11-16-2010, 11:00 AM | #61 |
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11-16-2010, 11:09 AM | #62 | |
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Last edited by LDBoblo; 11-16-2010 at 11:30 AM. |
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11-16-2010, 11:50 AM | #63 |
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Very interesting, thank you!
eP |
11-16-2010, 12:00 PM | #64 | |
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11-16-2010, 12:24 PM | #65 | |
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The industry however, is in the way. |
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11-16-2010, 12:26 PM | #66 | ||
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Marketing people sometimes make misleading claims, which helps elevate buyers' expectations, leading to disappointment when they discover their dreams cannot be realized. Last edited by boxcorner; 11-16-2010 at 12:49 PM. |
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11-16-2010, 12:35 PM | #67 |
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So, okay, the short-sightedness and single-mindedness of the publishing industry has slowed ebook development, innovation and availability to a crawl and made almost every aspect of ebook buying and reading a little bit of a pain.
For pretty much 2 decades now. Taylor, I understand your disillusionment of the ebook industry. Far from telling you you haven't given it a fair chance, I'd say you have--we all have given the industry a more than fair chance--and watched many of our hopes get dashed on the rocks for our trouble. But the publishing castle will not forever rule the industry, and as it falls, small pubs and indies will help the industry evolve to its next level. There will be some pain, and there will be losses with the gains... that's to be expected, as we're still on the bleeding edge (yes, we've been here far too long). We will all find things to miss about the way things were. But eventually, things will be better, and much of our present pain will be gone. If you can't wait out this admittedly frustrating transition, I understand... I've come close to abandoning it, myself, more than once. But if you can use paper books to salvage your interest in reading, and just keep ebooks at more of a distance for awhile, you may come back one day to find that things will seem to be looking up, and that at that point, it may be worthwhile to check out ebooks again. Either way, we'll be watching for you. |
11-16-2010, 12:39 PM | #68 |
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I am also feeling a lack of enthusiasm for ebooks. I probably have more than 300 ebooks, but I don't think I have bought more than 1 or 2 in the past 7 months. This is mostly because of the Agency 5, but also because of the state of limbo B&N have put Fictionwise in.
I used to follow a blog by one of my favorite authors. She mostly blogged about the process of writing, which I found fascinating. However, when I expressed my frustration at no longer being able to buy her books from Fictionwise, I was treated with terrible disdain (I was not the only one. Several others also complained. She basically called us all "crybabies"). After that, and reading her rants about how Amazon was trying to bully the poor publishers, I left in disgust. After all that, I too am having second thoughts about sticking with ebooks. By the way, I haven't been able to find any hard numbers about how agency pricing has affected the ebook market overall. Is it affecting sales? Are most people still buying? Are new readers oblivious to what came before and thinking this is all normal? Is my search-fu lacking? |
11-16-2010, 09:10 PM | #69 |
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I gave up following ebooks in 2005 after watching their development like a hawk and writing about them regularly, for exactly the reasons y'all have mentioned. I got back into them this year because Kobo forced the price of readers down.
The agency pricing model has hurt ebook prices (keeping them too high to be of interest to me for the major books) but I don't seem to be lacking in stuff to read. I've hit the public domain works, indie books, library books and bought a couple of contemporary novels at the $9.99 price point since getting my e-readers. My TBR list is long enough to keep me going for weeks, and I seem to add something every few days that piques my interest and is free or reasonably priced. There is a rich and wonderful world of reading beyond the big five and I don't mind at all exploring it while the industry adjusts. |
11-16-2010, 09:28 PM | #70 |
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It's hard to say how the agency 5 prices have affected ebooks: A lot of people who used to buy their books are still buying them, and a lot of others are going indie in response to the higher agency prices. We need more time to establish the effect on the overall market.
I will say this, though: Consumers tend to have short memories, and in the U.S. and some other countries, they will buy what they want regardless of price to a large extent. I suspect the agency 5 price issues will only amount to a blip on the ebook graphs. The bigger issue is quality... people need to believe the books they buy are worth the cost, and right now, that belief is strained. That is ebooks' biggest obstacle right now. |
11-16-2010, 11:28 PM | #71 | |
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And I agree about consumers with short memories. That is part of why the ebook market is so depressing to me now. I vote with my wallet, but I feel like a trickle in the middle of a flood. And of course all the long-running series I was reading were products of the Agency 5. |
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