Quote:
Originally Posted by Crodley
So you see, if you wanted to read this fine series in order, you couldn't on either platform. And I'm pretty sure all these books hit the bestseller's list.
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In this particular case Night Prey seems to be readily available in Sony, eReader & MS Reader formats, but not Mobipocket (& I suppose by extension Kindle format). The other one is not just unavailable for Sony or Kindle, but is unavailable in any format.
These are Penguin books so they'd be the publisher to contact to get them available & you're right it makes no sense to not have them available if you're going to make the rest of the series available.
In my observation Penguin is the most inconsistent publisher that does ebooks (but at least they do them, unlike some others). They used to charge more than the cost of the equivalent edition in paper for their ebooks (so a 7.99 paperback would cost 9.99 as an ebook), but they've finally stopped that.
They have a tendency to 'forget' to lower the price when a book shifts from HC to PB though, at least in the formats they release directly. For example Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris has been in PB for almost a year, but in the formats Penguin does directly (MS Reader, PDF & eReader) the book still costs $23.95 msrp, instead of $7.99 - however the MobiPocket version (which Penguin doesn't sell directly) is $7.99 msrp (I assume the Kindle version is too). So what happens is someplace like Fictionwise just drops the other formats & doesn't carry them anymore. Very frustrating.
For some reason also their books seem to almost always be the ones places like Fictionwise & Books On Board only have the Mobi version available even when the other versions are out there according to Penguin. I don't know if it's some messed up distribution scheme or what.
They also seem to not make certain books available themselves, but yet there will be a Mobi version available. You'd think if they're going to go to the trouble of making the text available to Mobi for their edition then they'd want to maximize their earnings by making it available in the other formats too. (Most times if they let Mobi release it, Sony has it too).
It really seems like they don't know what they want to do as far a ebooks go so they just do everything in as unorganized a fashion as possible. I'm getting all my info together along with examples to send to them in hopes they may actually listen. Since Penguin includes lots of popular labels including Ace, Roc, Berkley, DAW, Jove, Putnam & others it effects a lot of titles.
Sorry, I know I went into thing more than necessary there.
Another example of a series with gaps is Faye Kellerman's series from Harper Collins. They have every book, but #'s 3, 4 & 11 out as ebooks. When I emailed them last week & asked about it I was very pleased with the reply I got. They noted that they were on their radar & hoped to have all three out this year sometime.