Quote:
Originally Posted by dhbailey
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I think better is that where any of us have complaints, we each make them to the publisher, the author and to the web-site where we don't like the prices we see. A multi-faceted attack is the best one to convince the powers that be that we really are a large and diverse and growing marketplace.
I think that can be best achieved by many individual requests, not by a single monolithic request by a group, since we don't know how large a group of people they would actually respond positively to. When we each contact them on our own, they can't know how many we are and can only assume that the vocal members are a smaller subset of a larger potential audience.
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i completely agree with this ; this is a pivotal time for ebooks developpement and i think it's very important that we communicate as much as possible to publishers about exactly what we want and will pay for (more ebooks published, reasonable prices, no drm...).
i believe i once read that companies consider that the majority of their customers are too lazy to write ; so for each letter they receive, they estimate another 7 people feel the same way, but won't bother to contact them. the number might be slightly different now but i think the same principle still applies. that's a pretty good return on the time you invest in writing.
i try to write to the publisher every time a book i want is not available as an ebook, or the price is too high, for example. i think it's important to stay polite but be quite explicit about why you want what you want (ebooks should be cheaper than pbooks because many of the costs associated with printing do not apply to the creation of digital files, for instance). most publishers have websites now with a contact email or online form, so it's very easy to do.
if enough people write they will be forced to listen to us.