Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake
And seriously for serious, how many of you people reading this (assuming you've gotten this far and haven't just skipped to the freebie listings) would actually, if the books of an author you kind of mildly liked to read suddenly disappeared from the store you were used to buying them, would really and truly follow the author to another store just to get their books in a different and possibly incompatible-with-your-reader format?
I'm not talking about your favourites whom you'd even resort to reading in paper, but for someone new you thought was nice light fun and you might buy another if it looked good and was on sale.
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Posters on MR tend to be incredibly blase about using the tools. "Oh, don't worry be happy, you can strip and convert just about anything from Amazon; easy as reciting the first 3 digits of pi with Calibre and a little apprenticeship lesson."
Leaving people's individual levels of tech-savviness and the ensuing issues of just how "easy" it really is for the general public aside, it so happens that Amazon breaks the tools every so often and there may not always be people around who are ready, willing, and able to fix what they break.
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I would certainly follow such an author to a new store, if
1) I happened to hear about it,
2) it was free or bargain-priced (I have a price point for authors in that category in general), and
3) there was a free reading app whereby I could read the book OR I had the tools to convert it to be read on my device. I now have the tools and expertise to convert whether there is DRM or not, but before that I was ... I won't say fully satisfied, but *content* to read such books on my phone or PC when I didn't have my e-reader with me.
That said, I think it's healthy for competition and free markets and all that stuff if ebooks were available to be stocked by any willing merchant at prices making sense to that merchant's business plan.