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Originally Posted by phenomshel
I know we've had this discussion before, but again: How much time and money could it possibly take? I know that Jeffrey Carver insists that it isn't as easy as proofreading and converting the electronic versions they already have as submitted by the author - and I do know that most authors these days submit in electronic format, I asked Dana Stabenow about it. Even the older titles in this series are not old enough to have been done before email submission was common. So, the publishers already HAVE an electronic form of the book - how much more effort can it take them to convert it and get it submitted to the stores than it takes us to convert and submit PG material for Mobileread? I know Patricia and the ones that do the PG conversions here work hard at them, but it doesn't take them forever. The Albert Payson Terhune works only took Patricia a couple of weeks after I asked for them to have them uploaded, and I don't know how long after I asked that she started them.
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Time and money are of course only part of it, we also need to take into account the individual publishers. Some are doing a much better job than others. St. Martin's (Macmillan), Stabenow's publisher has a hard enough time even bothering to get new books out as ebooks let alone back titles (not sure if they have all her old ones or just some). I was just now finally able to get Stabenow's newest in ebook form, but the pbook's been out since the end of February. I would easily buy her whole series if it were out in ebook form.
Some of the ebook arms of these publishers are so small it's all they can do to keep up with current releases. Hopefully that will be changing soon as ebooks become a bigger market (for some pubs apparently it is changing already). I also think some publishers don't want ebooks to succeed.
When I first got my Sony almost none of Nevada Barr's books were out. Now almost the whole series is available and they appear to be adding back titles monthly. Another example would be Faye Kellerman's series. Only about half available towards the end of '07 and '08 saw them getting all the missing ones out.