Quote:
Originally Posted by Timboli
Clearly different people have different views on what constitutes as acceptable in a review, and I believe each are entitled to that view. So if you don't like it skip it.
The price of a book is just as important as any other aspect of the book.
So a review can not only be about how good the story is, but whether it was good value for money.
And while yes, anyone going to the book page, can see the current price, they don't see what price it was or what price someone from another country is being asked to pay.
At the moment there is a war going on, between publishers who do the right thing and charge a fair price for an ebook, and those who don't. So I think it quite appropriate, to make a comment about price, that others can add their voice to.
In the end, the publisher is almost as interested in the book selling as the author is, so they won't want negative comments in a review. The author along with reviewer can also put pressure on the publisher.
Complaints need to be easily seen, and it is not the customers fault, that the review is the only place currently to write about an aspect of the book. So if they don't want such things to appear in a review, Amazon should add a book comment section.
In my view, Reviews are spoilers anyway, and highly overrated. They are good if positive, but can have a detrimental effect if negative, because you are not reading with an open mind ... you have another person's thoughts & conclusions there tainting things. So I tend to avoid them for authors I know and love.
Sometimes reviews can be helpful for an author you don't know, but they are very often a double-edged sword.
On another comment raised regarding price due to wage levels varying between countries, you also need to take into account many other factors, like the cost of living ... food costs, etc. So it is not as simplistic as was suggested, and so irrelevant in my view. At the end of the day, it is about money being returned to the seller/publisher/author, and what money goes elsewhere.
Here is a simplistic example.
An American buys an ebook, and it costs them $7.99 USD.
An Australian buys same ebook and it costs them $12.99 USD.
Where is that $5 USD difference going? A small part only of 10% is the GST (tax).
Is the author or publisher getting more money from the Australian? That would be wrong & racist.
Or is someone else getting it? And why?
There should be transparency about this.
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Dumb question. What is the Australian price in Australian dollars?
Oh and since you mentioned the 10% tax that is included, you need to add between 0 and 11% to that US price for taxes. The book would cost me $8.65. If I go to the next state over the book would cost me $8.47. Now if I moved up by issybird, ebooks are not taxed yet.
Now do you gripe when petrol prices jump certain times of the year?
If you want to see prices all over the place, go to gasbuddy.com and pick a city. Prices vary from station to station. Same with food prices.
By the way, why should I care what someone else paid for a book or anything else? Prices of everything go up and down. Actually I do like it if the item is still on sale and I can get it at the same price.
Rather like I got a VGA cord cheap. Someone else needed it. They asked what I had paid for it so they could give me the money. I said "my cost doesn't matter. What is this cord worth to you?" He made another dumb comment so I said well if I sell you this cord and I need it later, I will have to pay retail to replace it. He did get the cord free with the agreement that if I ever needed it, he had to return it immediately.
I don't care if it is a book, a car, a can of baked beans or dog food, different stores are going to charge different prices. Heck, the same store chain may charge different prices depending on location.
I remember when I lived in the next town over, it was several miles into town. I kept a fairly well stocked kitchen. All the neighbors knew I was cheap and bought on sale. We did for a bit have a small grocery store and cafe in the community. They were delightful people but no one used the grocery store part because their prices were double what the expensive store wanted for name brands. They sold store brands they had got on sale.
Anyway one neighbor would on occasion need a can of something. She would send one of her kids down with what the item cost at the store and sometimes a few cents more.
She could have just borrowed and returned later but she didn't want to do that.