Quote:
Originally Posted by Alisa
If he's a bit of a technophobe like they say maybe he thinks his works are less likely to be stolen by evil darknet pirates on a more closed system like the Kindle. We all know that's not true, but I think Amazon uses it as a differentiating point with publishers. Personally, I think going exclusive makes it more likely people will illegally share his work.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by carld
I'm guessing (and just guessing) that he got a special royalty rate for releasing exclusively for the Kindle. TG obviously believes the positives outweigh the negatives, or he wouldn't have gone with a Kindle exclusive release.
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I think both of these speculations are true. I think Amazon does try to convince publishers (and now writers and/or agents) that their platform is somehow "safer" with respect to piracy (and I also think that if anything locking the format to a single device makes it
more likely that the work will be hacked and distributed. I also suspect Amazon offered a premium if TG would sign with them exclusively. They've just cut out the publisher-as-middleman entirely.
I wonder if they're sending a free Kindle to J.K. Rowling now? They probably have a bit of an "in" with her, after bidding fairly high on her charity auction and then convincing her to do these special editions of
Beedle the Bard for charity. I could just see them negotiating for the rights to sell a special Kindle edition (Red with the Gryffindor Lion or Green with the Slytherin Snake) with all 7 books plus the 3 charity titles pre-loaded-- with some percentage of proceeds to go to charity. Rowling was quite keen to endorse the "Ancient Forest Friendly" recycled books I bought from Canada. If someone could convince her that the Kindle is the right platform, pointing to Goodkind as an example, perhaps, it would be quite a coup for Amazon.