Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger
I can't answer why Tor didn't start sooner on ebook sales, but it's clear they're serious about it now. I sat one evening working with the man who is overseeing the effort. I'm fairly certain that one obstacle to be overcome is that Tor is part of MacMillan USA, and their planned ebook store will be part of or coordinated with the MacMillan ebook store. (Or so I was told.) I never said anything about books magically appearing when they're tied into Baen webscription, though that is part of their plan--that Baen will be one of their distributors, or retailers. (And please note that even at Baen, things don't always move as efficiently as one might like.)
Obviously, I wish the Tor ebook project would move faster, because my own book is caught up in the delay. And if it's delayed much longer, I'll be pretty unhappy about it. So do I wish they were pushing harder? Yes. But do I believe they will get it going? Yes.
That said, I'll just note that more than one person at Tor expressed the feeling to me that the Mobileread community is sometimes...well, let's just say, less than constructive in supporting their efforts. (Note--the MR community has been great to me, and I share some of the frustration voiced here--but I'm telling you how MR is seen by some at Tor.)
(Why did I even get into this? If I'm smart, I'll leave this topic alone, because I'm not sure I'm contributing anything constructive to it.)
|
Jeff, what is particularly bothersome about the situtation is that the publishing industry has been willing for decades to provide big advances for books not yet written, and consider it normal business, but won't write themselves a big advance to put in the infrastructure to handle their business for the next century. Managements are paid to plan 5 to 20 years in advance, but publishers can't seem to plan 5 to 20 minutes in advance...And to me, small market size is no excuse. In a market growing triple digits, even a tiny market become very big, very fast. Ask any high-tech company...