Quote:
Originally Posted by Zedd
then do not buy it. Don't really know what to tell you.
Try looking at it from the authors and publishers point. If peopel are not buying them, why bother releasing more?
They are certainly not going to put them all out at once and if the beginning ones do not sell will not bother ot put out more.
Did you people ever think that your tactics hinder you from gettign what you want instead of helping you and it may be why you are not gettign full series or more books?
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Zedd,
I can understand why you might find some of the comments above a little frustrating, in isolation - but there are reasons for people's frustrations - in that there is little real commitment to the medium of e-books right now..
As an example (in paperback) of how frustrating this can be imagine reading parts 1 and 2 of a trilogy, and then the author deciding not to write the 3rd part just yet, or maybe ever (Step forward Melanie Rawn with your Exiles series...). I read parts 1 and 2 back in 1997 - and book 3 is still not published...
For people who are wanting only to use their e-books, for whatever reason, the idea that work that's already written, as part of a series, might not be made available is especially galling - and hence likely to generate some heat...
Given the extremely low cost of producing an e-book from other electronic media (and it's a pretty safe bet Mr Goodkind's books are all held electronically by the publisher at least) - it is very frustrating not to get a clear commitment to publish the whole series, even if there's no commitment to how / when / how much...
While I can understand the Publishers / Authors maybe wanting to 'dip their toes in the market' that only works with standalone books, not with series of books... (And to start e-books at part 2 or later of a series is just as bad - for any Publishers reading this!) However, the Catch-22, is that a lot of sales will BE series of books, given that many paperbacks are series in some sense or other, even if it's not 'part 1 / part 2 / ...' etc
So, given the low cost of production, and the relatively low penetration of e-book readers at the moment, this seems like an ideal time to really up the game, so that mechanisms, costs, pricing can be worked through before e-book readers become more endemic - and the best way to get a real understanding of purchasing patterns etc is to launch some popular series' of books as e-books, with a commitment to launch the whole series - so that the Publishers can get some stats on, for example, percentage of people buying the first book who then buy the second etc... (Also might lead to the first book being freely available for some established series' - sort of a literary loss leader).
So, in essence, what I'm trying to say is that I understand (some) of the motives behind the Publishers' / Authors' approach at the moment, but I disagree as to the appropriateness of the approach, given that (a) material is available (which also calls into questions launching novels with the traditional gaps between them - one every month / 2 months would be a better distribution frequency perhaps?) (b) lack of commitment to publish later material will hinder uptake of early material - which will distort the information being gathered and (c) this is an entirely new business model, and re-hashing models based on high initial costs, distribution costs etc etc isn't the right approach...
I hope this helps us all have a better understanding of the two sides to this debate - and if anyone disagrees with any specific points above please do open them up for debate, this is my opinion after all...