Cheapest E-Books Upend the Charts

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Although I consider this good news overall, I worry that in pursuit of lower-cost reading material, readers are willing to accept lower-quality to no editing, leading to poor grammar and spelling. I worry about this because clear communication is vital in many areas of life and when we begin to accept sloppy communication skills, we degrade our life experience and can even threaten our lives as a result of misunderstanding. What i would like to see is not only increased indie sales but increased demand for grammar and spelling quality.

i can understand that. i don't stand for any of those, though, and usually indicate in my reviews whether a book was edited or not

[mldavis2]

I generally avoid "name" authors that are spam-promoted by the big publishers. The public has always been best served by ads that explain the product features. Sadly, today's ads are rife with overstatements, hype and sizzle with no steak. The trend has morphed into absurdity which is evident to anyone watching, for example an ad for products on TV such as autos. Book ads from the big publishers are little better, sometimes offering a brief insight into the setting, but usually leaning exclusively on the author's name and giving us little other information but the cover on which the title font size is subservient to the size of the author's font.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lexi Revellian

Some of us indies don't do typos, misspellings or poor grammar and punctuation. We're good at formatting too.

Good for you, but sadly, relatively few independently-published authors do have their books professionally edited. And that shows.

[jbcohen]

When the starter of this thread spoke about "the charts" what is he/she talking about? When I get done with the current series I am definitely going to have to start checking into some of the cheaper books.

[mldavis2]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Good for you, but sadly, relatively few independently-published authors do have their books professionally edited. And that shows.

Hmmm... it would make sense for indie authors to find a proof-reader/friend to go over a work before making it available to the public. Many of us out here volunteer our time for proofing to sites like Project Gutenberg. Alternately, those who offer indie books could solicit proofreading suggestions from early readers. Most proofing corrections are quickly and easily performed in editing software. And to those who are offended by an occasional error, send in your comments to the author to help out.

[wodin]

Technology has (or should have) rendered the big publishing houses desperate. When editing, typesetting, printing, marketing, warehousing, shipping, etc was largely beyond the capabilities of an individual author, they served a necessary purpose; and profited accordingly! Now that most of those things are available to one or two people, the only real advantage they have is in marketing; and that only because of the public perception that the only place to get quality material is from them.

So we have the publishing houses desperately casting around for a model that will allow them to maintain their bloated organizations, and still return a decent margin. Stories like this demonstrate that the Agency model is mostly a failure, but until the public becomes aware that indies can be as good or better than the mainstream at half the price or less, the dinosaurs will continue to reign.

[jbcohen]

True wodin, but never under estimate the american public's gulibility and their willingness to pay absolutley anything for any dreck put in front of them.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by rhadin

That makes at least 2 of us . It is hard to find a writer whose work is consistently high quality, but Vicki Tyley's work certainly meets that criterion.

Ms Tyley has increased her prices. She used to be $0.99. Then $2.99.

Now she's up to $3.99. Probably still in the "cheap reads" category. However, I have noticed increased prices for indie authors lately from $4.99 - $10.99 while browsing a few websites.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Lexi Revellian

And not all the mainstream published ebooks are perfect; I've read a lot of complaints about them on Amazon forums, though they cost so much.

I've noticed this when buying from Penguin. Horrible formating and lots of errors. They didn't bother to fix the errors when I complained (they sent me a form letter/excuse and a coupon instead).

[leebase]

Another testimo y as to why we shouldn't be all worked up over agency pricing. There is competition.

Lee

[SlowRain]

I always like it when the little guys are able to throw a monkey wrench into the corporate strategies of the money-minded MBAs. I don't think it will have a huge, long-lasting effect as the MBAs will develop an alternate plan of attack to protect their precious industry, but it's still nice to see just the same.

[mldavis2]

I suspect that authors, most of whom tend to be artists, would be a bit less than adept at the mechanics of detail-oriented proofreading. Those of us who are not artists or who are not involved in getting the ideas down in print, would tend to be better at catching the odd misspelling or format error.

Having said that, I have read texts from both 'big name' publishing houses and eBook indies that contain errors that should have been caught by any word-processor spell-check program (i.e. 'ou' for 'you'). This is just plain inexcusable in today's world of instant spell check and thesaurus editors. Even though many electronic editors cannot handle 'properly spelled' context errors (to, two, too), the simple stuff should never survive.

If authors are simply throwing text on a page without any proofing whatsoever, then their work won't hold up long in the public sector, unless of course, the same shoddy products are being allowed by the big-money publishers who are short-cutting product quality for profits. There are times when the lowest common denominator should not the be benchmark.

On the other hand, is a properly formatted, spell-checked book necessarily better than one with a few editing errors that is nevertheless devoid of content? And is it worth a $35 hardcover price as opposed to a $3 eBook offering? I guess we'll find out.

[jbcohen]

Personally I love the idea of the cheap reads, it gives me a way to find the great un-discovered authors that I am always looking for. Previously if you were not one of the established, "big name" authors there was really no way for you to make a name for yourself and not way to break into the "big time." I think that Amazon's idea of pricing the books for new authors at bargin basement prices is an excellent idea, one that I did not see coming and now that I do will use it as a tool to find those new great authors. Right now I am going through Graham Brown's thus far two book series but will look into the bargains once I complete his books. Already I have taken a look through the bargain basement bin and found some good ones to start with.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Ms Tyley has increased her prices. She used to be $0.99. Then $2.99.

Now she's up to $3.99. Probably still in the "cheap reads" category. However, I have noticed increased prices for indie authors lately from $4.99 - $10.99 while browsing a few websites.

Having read her books, I think they are worth the $3.99 asking price, but I admit that I would not have tried her books in the beginning at that price.

I, too, have noticed an increase in the number of indie authors setting prices at $4.99 and up; I am amazed at the number who are choosing $7.99 and higher. With all that is available for less than $2.99, I find it difficult to see how they can sell -- or expect to sell -- many copies, if anyh copies, of their ebooks at those prices.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by leebase

Another testimo y as to why we shouldn't be all worked up over agency pricing. There is competition.

Yes, there is competition but even with the errors we find in books published by the Agency 6, there is still a general level of qualitative difference between what the Agency 6 publish and the indie market -- again, broadly speaking. I can point to a handful of indie authors whose books are comparable to the quality level of writing -- again, setting aside formatting issues -- of the Agency 6 produced books, but I would not say that the overall indie effort has reached that qualitative level yet. The fact of competition is not enough. The competition has to be comparable qualitatively.