Irate kindlers 1star carpet bomb Michael Connelly's new book

[DiapDealer]

It is far from over, it is only the beginning.

Ok, ok... I give up. Just let me know when it is over, please.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Barcey

[...]Industries with healthy competition understand the importance of customer satisfaction and that you can't measure it based on sales statistics alone. The publishing industry better wake up that they have a lot of very angry customers and that they have to measure customer satisfaction beyond staring at current sales statistics.

Just curious, under what qualification is this made? Isn't there just the faintest possibility that people actually running these businesses have some idea about what they are doing? I know it's a mad idea, way out there and all, but just wondered if you'd considered that?

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

[...] It's time for the Brigade to lay down their stars, come home, and start a baby-boom.

You want them to breed? Tell 'em to stay out there in the cold, we know what that does to certain parts of the anatomy.

[elcreative]

Wow... all these angry buyers telling the publishers where to get off... yes, really having an effect so far, sales of eBooks continue to rise...

MobileRead and the ones carpet bombing reviews aren't exactly a lot in terms of the number of people using eReaders and EBooks. Of course because of posting lots of things and seeing their names on the screen then this makes us really important... not... whether posting bad reviews etc or not, we who post and complain, are a minority and a very small one.

Now whilst publishers may show a bit more sense in the future, why should they lower prices at the moment for people who (by their own admission) aren't customers when there are thousands of people who are buying...

Originally Posted by Barcey

My conclusion is that if a group of people form a picket line on the sidewalk there will be another group of people that complain that sidewalks were intended for walking and not for people to stand around with signs.

Industries with healthy competition understand the importance of customer satisfaction and that you can't measure it based on sales statistics alone. The publishing industry better wake up that they have a lot of very angry customers and that they have to measure customer satisfaction beyond staring at current sales statistics.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

You're seriously suggesting that noobies need to be told that the current prices are unacceptable? That just doesn't wash and you know it.


Because it isn't democracy at work, consumers don't get a vote--except with their dollars. And consumer dollars are saying that ebook sales just keep growing and growing with each passing day.


Sorry, but it has played out in my eyes. The Agency Pricing model has been in effect for almost a year, now. Ebook sales continue to grow. The war's over. It's time for the Brigade to lay down their stars, come home, and start a baby-boom.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

Except that, according to the various EULA's, I don't own that ebook. Anything I don't own, can't share or give away, is inherently less valuable than an analogous product without those restrictions.

That's a subjective value judgment. Not owning a book doesn't make it inherently less valuable. It makes it less valuable to those who care about owning the book.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

That's a subjective value judgment. Not owning a book doesn't make it inherently less valuable. It makes it less valuable to those who care about owning the book.

I can't think of a single tangible good I would pay more to rent than to own. Can you?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

I can't think of a single tangible good I would pay more to rent than to own. Can you?

A porta-john.

But seriously, "tangible" is rapidly losing its relevance with regard to property value in this day and age. And I have no problem with that. I was happily paying hardcover prices for new-release ebooks long before Amazon's $9.99 ebook price-point came along. But, boy... that ever-so-short-lived era sure spoiled a lot of people, didn't it?

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by CallOfCth'reader

I don't search ebooks, annotate them, nor share said annotations, therefore the ability to do so adds zero value for me. I can also annotate pbooks, but I don't do that either, and neither do I factor that ability in when considering its potential worth to me.

People have different methods of determining worth. Personally, an electronic file (an ebook) has less intrinsic value to me than a solid object (a pbook).

Originally Posted by Nyssa

+1

Additional thought - doesn't the price of the Kindle include the functionality? So why should I continue to pay for it per book?

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

I can't think of a single tangible good I would pay more to rent than to own. Can you?

You don't "rent" e-books. Renting implies you continue to pay a price for the item over the time that you use it. With e-books, as with a lot of other software, what you're doing is buying a license that prohibits you from doing certain things with it (e.g., reproducing it to give it to your friends). If you were to buy the e-book under different license terms (e.g., unlimited copies to whomever you chose to give them to) you'd have to pay a lot more for the license. And if you wanted to buy all the rights to the book outright, you'd be talking a lot more money than that.

As it stands right now, licenses for Nook and Kindle books already entitle you to more than one copy of a work. According to the Kindle FAQ, you can have up to six simultaneous copies of a book on different devices (depending on how many the publisher allows). The Fifth Witness is apparently licensed for all six Kindle devices, because there's no mention of a restriction. So you're basically getting six copies for $2.17 a copy. Obviously, almost no one will use all six, but they're there if you want them.

The bottom line is, it's not as simple as "paper book > e-book", even when you take into account the limitations of the license.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

Additional thought - doesn't the price of the Kindle include the functionality? So why should I continue to pay for it per book?

You're paying to use that content on the Kindle, as opposed to another format that doesn't have the same capabilities.

Personally, I don't annotate my e-books either, generally. I can only think of one instance in which I did that. If they took away the ability to annotate books tomorrow, I probably wouldn't notice.

[Piper_]

Just to keep people and things from polarizing...

People can think a lot of ebook pricing is too high and that publishers have demonstrated too much poor judgment when it comes to selling ebooks to trust their judgment, without thinking $9.99 is the key or that it's cool to do this 1-Star thing.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Piper_

Just to keep people and things from polarizing...

People can think a lot of ebook pricing is too high and that publishers have demonstrated too much poor judgment when it comes to selling ebooks to trust their judgment, without thinking $9.99 is the key or that it's cool to do this 1-Star thing.

This.

I may be against Kindle bombing for my own personal reasons, but I also believe strongly that the current model is far from perfect and needs changing. We can disagree on how best to affect that change, of course, but there is a lot of common ground here in this thread, I think.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Piper_

People can think a lot of ebook pricing is too high and that publishers have demonstrated too much poor judgment when it comes to selling ebooks to trust their judgment, without thinking $9.99 is the key or that it's cool to do this 1-Star thing.

Never doubted it for a second.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Piper_

Just to keep people and things from polarizing...

People can think a lot of ebook pricing is too high and that publishers have demonstrated too much poor judgment when it comes to selling ebooks to trust their judgment, without thinking $9.99 is the key or that it's cool to do this 1-Star thing.

[Fbone]

The readers seem to be posting their reviews now. He's been given many 5-star reviews as a result. If you remove the price complaints, his book would be one of the highest rated novels sold on Amazon.

[jersysman]

I am so cynical now. I wonder how many of these 5-star ratings are in response to the 1-star bombing the book received.