still can. For books available in ebook, I’m not interested in the new paper version at all. Reading a broken-in used book is one thing, but my cripple hands just can’t hold a new paperback open. I drop the book, lose my page, get hand cramps, and so on.
Since the dawn of agency last April, I’ve stopped buying from agency publishers entirely. I’m not paying undiscountable full price for the ebook version of something I could get in paper as part of Amazon’s 4-for-3 sale. But neither will I buy the paper copy. I just don’t buy the book at all.
As a result, I’m reading less than I was pre-agency. I’m playing more WoW, watching more TV and trolling more online communities. I bought and read about 100 fewer books in 2010 than I did in 2009. I haven’t bought a single book yet this year (although, on the plus side, Mt. TBR is finally shrinking.) At least 3 or 4 of my Goodreads friends are on total book buying moratoriums as well.
Does any of this affect the publishers? Probably not. For every cripple out there unable to afford agency or read paper there’s 1000 people queued up to buy the next iThing, and this is about being available in Apple’s locked-down App Store.
The deadline’s looming for app designers to include in-app shopping, rather than external links to websites, and give Apple their 30% cut on those sales. Since that 30% means Amazon et al would earn 0 on in-app agency sales, they’ll probably remove shopping entirely from their apps, leaving the iBookstore the only way to buy books natively from an iThing. And Apple will only sell books on the 70/30 agency model.
Hate agency? Blame Apple. They’re The Man now. Even at its peak Microsoft was never this anti-consumer. Think Different, indeed.
I read somewhere that Adobe Digital Editions DRM is something like $0.50 a book, which strikes me as robbery. So Agency publishers are forcing me to spend more money on something I don’t want in order to sell me to sell me a crippled version of something I do want. right.
I think I’ll wander over to Baen and see what’s new and good over there.
Now if we could just get Baen to publish romances… I just checked Webscriptions, and Baen is holding firm at $6.00 per e-book, no DRM, plus there’s a copious number of books in the Baen Free Library.
Oh, and Project Gutenberg ePubs are much better quality than they used to be. They seem to be getting the hang of formatting them properly. There are so many classics I have never read.
[looks at a computer whose drive was purchased in 2002]
You were saying?
@Dragoness Eclectic – I’ve been looking for a Baen-esque Romance publisher for a long time. I’m hampered by not being into erotica that much, and not that into the paranormal/urban fantasy stuff that much (because much of it tends to be too dark for my taste). I’d love some recommendations for indy authors in contemp romance or romantic suspense!
get54: I’d get 54 new authors if I could find some good reviews of them.
I’ve purchased nearly 200 ebooks since I got my iPad not quite a year ago. They are nearly evenly split between Kindle and iBooks. Where I purchase largely depends on where I’ve got a gift card. I find it particularly irritating to pay $9.99 or more for an ebook and have to edit it as I read, which happens more often than not. Like anything, I feel that if I pay more, should get more.
I’ve considered not buying from Publishers who are the worst offenders, but I love to read, and this method keeps the books from taking over every square foot of my tiny home.
So how dowe pressure these people to give us more for our money?
This rambles, sorry,
After reading Sarah’s comments about pricing, I started looking around for what I might reasonably be likely to spend for a book in the next week or two. I was particularly looking for the “most romances” at 4 to 5 dollars.
I’ve given up really searching Fictionwise for anything other than small publishers and HQ. I miss how they worked. As I was typing my comments, I realized that this is the beginning of the week and I haven’t checked the new titles. I used to be chomping at the bit by this point, waiting to see what was going to get the 100% rebate. When I first got my iPod Touch and was able to have all of the books directly transfer themselves I was walking on air. I was buying 10 to 20 books a week (granted some were very short and very cheap), so my wallet doesn’t miss the old Fictionwise. Low cost books did add up. I was willing to buy a $22 book when it came with a rebate that let me buy $22 of other books – very easy to swallow compared to a simple price break on $22 – like $14. And the “free” money was very easy to splash around on new authors or books that I was just interested in, not yet on my must-read auto-buy list. My understanding is that the Agency model is what made this practice no longer possible.
When I open Books on Board, my current favorite, the romances that show up are almost all $6.99 or $7.99. There were still some reductions. [And one of Maya Banks’ Coulter novels for $4.29. Gee, I wonder how Maya Banks got to the Best Seller List with an epublished-only novel from a small publisher? Maybe $4.29 is the actual perfect price point for an ebook.]
For Amazon, I used their search function for “romance novel best sellers”. They had nothing that looked like a romance for less than $7.99 and a lot of the books brought up by the search can’t possibly be best sellers.
Clearly, I was in the wrong spot. I don’t use Amazon because of how much I hate what they did to mobipocket. They could allow me to use my DRM-protected mobipocket books in their stupid app that lets me read kindle books, but they chose not to. They rub it in by naming their file extension .mobi just in case I didn’t notice that non-DRM mobipocket files can be read by kindle. I have 400 titles sitting, waiting.
I hate Amazon. Hate, Hate, Hate. Those 400 titles were usually about $8 and up but they got 10% off for club membership, 10% off for purchasing in the first week of release, etc. The rebates and price reductions weren’t really that much money per book – they just brought the book in line with my Barnes and Noble membership or my Borders rewards card. But still, in under two years of serious ebook reading, I racked up 400 books that probably cost at least $7.00 on average, including the aforementioned occasional $22 hard-cover-equivalent-ebook.
Please tell me that isn’t $2800 just on ebooks.
There were the other books that weren’t DRM’ed or that had eReader instead. I am a junkie.
So, back to my search for my likely price for a new purchase. I reduced the search to just “romance” – Alice in Wonderland is in the first 8 books?
Maybe they aren’t trying to sell to me.
The first book that came up when I search “romance” is free on kindle and a few of the others were classics being offered free. There were also some $5 novels. They were cheaper than the paper copies of the same books.
But they weren’t the books we’re really talking about, the authors I have heard of with a new release that I have been waiting for, so again back to the search.
I’ll narrow it to books that were released in the last 30 days. Now the search includes a number of $5-8 books, with prices matching the paperback or up to $2 lower and many, many freebies – most from Ellora’s Cave. [Holy Moly, the hardback copy of JR Ward’s third black dagger novel costs $295 and up. What is wrong with people?]
It is still hard to sort through all of the junk that Amazon is calling a recent romance; just because something is going to have a new edition out doesn’t mean it is really new.
I still am seeing books that are mostly $5.50 and up.
Conclusions:
I did not find a case where the digital copy was more expensive than the hard copy. But most of the books that I want to buy are $7.99 to exactly match their paperback brethren.
I have spent much less money on books this past 12 months than the 12 months before.
Amazon is stealing $2,800 worth of books from me at this very moment in time so getting 10% off from them does not appeal.
How can it be good business for the publishing industry to make me stop spending $1500 a year on ebooks?
@henofthewoods I’m neither familiar with mobi or kindle. But can’t you find a Python freeware app out there to strip your DRM and use Calibre to convert your old mobi’s to Kindle format? Calibre has become one of my absolute favorite programs out there in the world. And I apologize in advance if mention of DRM-stripping is bad here – feel free to delete if that’s the case. But since you evidently bought the books and you just want to read them on your device…
Gee, and isn’t this the perfect example of why this whole mess is as ridiculous as it is.
It’s funny how I used to see polls and discussions about avoiding small publishers or self-published labels because they were evidently sub-par, etc. And now I (and I know I’m not alone) am doing the opposite. Adding Random House to my list of publishers I won’t be spending my money on anymore. There’s plenty of small-name talent out there who deserve my dollars and attention, thankyouverymuch.
I’ll just give one example of total extortion by publishers for e-books. If you visit barnes and nobles site (I have a nook, so this is my point of reference), you’ll see Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey in large paperback for $17.30 after B&N discount. If you see the nook price, it is $18.99, which I feel is absolutely ridiculous. I was a potential new reader, but when I saw the price, I was completely turned off. While I feel publishers and authors are due a profit in books, one must consider that readers aren’t stupid: we know that there is much less overhead in producing an e-book versus a paperback, so it’s insulting when they charge more for an e-book than they do for a physical copy, particularly one that is over a year old.
On average, I pay about $5.99 for paperback books, though some have been less when they’re older. I find this reasonable, and am willing to overlook typos and formatting errors (and there are A LOT). I’ve also paid $12.99 or so for bestselling authors releasing a hardcover. But once a book is released in paper (a year or so later?), then the e-book price should also come down.
@cara: I rarely, if ever, delete comments, and usually it is as the request of someone who inadvertently published their email address and didn’t want to. And trust me, as someone who strips DRM as a matter of course, I am not going to hold anything against you for suggesting it. That’s exactly what I was thinking as I read @henofthewoods’ comment.
Here’s an example for you. I love Kresley Cole’s IAD series. The newest book is out at Target for $5.99, the e-book is $7.99. Guess what book I won’t be buying since I am e only these days.
Another example, Lora Leigh’s Live Wire or Renegade, the last two books in her Elite Ops series, are both $7.99 in e-book The price is $5.99 for Live Wire at Target and considerably less for Renegade at Amazon in paper. Another series I’ve given up.
One more example – Alexis Morgan’s Paladin series. I love these books, they are $7.99 for the e-book and $6 or less for the paper version. I just won’t pay more for a book I can’t pass share with friends and family. That’s crazy!
My money now goes to small e-pubs. While I miss the authors listed above (and too many others to name), I have found new authors to give my money to these days.
I’m loving the 30% discount on new and future releases at Samhain. They really seem to value my business and realize I am their customer.
@Cara
Related to this: A change I’ve noticed in my own buying habits is that, although I still don’t own an e-reader and don’t buy e-books, I’ve actually started buying more books from small publishers, even though the price for their print books is much greater than for their e-books.
The reason? I keep up with quite a few book blogs, and books by these publishers are getting reviewed more often (possibly because book bloggers are being pushed towards them by the higher prices other publishers charge for their e-books?). The end result is that I, still a 100% print book reader, am spending money on books published by smaller presses that I wouldn’t even have heard of a few years ago, and I’ve gotten interested enough to be willing to pay more just to try a few out. The high price difference between these publishers’ e-books and print books is actually making me consider finally breaking down and getting an e-reader. Now, if only I could make up my mind about which one to get….
I have an iPad and a generous disposable income. I’m also a voracious reader (of mostly romances or books with a strong romantic element), in addition to an obsessive knitter (also a potentially expensive habit). I read e-books exclusively, outside of gifts and non-fiction. Most of the books I buy are from smaller publishers, either directly or through sites like AllRomance, which I discovered on this enlightening site. I buy an occasional e-book from B&N or Amazon, but rarely. I dislike DRM on principle and prefer not to give it positive reinforcement with my $. I typically pay between $6-$8 per book, not including incentives—a fair price for a novel-lenghth book. What the books I read from smaller publishers may sometimes (and I do stress sometimes) lack in polish, they more than make up for in fresh ideas, subject matter and good sex. The majority of my auto-buy authors are published in the small press. While I do wish I could occasionally lend an e-book, I wouldn’t trade the awkwardness of holding a pb or hc or storing/disposing of it when I’m done. Again, a fair trade.
If you have a problem with the pricing of the big houses, why not try some of the smaller ones?
Cara,
I tried about a year ago to use Python. Many of the links I had at the time were old, so the information was no longer available at the websites. I cobbled together what I thought I would need.
I shouldn’t have been drinking that late at night…
Within 12 hours I went to brunch with my husband and our credit card was denied. I called and we had $1500 already charged to the card. I decided that possibly I am not actually able to manage all of these programs anymore.
Now, I make sure that my browser does not know my credit card number and I use two separate pc’s for purchases and banking.
But then I felt like the Voice of God said “cara bozja” which is my Baba’s way of saying “God Punishes”. (Sorry if this means your name translates to “punish” in Ukrainian. That doesn’t seem like great news.)
So I have saved the links, and I will probably cave but I hate breaking rules much less actual laws. You’ve seen me, I cross at the crosswalk and wait for the light while the rest of my family continues on. I sit in my car waiting for the light to turn green even though the visibility is great in every direction and there is no one anywhere around. I don’t smoke pot even though I don’t actually believe it is worse than alcohol. I really don’t want to have to cheat to read my own books.
People. People.
Start calling them. Google them up, click on the contact us button and the switchboard will transfer you to a LIVE person to take your views on it. I’ve talk to 3 of them so far and from what the CS people have been telling me, is that a lot of people are calling and they are logging it and forwarding it on. Think of it like being your very own (incredibly cheap w/o any fun kickback) lobbyist.
Make your voice heard.
All 3 calls together took me less than 6 minutes to make.
Two small presses that offer romances that are not particularly erotic in nature (along with other genres) spring to mind: Samhain and Whiskey Creek Press. Various formats are available, no DRM. Oh, Ellora’s Cave (JasmineJade) is now offering a Blush romance line (non-erotic), which replaces their former sister publisher, Cerwiden.
Hope this helps.
Wow, I had no idea any about any of this.
I am a voracious reader, with a nearly insatiable hunger for books. I recently, okay in August, bought myself a Kindle for my birthday. I have probably spent 600 to 1000 dollars on books since I bought my Kindle, and all because the books are right at my fingertips.
Being a sixteen-year-old, I have never before this last birthday been able to drive myself to the bookstore, and so usually I had to be content with the school library, christmas gifts from parents, and the ocassional trip to the store when my mother was in the mood to take me. Getting my Kindle allowed me the freedom to pick from so many books – and I have been so happy about that! But as I read this article, I understand I’m only happy with my Kindle – and the prices I must pay for books – because I’ve never known it any other way.
Unfortunately, I know I’m not going to stop buying books just to send a message to these nasty publishers. I don’t really like movies or video/computer games (except for the SIMS), so reading is really the only form of entertainment I really, really enjoy. But should I ever get the chance to complain to a publisher (who knows what connections one will make in college!) this will definitely be on my mind. The fact that e-books are not up to the standards of print books, cannot be lent to others (a signifcant drawback that my bookish friends and I have lamented over many a day at lunch), and yet they still cost more? Ridiculous. Thanks for informing me about this issue. I love to be better informed, and I think with all the really intellectual comments above I’ve learned a lot more about the book-market and the publishers.
An alternative to Python – that is much easier to handle and has provided me with value for money is http://www.ebook-converter.com/
I only use it to convert Epub and PDF ebooks with DRM that I have purchased to read.They have half a dozen programs that are specific to converting different formats and they have a trial of each so you can test that they work for the files that you have.
I read Epub on Stanza on my iPod but I have also converted copies of all my ebooks to PDF via Calibre and saved them seperately so that the chances of being at the mercy of ebook file formats are reduced.
I am disappointed Random House has gone with the agency model as well though not suprised. I only hope that authors have negotiated much better percentages for the format than they can for print versions
The more I read about this situation, the happier I am that I love to read classic books that are out of copyright and free, or nearly free. I have filled my Kindle so full (600+ books) that I have years of reading no matter what the publishers start doing. $12.99 for a Booker Prize winner (I’m looking at you, Hilary Mantel)? Cheap at twice the price since I’ll read it at least twice and keep it for another re-read in the future. I just bought 60 novels by Henry James for
< $3.00. Lots of hours of good reading there. My Kindle paid for itself in the savings from no shipping. Even if the book was free, at $4 a pop for shipping, I was spening >
$300/year for shipping alone. My favorite author, Anthony Trollope, wrote 47 novels, all of which are available for free or very low cost on the Kindle. Maybe if we readers start turning our attention to some of the classic stories that have stood the test of time, we can find a gold mine of good reading that doesn’t cost a fortune. There’s a reason these books are still around years after the authors died. I’m also please that some of my favorite out of print authors like DE Stevenson and Georgette Heyer are turning up for the Kindle.
PS: If you are not sure you will like the book, download a free sample. You can tell by chapter two whether you want to spend time/money with the author, and it doesn’t cost a cent.
Current Romance and other bestsellers, (Water for Elephants, etc.) $4.88 Sam’s club. Today. Not a huge inventory, but good selection.
@thirstygirl – It’s 6.99 American in the amazon.com store. Do you want to email me and work something out?
@henofthewoods – $2800? calibre has a plugin that strips DRM. Just sayin’. You don’t even have to bother with Python anymore. It is easy-peasy lemon squeezie; all you do is install the plugin and then import the book as you normally would. Stripping DRM may be against your TOS, but AFAIK it isn’t illegal. Sharing what you’ve stripped is another story.
“Maybe if we readers start turning our attention to some of the classic stories that have stood the test of time, we can find a gold mine of good reading that doesn’t cost a fortune.”
I cannot stress this enough, or say it in too many places: Mary Roberts Rinehart. Do it! You won’t regret it!