Downloading from Publishers

[jbcohen]

With all of this talk about book stores going out of business I have been investigating cutting out the middleman, the bookstore. Has anyone had luck donloading their ebooks from the appropriate publisher? I have no qualms about cutting out the bookstore out of the process and in fact would preferr to cut out the publishing house out of the process as well if I could and buy directly from the author. Anyone buy ebooks from the author rather than the publisher?

[jehane]

This is available, but it really depends on the author and publisher. Baen is a publisher, although their store has expanded to include some other publishers. Some authors sell directly from their websites, although I think there may be rights issues there, so it will only be those that own their rights, ie self-published or backlists. There are a number of authors on here from backlistebooks, which does this.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by jehane

This is available, but it really depends on the author and publisher. Baen is a publisher, although their store has expanded to include some other publishers. Some authors sell directly from their websites, although I think there may be rights issues there, so it will only be those that own their rights, ie self-published or backlists. There are a number of authors on here from backlistebooks, which does this.

Regarding authors selling books on their sites: Isn't it also possible that some authors have pages sponsored by their publishers (thereby negating any rights problems)? I always kind of assumed that the publishers put up some of those pages.

[ATDrake]

Also beware the publisher deciding to shut down its own website store.

HarperCollins used to sell their own books off their site, but then recently decided not to any more. There was a thread in the News forum with people wondering what was going to happen to their purchases (apparently not everyone got the email notification to download backup copies of their books before DATE).

Anyway, if you like SF/fantasy, Baen and BookViewCafé (authors offering their backlist books directly) are good: DRM-free, MultiFormat with single purchase, online reading, individual titles 4.99 or less, lots of free stories to sample.

And established print authors can also "self-publish" their backlists directly on Fictionwise, though these books can be prone to disappear if the author decides to go with another e-publisher later, like Mike Resnick did, moving part of his backlist to Baen's Webscriptions, and part to some imprint called ZappTek (unfortunately, the part that I wanted most).

For computer books, O'Reilly is really good: roughly the same terms as Baen/BVC, free updates to new editions for life. For romance, Harlequin/Carina Press seems to be okay (I've picked up some freebies there, and they work much like any other single-format store).

But Jasmine Jade (Ellora's Cave/Cerridwen webstore) has less favourable shopping terms than buying their books through another outlet: you have 5 days to download your books, then the link expires forever. No keeping your stuff in the "cloud". And no ePub directly from them last time I picked up a freebie, though their stuff is available ePub from other stores.

Similarly, it's better to get books from Mundania Press (sf/fantasy + horror/romance/mystery) via Fictionwise if you can, because the older books are only PDF on the publisher's website, but are all MultiFormat at FW. Though it seems like they've stopped putting up the newer ones via Fictionwise and now offer choice-of-single-format including ePub on them from their own website.

So sometimes it may be more disadvantageous from a consumer viewpoint to get your books directly, if having offsite backups, a particular format, and re-downloadability is important.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Similarly, it's better to get books from Mundania Press (sf/fantasy + horror/romance/mystery) via Fictionwise if you can, because the older books are only PDF on the publisher's website, but are all MultiFormat at FW. Though it seems like they've stopped putting up the newer ones via Fictionwise and now offer choice-of-single-format including ePub on them from their own website.

Thanks for the Mundania Press! I'd never heard of it but now I think I'm in love

[ATDrake]

Here's a direct link to Mundania's website. They tend to have 25% off coupons at certain times of the year (they did a back-to-school and CyberMonday sales since I started noticing them). And of course you can use Fictionwise coupons on their stuff there.

They publish both new and reprinted backlist material; their biggest "name" author seems to be Piers Anthony.

I hope this isn't intruding, but given what you've mentioned about your reading tastes in another thread, I think you might possibly like Anne Logston's "Shadow" books. They're a light fantasy series where an elven thief often teams up with a human swordswoman to solve magically-based problems in a setting that's a bit of a cross between western European medieval-ish and D&D.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Here's a direct link to Mundania's website. They tend to have 25% off coupons at certain times of the year (they did a back-to-school and CyberMonday sales since I started noticing them). And of course you can use Fictionwise coupons on their stuff there.

They publish both new and reprinted backlist material; their biggest "name" author seems to be Piers Anthony.

I hope this isn't intruding, but given what you've mentioned about your reading tastes in another thread, I think you might possibly like Anne Logston's "Shadow" books. They're a light fantasy series where an elven thief often teams up with a human swordswoman to solve magically-based problems in a setting that's a bit of a cross between western European medieval-ish and D&D.

I think you're my new best friend...

but you gotta stop spending my money, lol! You know, I bought that whole Sabian series, quite a few of the MZB, and I sprinkled it with a couple of M. Lackey short stories.

I wonder why they don't sell this series in ePub? PDF is so annoying with the cropping & regular expressions (which I'm horrible at) and all...

[ATDrake]

The Shadow books are available in ePub via Fictionwise's MultiFormat. I got it myself with the 50% off coupons last year.

Unfortunately, they've only done the first two books in the series so far, and there are a total of about 7 in the setting overall (3 Shadow, 2 with her niece Jael, 2 about the founding of the city of Allanmere where they live). They're nice light fun adventures (mostly non-serious, but good mind candy entertainment) and the later books are even better than the earlier ones because the author's had more experience writing by then.

I own them all in paperback, which is how I came to buy them in e-book later.

ETA: Well, this is an amazingly appropriate discussion for me to make "Wizard" with 1000 posts at. Whee! I should add an extra "zed" Rincewind-style, though.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Has anyone had luck donloading their ebooks from the appropriate publisher?

Not many publishers sell direct; most that do are genre publishers. I believe Penguin and maybe Random House used to sell ebooks direct, but stopped some time ago.

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Anyone buy ebooks from the author rather than the publisher?

You can only buy direct from the author under very specific conditions: E.g. the author gets the digital rights, or is self-published.

In many cases the author will still prefer to go through a retailer in order to reach the largest possible audience.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Not many publishers sell direct; most that do are genre publishers. I believe Penguin and maybe Random House used to sell ebooks direct, but stopped some time ago.

I was on Penguin's website earlier this week, they are selling ebooks again.

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

Thanks for the Mundania Press! I'd never heard of it but now I think I'm in love

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by MrsJoseph

I wonder why they don't sell this series in ePub? PDF is so annoying with the cropping & regular expressions (which I'm horrible at) and all...

Have you tried running them through Mobipocket Creator? It does better with some PDF files. It does really well with liberated Adobe PDFs from Harlequin, at least, and I've had luck with a few others than wouldn't convert well in other software.

It's a crapshoot, really, but I usually try it to see if I can at least get something readable. Usually between Mobipocket Creator, Calibre, PDFtoEpub and (last resort) text extraction, something works at least somewhat. (I don't sound sure of anything at all, do I?)

Yeah, I hate PDFs too.

[neilmarr]

My own indie house has a bookstore (about 120 contemporary titles running as a rule) at our own website (link below) as well as using all the major third-party retailers. Prices are the same, but the beauty of buying direct from our own site -- as far as we're concerned -- is that we don't charge ourselves retail commission, so all royalties (author, editor, artist, designer, technician) remain intact. They represent a range of genres and are in PDF, ePub and Mobi formats, all DRM-free and carry no geographical restrictions because we hold international rights to all our paperbacks and ebooks. Several other smaller publishers (many more genre-specific) also have a direct sale and instant down facility and several indie authors. Good luck and best wishes. Neil

[jbcohen]

I can understand why an author might be wavering about selling ebooks on their own site, web sites tend not to move that many units unlike publishers do. I would think that an analysis of the risk/return ratio would have to be looked at. The cost of establishing a web site that can sell their books - the total dollars amount of the sales = profit. Is there a profit or is it going to be a money sink. I would think that if an author is so inclinded to create web site at all the author would preferr if the site made some dollars for him/her and preferably paid for itself in ebook sales.

Book view cafe and bewrite.net are an interesting sites that I will add to my list of book stores, however they are middlemen.

My understanding of the writting process is that the author sells the book to a publishing house such as penguin who sells the finished book to a store such as Borders or Books a Million who then sells to the end reader. Perhaps there is another company in there that I don't know about such as a distributor. I am looking into dropping Borders and Books A Million from the process and hopefully I can drop the distributor and publishing houe from the process. Less hands in the process means faster delivery of the materiel and hopefully better prices.

Thus far I have found estores from Penguin and Random House, thus for the short term i have managed to remove the book stores from the process.