Quote:
Originally Posted by piperclassique
Also I find the format perfectly acceptable for text. I can read without pictures, have been able to since I was five years old.
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Pictures are not the only issue with the Mobi format. It can and does mess up certain basic features of plain text.
You know how some stories distinguish letters and faux-newspaper column stories from the regular narrative by off-setting that quoted text by indenting in a block on both sides? Thanks to the total lack of right-hand margin/indents, that doesn't happen in Mobi books.
But mainly, my pathological dislike for it stems from the badly-arranged mess it is when deconstructed and edited to fix errors (and KindleGen's charming little conversion quirks), which I freely admit I am anomalous in doing and really not representative of the general reading audience who like you, doesn't care at all.
Though I will likely finally be able to directly use my gotten-for-convenience-and-future-proofing ePub collection, as I'm anticipating getting a Sony as part of a credit card application promo. Just three more qualifying purchases and a 6-8 week wait, if they haven't run out of PRS-T1s in the meantime!
Quote:
Originally Posted by piperclassique
Give the publishers a break here guys, they are supposed to be running a business and hopefully making money for themselves, their employees, an their authors ( change the order as required)
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The publisher would make more money from a direct sale from their own store at 99 cents less transaction fees, than 30 cents less transfer and other fees from Amazon on the general royalty scheme which would apply at that price. They could then pass on that extra 69 or so cents to the author and/or pay a tiny pittance of their employee salaries out of it.
I understand the motive for not wanting to deal with the other stores' price-adjusting quirks, but refusing to sell directly from their own store at the same promotional price when they control the store and its pricing and get to keep more of a share of the money from a sale just strikes me as one of those short-sighted silly things.
However, if they really only want to promote through Amazon, I don't really care. It would be nice if they were willing to offer the promo price at their own store in the format I prefer, but if they don't, it's disappointing but frees up my potential purchasing money to spend elsewhere on something that costs more, such as yet another Baen bundle.
I don't feel the publisher owes me anything in making the sale price available to me, but by the same token I don't owe them anything and I'm certainly not going to rush off to Amazon to buy the book if it it's not available elsewhere (I certainly didn't for the last one offered as Amazon-only).
And I freely admit I don't particularly care for the "if all of you who are interested go buy the book on sale at Amazon regardless to prove this price-point a "success", then maybe, just
maybe, we'll later make it available to the other store you might use in the format you can actually use" rely-on-the-kindness-of-strangers-and-wait-for-dropped-breadcrumbs-if-we-feel-like-doling-them-out approach to differential promotional pricing.
Especially with the added "if you
really need to get an ePub
and show your support for the author/small publishing, you should pay 9 times as much as the asking price people who've never even heard of either of us are getting waved in their face".
I reiterate: 99 cents less transaction fees from a direct sale > 30 cents less transfer/other fees from an Amazon buy and would support said author/small publisher better. Some people may be willing to pay an $8 premium to show support, but I'm not one of them, especially not for an author I've never read whose works appear to have been mainly written before I was born and thus may end up being too dated for me to really like the style of, but am otherwise willing to try. A dollar or two extra when I'm buying at Baen or Samhain or Smashwords vs. using the Kobo discount coupons, maybe, but not 8.
I vote with my wallet, and my wallet's telling me "you just saved 99 cents (and the bother of fixing inevitable typos in the hot mess that is Mobi) (and the chunk of time which you can now use to read your 3-dozen-odd $3-5 Robert Silverberg and George Alec Effinger and Pamela Sargent and Charles Sheffield and Frederik C. Pohl backlist e-book buys if you're in the mood for old-school sci-fi)!"
