We need to stand up to ebook pricing NOW. - Page 3

amjbrown · 02-01-2010, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shaggy

That's your opinion, mine is different. DRM restricts things that should be fair use and first sale rights, like lending to family, which hardback books allow. Therefore, to me, a DRM'd eBook has less value because it artificially restricts my rights.

I think there a big difference between the perceived impact of DRM versus the actual impact. I hate the concept of DRM, but the truth is when the iTunes Music Store opened in the UK, I stopped buying CDs.

I currently use a Sony reader with ePubs, and I can register enough of the things to share books with my immediate family. I can't easily pass an eBook onto my mother-in-law, which is a shame, but I'd buy her the paperback if I really wanted to. That only applies to a few books I read though - my other extended family members don't really share my tastes. Beyond that I'd normally just recommend a book.

The big issue I would have found when I was younger is not being able to sell my old books. That is a big issue for some people. These days I cart arm loads of books I really want to keep to charity shops because I am out of shelf space. eBooks help me here, and to me DRM is a price worth paying.

I'd love to see a social DRM model. Get "from the library of amjb" indelibly stamped across all my eBooks. If you find the odd copy turn up with on a friend or colleagues reader, forgive me. If you find it on a bit torrent site, cart me away shackled in irons. I really believe that should be the answer, but I suspect authors and publishers may need convincing.

imho

amjb

ficbot · 02-01-2010, 06:43 PM

I am wondering if people would be so upset about the higher initial price if they honestly believed it would go down later. I think part of the ire comes from examples people have posted of books which have been in mass market paperback for a decade or more and the ebook is still listing at $12. Let us say the system was formalized the way the arc of hardback/trade paper/mass market was as follows:

- At hardcover or slightly below on day 1 for the obsessed fans who can't wait
- Reduced to trade paper price or slightly below 3 months later
- At mass market paperback price 3 months after that
- Settles to final price point of $4.99 or so after a year

If you could *reliably* count on every book really being released this way, with publishers reliably and systematically following through with the price reductions at set intervals, would you care? I wouldn't. I'd say fine, let the die-hard fans get it on day 1 and the publishers maximize the profit while the iron is hot, as long as the more patient can get it later at a more realistic price point. There is even one author I read where I would probably even find it worth it to pay the premium to get it on day 1.

But we are angry because we don't trust them to play fair and we are baffled that they can't even provide the simplest, most basic levels of service to loyal customers without silly games like not letting them buy if they live in the UK or locking down the books so they can only read it on this smart phone and not that one.

If they played fair and said look, let us collect from the Crazy Fans first and then we'll get back to you later and you can get it when you're ready, just like you used to wait for the paperback back in the day, I bet we'd all say fine...

Guns4Hire · 02-01-2010, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcl

i said there were opportunity costs to writing, and that I wouldn't go into them. You simply chose to ignore that.

You're assuming that ebooks should cover the costs of producing paper books. I am staunchly opposed to that. They could cover their own costs, nothing more. Your argument is flawed, since it would only be valid if the editing, etc. did not occur except in cases where ebooks were produced. Since they occur anyway, you cannot blame ebooks for the fact that many books never recoup their publishing costs. Ebooks are not a scapegoat to be used by the publishing industry to cover those costs, and their prices should not reflect that. If the industry wants to view profits from ebooks as offsetting print costs, that's fine. But to price them such that those costs are reflected in the ebooks' prices is fundamentally wrong in my opinion, and I refuse to support such a pricing model.

The publishers delay ebook releases to prop up physical book sales, not to recoup costs of publishing.

I do not have a position on the release time of ebooks. I'd be happy to wait. But I am deeply opposed to pricing ebooks such that they are intended to prop up the print market, in the same way I'd be opposed to MP3s priced to prop up the CD market.

Punitive pricing of new media in order to prop up old media markets is a shortsighted and, frankly, stupid practice by myopic, Luddite publishers of media who would rather fight tooth and nail to preserve their existing business models rather than adapt to the new media and increase their profits.

As a case study, look at wax cylinder recordings in the 1800s. Or the sheet music market. or piano rolls. Or cassette tapes. VHS tapes. CD-Rs. DVD-Rs. DVDs. CDs. Records (from 78s to 33 1/3 to 45s). To current streaming media and digital media.

In every case, the media publishers fought desperately to cling to their old business models. In every case, they eventually capitulated. In every case, their cries of "the new media is destroying our market!" were not only wrong, but they wound up profiting more from the new media than they ever did from the old media.

The RIAA has made this mistake. Repeatedly. The MPAA likewise. And now the publishing industry, rather than learning from history, is repeating it in spades.

Absolutely great post from start to finish.

Seli · 02-01-2010, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcl

...
I do not have a position on the release time of ebooks. I'd be happy to wait. But I am deeply opposed to pricing ebooks such that they are intended to prop up the print market, in the same way I'd be opposed to MP3s priced to prop up the CD market.

...

I think you cannot see the pricing of ebooks independently form paper books. They are not propping up paper with ebook (maybe the other way around at the moment), they are however propping up the publication of a large variety of books with a smaller selection of hugely successful ones. Publishers are trying to protect content, not form. Just a result of the fact that no-one at the moment can predict who or what will become profitable.

Joebill · 02-01-2010, 07:19 PM

The paper print publishers wont think outside the box. They doom themselves.

I believe websites of ebooks for download are coming. Oh, they are already here.

The paper print companies can join the move, or fade away, like the buggy accessory makers.

guyanonymous · 02-01-2010, 07:27 PM

Perhaps the biggest fear of the publishing world (music or books) is that the artists will realize that they don't need publishers anymore. They can do it all themselves in the manner they feel is most effective.

asjogren · 02-01-2010, 07:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

Perhaps the biggest fear of the publishing world (music or books) is that the artists will realize that they don't need publishers anymore. They can do it all themselves in the manner they feel is most effective.

In electronic media, the services provided by the middlemen can easily be provided on a freelance basis:
- literary editing
- proof reading
- graphics
- promotion
Then the artist can keep a larger portion of each sale.

The artist's agent and the publisher currently filter what will be published. At times this filtering has been a problem. This could be replaced with a rating service of some kind.

The Big Publishing houses have assumed power beyond their station. They are just middlemen in an increasing electronic age that has little need for middlemen. I give them one decade.

fugazied · 02-01-2010, 07:54 PM

At this stage in the development of ebooks, publishers are trying to use the technology to improve their product margin and reduce the rights consumers obtain when purchasing a book.

They want us to buy a one use item which we read then store on our device, unable to share with our friends or re-sell. I find DRM more threatening than prices of ebooks.

I think prices will sort themselves out eventually as ebooks become more popular and we see more competition in the marketplace. However the push for DRM is disturbing.

Ghostlight · 02-01-2010, 08:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyDigitalParadis

Look at MP3's. They are sold at say 1$ each. to buy each song from a whole album costs more than the CD. But! You only buy the songs you want. 2-3$ intead of 14$...

Do you know, I hadn't thought of it that way. You're right, though; I save money on iTunes because I only pay for the songs I want. For some odd reason, I was going along thinking that my savings had to do with the music publishers not having to pay for printing labels, packaging, etc; my reasoning was obviously flawed. I really wasn't understanding too much of this discussion until I came to this conclusion.
Books are expensive. CD's are expensive. Don't even get me started on printed music (Church organist, here. 3 or more staff music = expensive). It's good to be able to save money where you can, but the only way I can see to do this with the books would be to just select the chapters you want to buy. With academic books it might just work. With your favorite mystery.....not so much.

Still, if anyone wants to lower their ebook prices, I'd be glad to support them.

GhostHawk · 02-01-2010, 09:40 PM

Currently with hard covers a lot of books go to waste. Stripped and shipped back to the publisher after a few short months. Only a select few very popular books really sell out.

However with Ebooks publishers should be looking at an entirely different model.
They do not have to compete for shelf space. They don't have to recoup all their costs in the first 6 months. They don't have to ship back product that doesn't sell.

The first big publisher who really looks at ebooks, and the market.
Who puts a firm schedule for pricing on ebooks. So that when the hardcover is released, the ebook is in the 8 - 12$ range. When the mass market paperbacks release, it drops below the paperback price point. (Ideally it should be in the 5 - 7$ area)
After that it should drop a dollar a year until the price reaches the 1-2$ range.

Leave it there for a year or 2 then release it, give it away to encourage readers to go buy that authors latest books.

The publisher that does that, with DRM free books, and a pricing structure that I can count on, will sell me books. And he'll sell me a lot of books. And I can buy a lot of books because I can choose when to buy, and at what price point.

The Publisher that try's to get greedy, and jack up prices for something they really didn't think was going to go anywhere. He's going to sell me nothing.

Someone will figure it out, and they will capture the lions share of the ebook market.
Its just a question of who its going to be.

Daithi · 02-01-2010, 10:07 PM

Someone here mentioned that CDs and the downloaded album were now the same price. I just went and checked on Amazon, and sometimes this is the case, but this isn't always true. Here are a few that I checked (I tried looking at a wide range of genres). The first price is the CD price and the second is the download price.

The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga $17 vs. $12
As I Am by Alicia Keys $12 vs. $10
Design Your Universe by Epica $14 vs. $9
Ultimate Santana by Santana $13 vs. $10
Blue Train by John Coltrane $11 vs. $5
Lady Day by Billie Holiday $14 vs. $17 (yes, the CD is cheaper)

Not sure that this means anything. Just an observation. Now I have to get back to watching Castle.

stustaff · 02-02-2010, 03:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GhostHawk

Currently with hard covers a lot of books go to waste. Stripped and shipped back to the publisher after a few short months. Only a select few very popular books really sell out.

However with Ebooks publishers should be looking at an entirely different model.
They do not have to compete for shelf space. They don't have to recoup all their costs in the first 6 months. They don't have to ship back product that doesn't sell.

The first big publisher who really looks at ebooks, and the market.
Who puts a firm schedule for pricing on ebooks. So that when the hardcover is released, the ebook is in the 8 - 12$ range. When the mass market paperbacks release, it drops below the paperback price point. (Ideally it should be in the 5 - 7$ area)
After that it should drop a dollar a year until the price reaches the 1-2$ range.

Leave it there for a year or 2 then release it, give it away to encourage readers to go buy that authors latest books.

The publisher that does that, with DRM free books, and a pricing structure that I can count on, will sell me books. And he'll sell me a lot of books. And I can buy a lot of books because I can choose when to buy, and at what price point.

The Publisher that try's to get greedy, and jack up prices for something they really didn't think was going to go anywhere. He's going to sell me nothing.

Someone will figure it out, and they will capture the lions share of the ebook market.
Its just a question of who its going to be.

Well thats all nice and we hope it would work like that.

But lets say the authour(a well known one) a King or Rowling is already selling to say 90% of the people who would potentially actually read the Ebook at the price of $15 and dropping the price down to $12 saw an increase to a 100% of that potential market.

All of a sudden they are making less money.

An there is teh risk taht a $12 dollar ebook not only sells to 100% of teh current ebook market for the book but starts to make people who currently buy the HB consider buying Ebook instead so they now satrt to turn $20 into $12 sales.

Now they are making even less money.

Why would they want to do that? where is the incentive in this quarters turnover or this years? How do they sell 'we will lose money' if we do this to the shareholders.

btw I believe in the long run they would be succesful or at least not get caught napping by some smaller company that steal away the ebook market from them. However in the above Im trying to look at it from there point of view.

GhostHawk · 02-02-2010, 08:03 AM

First of all, so the latest greatest novel comes out by X awesome author.
That author is already at the top of the peak, correct? They have already won the lottery, they are recognized, have loyal fans, and they will sell books. They also have very little to gain by putting out an Ebook version in the first place. Lost sales as you pointed out. Or sales at a lower $ amount.

But would the author really suffer? Considering the lower costs to produce an Ebook with the advantage of selling it over years instead of months. Would that author not make just as much? Its the publisher that takes the lions share of a paper book sales because he has lots of expenses. Yes he'll sell an ebook for less dollars than the equivalent paper book, but he doesn't have the same expenses for it either. He may actually come out ahead on the deal.

For any given book publishers can expect a % of all sales to come in Hard Cover, another % in paperback (at a lower price) and a 3rd % in books.

I won't guess at what the average is for each of those percentages.
But I will bet that not even King or Rowling sells more than 40% of the total as Hardcovers.

To say they are losing money because the price is scaled to drop is not the case.
They are only going to sell so many of those expensive hardcover books at the high price. At some point they are simply going to not have enough sales to justify keeping the books on the shelf. The same is true of paperbacks. They promote, release, hit the supermarket, walmart, bookstore shelves, are bought, and after a few months they are cleared off so the next big book can have its moment in the sun.

Where with Ebooks they simply don't have that whole issue. Books can be posted for years without taking shelf space from the other books. They also don't have the same costs involved. So they "should" be passing that savings onto us the consumer.

Why should someone who invests 150 - 350$ into a device to read ebooks be forced to support those lagging sales of paper books???

Using your proposal, publishers would never sell a mass market paperback, because they wouldn't make as much money off it. Yet publishers do so with almost every book that hits the market. Why?

Because they know only so many people can or will spend the $$ for that hard cover.
More will spend the 8 - 10 $ for a paperback.

And even more would spend 2-5$ for an ebook.

That does not necessarily mean that the ebook sales are taken from the hardcover or paperback sales. That is where the model is wrong, and that is why there is so much debate.

Chances are I will never again spend the big bucks to have the latest hardcover.
Its simply not worth the money spent to me. Nor will I spend money for paperbacks.

Those are not lost sales, you can't lose something you didn't have.
We are through the looking glass, things have changed.

The only real question is who is going to accept the change, and adapt.
And who is going to dig their feet in and be plowed under.

Publishers who work "with" the ebook community will be supported by them.
Those who work "against" it will be buried.

ondabeach · 02-02-2010, 09:38 AM

Damn right eBooks are still too expensive but they are coming down all the time, if you look in the right place.

The publishing industry isn't quite in it's final death throws but it is clearly not going to exist much longer in it's current form or with it's current MO. It can only emerge from the metamorphosis it is currently undergoing as a seriously wittled down version of itself, catering to what will become a niche market, like incontinence pads for the geriatrics that will still be reading dead tree books into the next decade.

There is simply no place for them in the future of mainstream literature distribution. When an Author can sell an eBook for $3 and still make more per copy than than the world's best sellers can from dead tree books it really is a no-brainer. DRM-free ePUB/OEB eBooks are the future of electronic reading as are low, low prices. With lower prices comes a reduced inclination for people to commit piracy.

I'm not expecting my site (www.zuluexpress.com) to sell more eBooks than Amazon any time soon but with people like me stirring the pot we'll at least do what we can to keep the bastards honest. You can go to my site, sign up for free, upload your book for free and become a published author in minutes with no-one to tell you "It still needs work" or "Sorry we're publishing that genre at the moment". Set your own price and collect all but $1 (which includes processing fee) of the sale price.

The site still nees plenty of work so check it out and tell me how to make it even better and help us do our bit to bring eBook prices down and do away with DRM forever.

If you review upload or buy a book this month you could be the lucky winner of the eReader of your choice up to a value of $500 US.

orwell2k · 02-02-2010, 10:23 AM

And let's not forget the product quality at the moment.

The ludicrous over-pricing of eBooks in an apparent mad dash to cash in on new sales has been accompanied by a deplorable absence of seemingly basic quality control.

Of the thousands of paper books I've bought over the years, maybe a few has the odd type or format hiccup here or there. But this current wave of publishing mafia puts out ePubs infested with typos, missing/cut sentences and the crappiest formatting around. And consumers are expected to pay full price and sometimes more than the paper price for this rubbish.

Any cost of an eBook must include proofing, and clearly that's not happening in many cases. If I find these kind of errors in any eBooks I purchase, I contact the vendor and request a proofed replacement or a refund. Obviously no correct copy ever exists, and the only store to hesitate is Waterstones UK - they haven't said "no" but they are stonewalling me with the old "your query has been forwarded to the appropriate department" claim - I bet!

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02-01-2010, 06:43 PM	#32
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	I am wondering if people would be so upset about the higher initial price if they honestly believed it would go down later. I think part of the ire comes from examples people have posted of books which have been in mass market paperback for a decade or more and the ebook is still listing at $12. Let us say the system was formalized the way the arc of hardback/trade paper/mass market was as follows: - At hardcover or slightly below on day 1 for the obsessed fans who can't wait - Reduced to trade paper price or slightly below 3 months later - At mass market paperback price 3 months after that - Settles to final price point of $4.99 or so after a year If you could reliably count on every book really being released this way, with publishers reliably and systematically following through with the price reductions at set intervals, would you care? I wouldn't. I'd say fine, let the die-hard fans get it on day 1 and the publishers maximize the profit while the iron is hot, as long as the more patient can get it later at a more realistic price point. There is even one author I read where I would probably even find it worth it to pay the premium to get it on day 1. But we are angry because we don't trust them to play fair and we are baffled that they can't even provide the simplest, most basic levels of service to loyal customers without silly games like not letting them buy if they live in the UK or locking down the books so they can only read it on this smart phone and not that one. If they played fair and said look, let us collect from the Crazy Fans first and then we'll get back to you later and you can get it when you're ready, just like you used to wait for the paperback back in the day, I bet we'd all say fine...

02-01-2010, 07:19 PM	#35
Joebill Fanatic Posts: 517 Karma: 459442 Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Alpha Centauri's Library of Alexandria Device: Pandigital Novel	The paper print publishers wont think outside the box. They doom themselves. I believe websites of ebooks for download are coming. Oh, they are already here. The paper print companies can join the move, or fade away, like the buggy accessory makers.

02-01-2010, 07:27 PM	#36
guyanonymous Guru Posts: 692 Karma: 27532 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Ebookwise 1150 / 1200	Perhaps the biggest fear of the publishing world (music or books) is that the artists will realize that they don't need publishers anymore. They can do it all themselves in the manner they feel is most effective.

02-01-2010, 07:54 PM	#38
fugazied Wizard Posts: 1,305 Karma: 1958 Join Date: Jan 2009 Device: iPod Touch	At this stage in the development of ebooks, publishers are trying to use the technology to improve their product margin and reduce the rights consumers obtain when purchasing a book. They want us to buy a one use item which we read then store on our device, unable to share with our friends or re-sell. I find DRM more threatening than prices of ebooks. I think prices will sort themselves out eventually as ebooks become more popular and we see more competition in the marketplace. However the push for DRM is disturbing.

02-01-2010, 09:40 PM	#40
GhostHawk Data Privateer! Posts: 586 Karma: 62887 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Fargo ND Device: Ectaco Jetbook& Jetbook Lite	Currently with hard covers a lot of books go to waste. Stripped and shipped back to the publisher after a few short months. Only a select few very popular books really sell out. However with Ebooks publishers should be looking at an entirely different model. They do not have to compete for shelf space. They don't have to recoup all their costs in the first 6 months. They don't have to ship back product that doesn't sell. The first big publisher who really looks at ebooks, and the market. Who puts a firm schedule for pricing on ebooks. So that when the hardcover is released, the ebook is in the 8 - 12$ range. When the mass market paperbacks release, it drops below the paperback price point. (Ideally it should be in the 5 - 7$ area) After that it should drop a dollar a year until the price reaches the 1-2$ range. Leave it there for a year or 2 then release it, give it away to encourage readers to go buy that authors latest books. The publisher that does that, with DRM free books, and a pricing structure that I can count on, will sell me books. And he'll sell me a lot of books. And I can buy a lot of books because I can choose when to buy, and at what price point. The Publisher that try's to get greedy, and jack up prices for something they really didn't think was going to go anywhere. He's going to sell me nothing. Someone will figure it out, and they will capture the lions share of the ebook market. Its just a question of who its going to be.

02-01-2010, 10:07 PM	#41
Daithi Publishers are evil! Posts: 2,418 Karma: 36205264 Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Rhode Island Device: Various Kindles	Someone here mentioned that CDs and the downloaded album were now the same price. I just went and checked on Amazon, and sometimes this is the case, but this isn't always true. Here are a few that I checked (I tried looking at a wide range of genres). The first price is the CD price and the second is the download price. The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga $17 vs. $12 As I Am by Alicia Keys $12 vs. $10 Design Your Universe by Epica $14 vs. $9 Ultimate Santana by Santana $13 vs. $10 Blue Train by John Coltrane $11 vs. $5 Lady Day by Billie Holiday $14 vs. $17 (yes, the CD is cheaper) Not sure that this means anything. Just an observation. Now I have to get back to watching Castle.

02-02-2010, 08:03 AM	#43
GhostHawk Data Privateer! Posts: 586 Karma: 62887 Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Fargo ND Device: Ectaco Jetbook& Jetbook Lite	First of all, so the latest greatest novel comes out by X awesome author. That author is already at the top of the peak, correct? They have already won the lottery, they are recognized, have loyal fans, and they will sell books. They also have very little to gain by putting out an Ebook version in the first place. Lost sales as you pointed out. Or sales at a lower $ amount. But would the author really suffer? Considering the lower costs to produce an Ebook with the advantage of selling it over years instead of months. Would that author not make just as much? Its the publisher that takes the lions share of a paper book sales because he has lots of expenses. Yes he'll sell an ebook for less dollars than the equivalent paper book, but he doesn't have the same expenses for it either. He may actually come out ahead on the deal. For any given book publishers can expect a % of all sales to come in Hard Cover, another % in paperback (at a lower price) and a 3rd % in books. I won't guess at what the average is for each of those percentages. But I will bet that not even King or Rowling sells more than 40% of the total as Hardcovers. To say they are losing money because the price is scaled to drop is not the case. They are only going to sell so many of those expensive hardcover books at the high price. At some point they are simply going to not have enough sales to justify keeping the books on the shelf. The same is true of paperbacks. They promote, release, hit the supermarket, walmart, bookstore shelves, are bought, and after a few months they are cleared off so the next big book can have its moment in the sun. Where with Ebooks they simply don't have that whole issue. Books can be posted for years without taking shelf space from the other books. They also don't have the same costs involved. So they "should" be passing that savings onto us the consumer. Why should someone who invests 150 - 350$ into a device to read ebooks be forced to support those lagging sales of paper books??? Using your proposal, publishers would never sell a mass market paperback, because they wouldn't make as much money off it. Yet publishers do so with almost every book that hits the market. Why? Because they know only so many people can or will spend the $$ for that hard cover. More will spend the 8 - 10 $ for a paperback. And even more would spend 2-5$ for an ebook. That does not necessarily mean that the ebook sales are taken from the hardcover or paperback sales. That is where the model is wrong, and that is why there is so much debate. Chances are I will never again spend the big bucks to have the latest hardcover. Its simply not worth the money spent to me. Nor will I spend money for paperbacks. Those are not lost sales, you can't lose something you didn't have. We are through the looking glass, things have changed. The only real question is who is going to accept the change, and adapt. And who is going to dig their feet in and be plowed under. Publishers who work "with" the ebook community will be supported by them. Those who work "against" it will be buried.

02-02-2010, 09:38 AM	#44
ondabeach Groupie Posts: 193 Karma: 192 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Vanuatu Device: HTC touch Diamond, Ipaq 3115	Damn right eBooks are still too expensive but they are coming down all the time, if you look in the right place. The publishing industry isn't quite in it's final death throws but it is clearly not going to exist much longer in it's current form or with it's current MO. It can only emerge from the metamorphosis it is currently undergoing as a seriously wittled down version of itself, catering to what will become a niche market, like incontinence pads for the geriatrics that will still be reading dead tree books into the next decade. There is simply no place for them in the future of mainstream literature distribution. When an Author can sell an eBook for $3 and still make more per copy than than the world's best sellers can from dead tree books it really is a no-brainer. DRM-free ePUB/OEB eBooks are the future of electronic reading as are low, low prices. With lower prices comes a reduced inclination for people to commit piracy. I'm not expecting my site (www.zuluexpress.com) to sell more eBooks than Amazon any time soon but with people like me stirring the pot we'll at least do what we can to keep the bastards honest. You can go to my site, sign up for free, upload your book for free and become a published author in minutes with no-one to tell you "It still needs work" or "Sorry we're publishing that genre at the moment". Set your own price and collect all but $1 (which includes processing fee) of the sale price. The site still nees plenty of work so check it out and tell me how to make it even better and help us do our bit to bring eBook prices down and do away with DRM forever. If you review upload or buy a book this month you could be the lucky winner of the eReader of your choice up to a value of $500 US.

02-02-2010, 10:23 AM	#45
orwell2k Addict Posts: 357 Karma: 1112 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Euroland Device: PocketBook 360°, BeBook (Hanlin V3), iRex DR1000S, iPad	And let's not forget the product quality at the moment. The ludicrous over-pricing of eBooks in an apparent mad dash to cash in on new sales has been accompanied by a deplorable absence of seemingly basic quality control. Of the thousands of paper books I've bought over the years, maybe a few has the odd type or format hiccup here or there. But this current wave of publishing mafia puts out ePubs infested with typos, missing/cut sentences and the crappiest formatting around. And consumers are expected to pay full price and sometimes more than the paper price for this rubbish. Any cost of an eBook must include proofing, and clearly that's not happening in many cases. If I find these kind of errors in any eBooks I purchase, I contact the vendor and request a proofed replacement or a refund. Obviously no correct copy ever exists, and the only store to hesitate is Waterstones UK - they haven't said "no" but they are stonewalling me with the old "your query has been forwarded to the appropriate department" claim - I bet!

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