Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

oh, my, yes!!!
Do you want a bit of gasoline for that fire, as well?
Personally, I have an additional bone to pick when it comes to e-books - one the size of a dinosaur thighbone: the geographical restrictions idiocy. The next time you visit Fictionwise, just have a look at how many of the DRMed books are restricted to the US, or US and Canada. And Fictionwise is at least up front about it, and show the restrictions for every book that has them. Others simply disappear books from your cart during checkout - if they accept customers outside the US at all, that is. :-(
The message _I_ get from that sort of thing is: go find a pirate edition.

And things are even worse now with the Eyjafjallajökull. If I want to order paper books from Amazon, they are likely to take just about forever to get here.

I came here to make the same comment ghn just did - geographical restriction is one of the most frustrating things I’ve encountered when it come to buying books. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve liked the sound of a book only to be informed ‘that title is not available in your region’.

Amen to the whole thing.

When I went shopping for a publisher, I ruled out companies who didn’t sell e-books and companies who put one version ahead of the other (delay in e or delay in print). It left me with a very narrow field, but in the end it was the best decision I made. Not only am I very happy with my publisher (Dreamspinner Press) from the standpoint of how they treat my work, but I’m daily impressed with how they treat customers. Just over the weekend a reader from Singapore tried to buy one of my books from an onilne e-aggregator, but it didn’t work correctly. Some sort of glitch with the file that made it too small. My publisher, though the customer didn’t buy from them directly, put the book in her library account there and encouraged her to buy from them in the future, because she’d have access to all the file versions of each story she bought as many times as she’d need them on her permanent bookshelf. She enthusiastically declared she’d buy all titles from our house directly from the house from now on. She also got to have the book she wanted to take along with her on her vacation. Hell, now she has it even if she forgets to put it on or buys a different reader between Singapore and Mexico. And as another commenter mentioned, if you’re not in the US or Canada or UK (and sometimes even in the latter two) your options are limited. THIS is the kind of service/availability I want for me and for my readers.

I’ve had an e-reader (iPad) for a few weeks now, and I’m already reading more. I’m also ready to branch into different genres or try new things, especially if something shiny or interesting catches my eye. Or I’m interested in putting old beloved titles on my iPad. But when they’re priced higher than my paperbacks or more than a music album, I just sigh and wander back to the places that are actually giving me what I want. It’s amazing the money traditional publishing houses aren’t getting from me right now. And I can’t think I’m the only one doing this.

Ugh, geographical restrictions.  They’ve gotten worse since the agency pricing.  I have a wishlist at the Sony bookstore, mostly things I wanted to remind myself to pick up when the price came down a bit or if there was a sale.  A couple of months ago, every single book on my wishlist was available for me to buy.  I logged in last weekend and now half of them are restricted to US only.  I am befuddled, because let’s face it, changing the pricing model does not change the regions you have the rights to sell in, but I guess the publishers really want me to jump through the flaming hoops of death.

Not gonna happen, guys.

A slightly different take, any form of communication has it’s flaws, and there will be a shaking out period. Readers of Classical Latin were no doubt frustrated by Gutenberg’s decision to print his new fangled books in German(and would have had the logical argument that it was less likely to change over time).
Take heart that change is inevitable, personally I think digital books in some form are here to stay and these geographical and other frustrations are temporary.

My day job is in another wing of the entertainment industry (vdeo games).

Interestingly, publishers in video games love the idea of digital streaming. No costs for boxes, manuals, burning disks (with all the accompanying potential for duds or errors), shipping, etc. Prices the same. It’s a no brainer.

And yet consumers struggle with DRM and geographical limitations. It’s been five years and no one is yet willing to give up the idea that a French customer is somehow totally different from an American customer, and must only get his product from someone granted the French rights.

I’m trying to move to fiction to get away from video game drama. Maybe I’m the idiot ;)

Yes.

I had the same problem with the Sony bookstore turning everything into US only.  Much cursing, much surfing for illegal copies - and it only seemed to get worse with every day - books that I had already purchased now only seemed to be available for american customers.  Finally I discoverd that Sony now has two copies of each title - one is the US edition, one is the Canadian edition.  Sadly there is no link between the two, and it is only the US editions that show up in their top ten lists, and lists of new editions.  Why they can’t have one entry per title and then figure out which edition to sell you once you check out???  Anyhow - I am now the happy owner of the Canadian edition (complete with Canadian cover art) of Yann Martel’s new book.

A slightly different take, any form of communication has its flaws, and there will be a shaking out period.

And we are deep within the contortionary evolution of the book industry. It’s not going to be pretty and there’s going to be lots of collateral damage (mostly mid-list authors). I try to be patient with it, but when I see shit like Victoria Alexander’s new book priced at double the MM cover price for E, snakes start popping out of my head.

I try to be patient with it, but when I see shit like Victoria Alexander’s new book priced at double the MM cover price for E, snakes start popping out of my head.

I’ve stopped purchasing ebooks for this reason. My poor Sony Reader sits gathering dust in a drawer.

Say it sister!  Go Sarah, go Sarah, go Sarah!

I try to be patient with it, but when I see shit like Victoria Alexander’s new book priced at double the MM cover price for E, snakes start popping out of my head.

I’ve stopped purchasing ebooks for this reason. My poor Sony Reader sits gathering dust in a drawer.

I’ve stopped purchasing Harper Collins/Avon books for this reason . . . I’m willing to pay the SAME amount for an eBook, but there’s simply no fucking way I’m paying more for one. I’ll likely buy this in paper from my favorite local bookstore (gives me something to still shop for there, which is good).

You made this point beautifully, SB Sarah, and Jane makes it all the time, but I think it bears repeating yet again again again.

The competition for books is not other books. It’s not that you’re fighting over whether to read a book from Avon or one from Samhain. The competition for books is…everything else, all the other media we’re bombarded with every day. And it’s so much EASIER to consume that other media, even in their original form. Much easier to turn on TV than have to GO to the bookstore or the library.

And publishing needs to get out of its own way, because they are not losing marketshare to their direct competitors, but to their indirect. And they will continue to do so unless they make things easier.

The competition for books is not other books.

Bingo. I’ve started watching TV again because of Hulu—7 to 9 p.m. on weeknights is perhaps the worst time of the week for me to partake of any recreation. And it’s a one-to-one tradeoff: what am I not doing now that I have access to these three shows?

I see effects on the writing side as well. More and more conferences and workshops are offering classes in screenwriting. People with stories to tell are looking for a venue besides old-school publishing. There are more being invented all the time, and they’re all looking for content.

You know how pushy salespeople always want you to buy right then, no, no coming back later? And how, when you’re buying furniture, they never mention the piece isn’t stocked locally and it’ll be three weeks to arrive, until you’re really far along in the process, about to hand over your credit card?  It’s because waiting and not purchasing go hand in hand. The actual waiting means you later decide you didn’t need that Thingy so badly. Even a situation where a customer knows they have to wait three weeks and can’t walk out with their purchase results in a lower percentage of customers actually going ahead with the purchase.

This is true in every industry I’ve seen figures and anecdotes on: cars, furniture, credit cards, loans, online services, floral, craft supplies. Sometimes the customer buys at another store, and sometimes they just don’t buy it at all.

Publishing is one of the few industries that could ever get their delivery down to instant or near-instant with some relatively minor changes and new technology (if not e-book, then print-on-demand books). I find it completely boggling they aren’t pulling out every trick to do so.

Publishing is one of the few industries that could ever get their delivery down to instant or near-instant with some relatively minor changes and new technology (if not e-book, then print-on-demand books). I find it completely boggling they aren’t pulling out every trick to do so.

Renae: You are right on with this point. I can get an e-book anytime just as long as someone is willing to sell it to me. Having lived a full hour from any bookstore and being a raging insomniac, I can tell you that more than one book has gone unpurchased in favor of another title I could get digitally right that very minute. And if I couldn’t find anything to read, hey! Hulu had the first two seasons of Remington Steele for a free trip down memory lane.

When it is actually much, much easier to steal something pirated (which I have never nor will ever do) than pay for it- even if you want to- something is very wrong with your delivery system.

I think if I have one thing to say to publishers it is this: Let the people buy your books.

I wouldn’t have thought that needed to be said but it seems like it really, really does.  And you’re totally right about Harlequin.  I may have made several of those 3am ebook purchases for instant gratification…

I’m commenting anonymously because, well, I think some people might be a bit upset with me for saying this. :-)

I was at B&N the other day looking at the Nook (want!) and talking to the salesgirl about it. I mentioned the geographical restrictions as an issue, though, because I spend a lot of time in the UK and of course there are no B&Ns; there which means no buying for the Nook there.

She said, no, you can’t buy Nook content from B&N online from the UK. But what you CAN do, apparently, is have someone in the US set up a Nook account for you and buy the book, and then download it (or upload, or whatever; sorry I don’t really know how it works) into your Nook from anywhere in the world.

I’m not clear on how exactly this works. But I’m throwing it out there. If you have a friend with a US account on whatever ebook site you like to purchase from, they can purchase the book, and you can then access the account from anywhere (at least that was/is my understanding).

I’m an author, and I hate piracy. And as an author I also want to earn money from the sale of rights to my books in other countries. But I have absolutely no problem with someone buying a copy of one of my ebooks and emailing it to a friend who would otherwise not be able to buy it, especially if they then delete it from their own computer (sure, they can read it first; I always read books I give as gifts, don’t you?) It’s still a sale, and as far as I’m concerned that’s nowhere near piracy.

I don’t know if that helps, and I don’t know quite how it would work. I don’t read ebooks, really. I can’t afford an ereader and I’m a fan of paper books in general anyway. But I wanted to throw that out there. It may not be a perfect solution but maybe some of you will find it useful.

Ros:

I think if I have one thing to say to publishers it is this: Let the people buy your books. I wouldn’t have thought that needed to be said but it seems like it really, really does.

This ties in with the history of publishers’ direct customers being the wholesalers and retailers rather than the readers.  Ten or fifteen years ago, if the reader couldn’t buy a book, it was generally because their bookstore wouldn’t carry or order it, not because the publisher’s policies put obstacles in their way. Ebooks have shrunk the supply chain between the publisher and the reader, and some publishers (especially some big NY publishers) are still figuring this out.

What’s wrong with wanting something a certain way?  Why is it “entitled”?  I’m the customer, with money that you (the business) want me ti give to you.  Why can’t I have a say in how I want thinfs?  Why can’t I have a digital book for a lesser price than a physical book (any excuse is a lie), and on the same release date as the physical version? 

working23 - not quite 23, but I am working!

Ken Auletta wrote a lengthy article for The New Yorker that touches on just about every aspect of the publishing/agency 5 cluster fuck including this one.  It’s definitely worth the time to read it if you’re at all interested in what’s been going on.  Highly recommended.

According to Grandinetti [Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti], publishers are asking the wrong questions. “The real competition here is not, in our view, between the hardcover book and the e-book,” he says. “TV, movies, Web browsing, video games are all competing for people’s valuable time. And if the book doesn’t compete we think that over time the industry will suffer. Look at the price points of digital goods in other media. I read a newspaper this morning online, and it didn’t cost me anything. Look at the price of rental movies. Look at the price of music. In a lot of respects, teaching a customer to pay ten dollars for a digital book is a great accomplishment.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta?currentPage=4

I’m fianlly seriously contemplating an iPad because I found out that Amazon is releasing a Kindle app, so that gives me a good reader on top of the rest of it. But some books I’ve really been looking forward to, including Charlaine Harris’ new Sookie novel, won’t be released for Kindle at the same time it’s released in the store. Annoying.

I’m also noticing a new trend. Amazon is really cutting the prices of hardbacks. I got Jim Butcher’s Changes for 12.95 + shipping. Usually hardback base prices are over 20. I wonder if this is due to the ebooks.

If someone called me Eyjafjallajökull I’d be spitting a lot more then fire and ice.

Bookdepository has (recently?) added ebooks to it’s catalog.
I can only assume that geographical limitations do not apply, or at least not to the U.K.

Of course, I would also assume that a sale that is made in the U.S. covers any worries about the author’s or publisher’s rights- no matter where the content is then electronically streamed to. Yes, I know I would be making an inaccurate assumption but that’s because the point of sale makes sense and that never seems to apply to publishers.

Absolutely love the topic.  We finally gave in and got rid of our satellite, the TiVo, and only kept our Netflix subscription because you can watch so much stuff online, whenever you want.  Hulu is an awesome choice (and I’m writing a new blog about the show Justified which I’ve been watching on Hulu, go check that out) for television programming and even the major channels have most of their own shows available online. 

As far as ebooks, I haven’t been bitten by the reader bug yet, or ever purchased a digital copy of a book.  BUT, so many good points.  How does it make sense that the price of so much other media is shifting and the price of books is just not?

The competition for books is not other books.

Yes. This!

Publishers are so concerned about not losing a single print sale that they’re throwing away their future market—all those young people (and some of us who aren’t so young) with iPads and Kindles and whatnot who want to buy e-books but will settle for other, non-book forms of entertainment if the e-books are unavailable or overpriced.

I get so frustrated with geographical restrictions with e-books.  It’s not an issue of having to physically ship anything so why the restriction?

It would not be that hard for the major publishers to get their lawyers to add a few paragraphs dealing with the international rights and yet some of them fail to do this. Most English language jurisdictions are common law based anyway, so it would not be that hard. 

What publishers are ignoring is that this is an iTunes culture in that when something is released in the US, we (the rest of the world) all want it now.  They are missing out on a lot of impulse buys by restricting it at the outset, especially if we then read not so positive reviews and decide against it. 

At minimum, e-books need to be released in all major formats on the same day of the print release.  Then they need to have reasonable prices for the e-book.  It should not be any more than the price of a paperback.

I see apps and things and I wonder… is the new wave of publishing coming in the form of $1 books that can be purchased off sites like itunes? I’m a publishing student and it frustrates me to no end how the industry I want to enter wants to control the ways in which people get the products to read.

I’m fascinated by epublishing and really think it’s the way of the future.

While I basically agree with your post, Sarah, and am all in favour of books/music/entertainment being more widely and easily available, there’s a couple of comments I’d like to make.

First up, while metropolitan USA, and some other countries, have broadband systems that enable instant download of movies, this is not the experience of quite a number of other countries - including Australia. Here, our ISP services are predominantly structured with monthly download limits, such that for most of us, downloading a movie is impossible. And if you happen to live beyond the black stump, then (much slower) satellite broadband is the only choice, and movies are even more impossible, no matter what your plan.

With regard to territorial rights on e-books, can I just put my hand up to comment that this is a very complex question, with sound arguments on all sides, and I honestly can’t see any easy answers. Yes, I’m personally affected - on both sides: as a reader who can’t buy many of the e-books I’d like to buy, and as an Australian author, (published first in Australia, and still without a US publisher).

Territorial rights aren’t just about a geographic carve-up of a market. They do play a VERY important part in enabling countries/regions across the world to support their own publishing industry that serves and enhances their own distinct literary culture. Without territorial rights, the size and economic power of the US would mean that a few US publishers would totally dominate the world-wide English-language market, and local publishers in countries like Australia would disappear. I’ll use Australia as an example, because I’m familiar with it. Yes, we speak English, and yes, we read many US-set and UK-set books, and watch US and UK TV and movies… but we also have a strong and vibrant literary culture of our own, with many obvious and many, many more subtle differences, and it’s vitally important that we can also read books that speak with Australian voices and story-telling modes about Australian places and issues. And yes, while some US publishers do publish books by Australian authors (and many of our romance authors writing for the US market do very well), the vast majority of Australian books are never published in the US - particularly those that are distinctly Australian in voice.

Please note, I’m not criticising North American publishers or readers, so please don’t anyone take offence! US publishers naturally only publish books they believe will appeal to their particular market; that market includes a population of around 300million (potentially a lot more if they’ve bought world rights) and they have the market power to shift a lot of books. Australian publishers acquire books that will appeal to the Australian market, but that has a much, much smaller population - around 22 million (plus around 3 million with New Zealand bundled in to the geographic territory).  The economics of publishing and book-selling therefore become quite different, and publishers must rely on income from Australian rights (and the increasingly important e-rights) to big-selling books (eg Dan Brown, Nora Roberts etc) to be able to also acquire and publish Australian authors.

Territorial e-book rights are, therefore, an important part of the global publishing landscape, and, while undoubtedly frustrating for many readers, they do provide some protection for the diversity of publishing worldwide, and enable minority voices to be heard, at least within their own regions/cultures.

I’ve only touched very briefly on the complexities of the issues, and as I said in the beginning, I can’t see any easy answers. I know the publishing industry is trying desperately to find some way of grappling with the conflicting demands, but they haven’t found easy answers yet, either.

I’ve lived without cable or satellite for quite sometime with the help of my Roku player, Netflix and Amazon On Demand.  Now, I too have hooked up my Wii so I can do Netflix on more than one TV in my home.

I have done some e-books, but I don’t have a reader and have to use my blackberry or the computer, and that’s just not as pleasurable for me as the good old fashioned print.  I also love my good old fashioned library, where I can check out books for free.  I don’t see the same urgency to read a book NOW, but I do see the convenience in ebooks and I agree that publishers do need to realize that the formats compliment traditional print.

That said, Netflix doesn’t offer everything streaming.  The urgency factor takes a backseat.  I’m still waiting for Season 4 of Dexter. I can wait.  There’s usually something that will catch my fancy.  Just like there’s probably a book I can wait to read because I have many other options.

Great post. I will probably always prefer paper, but I’m not an idiot and can see which way the world is moving. We writers with more traditional tastes must at least be willing to learn the ins and outs of e-publishing.

And yes, while some US publishers do publish books by Australian authors (and many of our romance authors writing for the US market do very well), the vast majority of Australian books are never published in the US - particularly those that are distinctly Australian in voice.

But if e-books were available to any (English-speaking) reader anywhere, would you need a US publisher?  To get your paper books out, yes, but if the e-books are in the cloud of (easily-)available ebooks, people outside of the Aus/NZ area would find them.  Maybe not in the millions, but in the hundreds.

It is frustrating for smaller markets to try to compete with the juggernaut that is the US, but there has to be some way, without decreasing options for writers from small markets, to increase accessibility for readers to books, all books, anywhere.  I want them all, and I want them now.  Grr.

But if e-books were available to any (English-speaking) reader anywhere, would you need a US publisher?

Suze, as I understand it, e-books are currently running at around 5% of sales for most fiction books where there’s an e-book as well as paper version, but that’s expected to grow fairly rapidly, and be an important part of a title’s revenue stream. So, a publisher (US or elsewhere) is unlikely to buy paper rights unless they can also buy e-rights for their territory.

It’s a tricky, tricky situation, and we’re all of us - readers and authors - caught in the middle :-(

I bought a Kindle and I have to say, the more I use it the more I hate it.  For me it doesn’t come anywhere close to the pleasure and convenience of reading a paperback.  I find the user interface awkward, unintuitive and slow.  I feel shut out of the story, like it’s hidden behind this screen and I can’t get to it.  The worst part is trying to go back to find a part you want to read over again.  I have to guess where it appeared in the book, type in a location number that I think is near that, guess wrong, type in a new location…each action involves pushing multiple buttons, waiting while the page appears, etc.  The process is made even more difficult by little stupidities such as the fact that when you’ve called up the field that allows you to type in location numbers, the location numbers of the screen you’re looking at are obscured, so that you have to remember where you were in order to calibrate your next guess.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten to decide my next guess before calling up that field, then had to cancel and start the whole button-pushing process over again (pun intended).

I think the basic problem is that I’m a visual thinker rather than an abstract thinker.  If I’m reading a paperback and I want to go back to look at an earlier passage, I have a vague tactile memory of how the book felt in my hands when I was reading that part (ie how far into it I was) and I have a vague visual memory of where on the page the passage was, and I find it pretty quickly.  And with favorite books I learn my way through them as time goes on, like learning my way around a town.  You might think I could do that with the Kindle (learn the right numbers to call up a passage, the keywords that will find it in a search) but my mind just doesn’t work that way.  I don’t remember words or numbers, I remember places and pictures. (I owned a car for eight years and never memorized the license plate number, but never lost the car in a parking lot.)  I’ve tried the bookmarks function on Kindle, but that itself is so unpleasant and clumsy to use that I never use the bookmarks I’ve created.  And I hate the way that when you do call up the right passage via numbers or keyword searching (or even a bookmark), it doesn’t appear in the same place on the screen as it was when you first read it. (Yes, I know that’s a completely bizarre and trivial point, but it just feels unnatural and wrong to me on a very deep level and contributes to my feeling that there’s an unbridgeable gap between me and the story.  There’s no spatial logic to how you move around the book, or how the words are presented on the screen, so there’s no way for me to develop a relationship with the book.)  As a result of all this, I enjoy the books I read in paperback a lot more than the books I read on the Kindle.  The paperback is just a much more intimate experience for me.

However, I keep buying romances on the Kindle because I can get them instantly whenever I want.  Then if one of the ones I bought electronically turns out to be really good, I wish I had it in paperback so I could re-read it with pleasure and visit my favorite passages over and over again.  I’m hoping that the iPad might solve my problem, because Apple’s interfaces generally use spatial logic (where something is on the screen tells you something about what you can do with it - not true of the Kindle) and interacting with a device using hand gestures is just a lot more meaningful than pushing buttons.  I doubt that the iPad will ever feel as good as holding a book in my hands, but it might be a close enough substitute that at least I won’t feel like I can’t touch the story at all.

Sorry for the rant, I didn’t realize this post was going to be so long when I started writing it…bottom line, if you’re a visual thinker like me, don’t buy the Kindle.  If you’re a computer programmer or a mathematician, you’ll probably prefer the Kindle to other ebook options.

God, I miss Fred Rogers.

So, a publisher (US or elsewhere) is unlikely to buy paper rights unless they can also buy e-rights for their territory.

But it seems to me that eventually this isn’t going to matter. The U.S. publisher wants e-book rights as well as print? Tell ‘em forget it. Let the Australian publisher release the e-book itself into the U.S. market. When e-books are 95% of sales instead of 5% (and someday they will be), getting a U.S. publisher to produce and stock the print books is going to be almost irrelevant.

But it seems to me that eventually this isn’t going to matter.

You’re right - eventually it probably won’t matter. But that ‘eventually’ is still several years (at least!) away, and for now, the industry is reliant on print as the main form, and digital as an essential supplement. Unless the iPad performs miracles, I think we’re still a few years away from even a 50/50 split.

But, looking on the bright side, I can still buy more e-books than I could ever read in my lifetime (even if I can’t get all the ones I want), and with the plethora of online booksellers, readers can buy almost any book in print that they want to from any country - if they’re prepared to pay the cost.

And price of books is a whole ‘nother complex topic… but I’ll resist that one for now!

Today on Twitter YA author John Green posted a link to this interesting article about the future of publishing:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta?currentPage=all

I just want to reiterate that we might be giving the tv/movie peeps a little more credit than they deserve if we’re talking ON DEMAND.  They protect their products with delays, too. I know if I got Showtme I could watch Dexter season 4 on demand.  Right now I can’t because I’m not willing to pay for it.

I know the publishing industry has a long way to go, but I’m just not smelling all the roses for the tv/movie industry just because suddenly Wii can stream Netflix.  The offerings are limited and the wait is substantial for popular tv series.  Heck, the wait on DVD is pretty substantial, much less streaming.  If you can be patient, it works.

It makes me happy that you quoted Mister Rogers. He was a smart man.

I know the publishing industry has a long way to go, but I’m just not smelling all the roses for the tv/movie industry just because suddenly Wii can stream Netflix.

Amen.  I’m stunned no one has mentioned DVD region restrictions, an utterly unnecessary and highly annoying issue for those who (like me) watch a considerable number of foreign films and series that are NOT AVAILABLE in Region 1 (US) format (so there is no issue of “piracy” because there are no “legitimate” US copies).  I’ve gotten around this by buying a multi-region DVD player, but I still have things I want to send to friends in Europe that I can’t because they ONLY exist as Region 1 DVDs.  This is where worldwide shipping of paperbacks is awesome.  Yes, there is a wait factor.  But there’s a payoff when you get the cool little package in the mail…like Calvin waiting for his beanie in Calvin and Hobbes.  (My favorite experience there was with a small Spanish bookstore that had a rather obscure memoir I needed for research.  Their website wasn’t set up for payment, so I emailed them my request, and they mailed it to me IN ADVANCE and asked me to send them a credit card number when the book arrived.  They and the book were both awesome.)

Territorial rights SUCK! Protect the Australian market, if you must. But what about us outside of the English speaking world. There are an estimate 5,000 to 10,000 Americans in Moscow. Just imagine how many in Paris, Berlin. Hell, there were a lot in Sofia, Bulgaria.  There are Americans resident in every lovely or Godforsaken—or more precisely English-language bookstore-forsaken corner of this earth.

Why can I not buy books in a language I can read outside the US? Without having to deal with exorbitant shipping charges, several month delays, dodgy customs officers?

There are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of us. Next add all the expat Brits, Canadians, Aussies, Indians, etc and you get a HUGE market for English language books outside any English speaking region.

Why do we get sacrificed because Aussies don’t bother to buy local authors?

I read the New Yorker article and it is interesting.  The thing that struck me though is why publishers think Amazon should share consumer data.  In fact this makes me a bit happier about being an Amazon customer no matter if their refusal to share data is due to a desire to keep valuable information for themselves or to protect the privacy of their customers. 

Amazon knows a heck of a lot about my buying habits and even my opinions, although it is information I have made freely available.  I would far rather Amazon guarded it for their own ends than gave it out to their suppliers.

They protect their products with delays, too. I know if I got Showtme I could watch Dexter season 4 on demand.  Right now I can’t because I’m not willing to pay for it.

As someone who has been waiting breathlessly for the Tudors I agree with this. Each season I wait almost a year until it is released on Netflix. Of course, this makes sense. Showtime’s premium customers pay premium money so they can get things first. Given that I’m paying substantially less for the same viewing experience it’s reasonable to me that I have to wait.

I was just in NYC and passed by several publishers offices—very swank—and thought about ebooks and the location of publishers main offices.  I really think they need a big dose of midwestern reality to hit their highrise, sterile environment.  Publishers are sitting on gold mines of copyright for books no longer available in their precious print.  My house is overflowing with books I’m loathe to part with since I love to re-read books.  I would love, love, love AND will pay for digital copies of my “keepers”.  (I’ll even send them my old, lovingly kept print copy if they crave them so much.)  I’ve already bought and read the print copies but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to have some of these older books in digital format.  AND thanks to the bitchery I discover authors new to me all the time.  Now I have a GREAT public library and can get a copy from them or through interlibrary loan to read.  BUT what if I fall in love with the series?  What if I want that no longer available in print book?  I can haunt the used bookstores and library book sales or try my luck buying it from Amazon used.  But that short sighted publisher has lost my dollars and the dollars of all the other readers of the Bitchery who might also buy that out of print book.  Maybe some smart MBA will finally do the market research and change the minds of the dinosaurs inhabiting the high rise corporate publishing offices in NYC.

yeah sure!!!!!!!!!

Books and video are not the same.  The methods of raising revenue for paying for them is not the same.

TV is broadcast publicly, paid for with revenue raised through advertising.  I, the consumer, for the mild inconvenience of periodic commercial breaks, can view it for free.  Before this product ever reaches the download button at HULU, it’s producers can sleep snug in their beds at night knowing that it’s paid for, with hopefully enough money in the bank to justify another season.

Books aren’t paid for in that fashion.  What you pay for them, that is their primary source of revenue.  They aren’t streamed directly to the public for simply that reason, their concern for their primary source of income.  I imagine the non-parallel release periods between paper and e-formats have more to do with banking future advances and covering current costs BEFORE releasing something in a readily pirateable format.

(Although maybe authors could consider raising revenue through product placement.  Yeah, Frodo could have stopped at the LL Bean store on his way into Mordor, where the shaodws lie, and he could have told Samwise how much happier he was, there at the end of all things, because he had these swell hiking boots.  Jamie Fraser could have swilled some Pepsi or something.  Yeah, I’m seeing the future here:  heroes with “Eat at Joe’s” tattooed on their, ah—tattoables.)

As for price, even at $30, my favorite authors are still a bargain.  I have only about six writers’ new releases that I will buy at that price.  Everyone else can wait for paperback.  But the point at which I will stop paying for Jim Butcher’s new hardcover is when the price per hour of entertainment that I get from it exceeds what I make per hour.  For non-favorite authors, it had better be a whole lot less than that.

I guess that unpopular stance puts me in teh asshat corner here at the bitchery, because I’m on the side of the argument that creators and producers can charge whatever they want for what they’re selling, and they can release it in whatever format when they’re ready to do so.

But what about Amazon Kindle?. You get fairly good prices on a digital book and you can download it almost anywhere without any additional cost. I mean, yes, the Kindle is expensive but the proces are going down. And remember that you can read ebooks comfortably in the Ipad too.

The iPad, much like the iPhone and iPod Touch, will run apps. Some will be specially made for the iPad.