Publisher Lunacy

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Especially when they shorten the title.

2001

[elemenoP]

well I admit I DID love the Illustrated Classics sold at McDonalds when I was a kid!!! Who remembers those?

eP

[apbschmitz]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Instead of pre-reading (I just love these creative euphemisms), you should boycott. Punish both the author and the publisher. Send a message.

I wonder whether the author has much to do with it. Generally authors want to sell the greatest number of books possible. Hard to see how this helps.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

I wonder whether the author has much to do with it. Generally authors want to sell the greatest number of books possible. Hard to see how this helps.

It teaches authors to be more selective when choosing publishers.

[RWJ]

Count me in as another bummed OSC fan.

In terms of what we can do? Honestly I'm not sure any kind of boycott or protest matters in this sort of situation. I'm not going to deprive myself of the book (which I've been looking forward to, and had the release date marked down) just because I really disagree with this decision. I might go the "used bookstore" route to get a legitimate copy that won't profit the publishers, but not enough people will do this to make a big difference. The only negative consequence in terms of OSC's readership is that, since I can't get the book now, it's not going to be top of mind - other books will be released, I will forget to keep an eye out for second hand copies, and I'll just have too many other things to read.

But when someone has the kind of reputation and following Card does, they (and their publishers) can do pretty much what they want.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by RWJ

In terms of what we can do? Honestly I'm not sure any kind of boycott or protest matters in this sort of situation. I'm not going to deprive myself of the book (which I've been looking forward to, and had the release date marked down) just because I really disagree with this decision.

If enough people don't buy the book, it matters. Short of that, publishers have no incentive to change their ways.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by leebase

Alright, I admit...I've generally been on the opposite side of this topic. I haven't thought it was unreasonable for publishers to take control of their pricing. I have not thought publishers were, in general, evil idiots.

However....Tor is just begging for the label of "a company too stupid to stay in business".

I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card. Love particularly the Ender's Game series. New months and months ago that a new book, "Shadows in Flight" was going to be released. I PREORDERED the kindle book from Amazon. And today I went to my Kindle app....and no book.

I go to the website and see that the hardback was released today, but the kindle book isn't scheduled to be released for another YEAR! WHAT THE F!

I guarantee you that I'll have read an electronic version of that book well before next year. And unlike me, most people who are fans and are equally irate about this....they won't be paying for the book. Me, I'll just PRE-READ the book I PREORDERED and pay for it NEXT FEB.

Lee

I think you're making a significant mistake by buying the book when it releases in eBook format. You're REWARDING the publisher. Frankly, Tor has no incentive to change their practices if you buy the book. You're telling them that their business model is correct.

However, if you want an electronic version of the book, Might I suggest the Audible book? Stefan Rudnicki is the reader, and it should be quite good. I've "read" several of the Ender books as Audible books, and enjoyed them.

[abookreader]

My goodness is it chilly in Hades today or what?

Tor - part of MacMillan right? MacMillan seems to like to play games with their eBooks trying to find that magical sweet spot of not sinking their ship. Somehow it has yet to occur to them to push customer service and listen to what their customers (the readers) want to buy.

[luqmaninbmore]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If enough people don't buy the book, it matters. Short of that, publishers have no incentive to change their ways.

What the publishers will conclude is that Card doesn't sell anymore, not that delaying the ebook crippled sales.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by luqmaninbmore

What the publishers will conclude is that Card doesn't sell anymore, not that delaying the ebook crippled sales.

I'm a fan of boycotts, but considering that OSC has managed to annoy GLBT allies with his public statements and his "Hamlet" rewrite, it'll be tough to sort out which parts of his lack of sales are due to their ebook shenanigans and which are due to his off-putting public persona.

We need a poll: Are YOU boycotting OSC? And all the options would be "Yes, because..."

[RWJ]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

If enough people don't buy the book, it matters. Short of that, publishers have no incentive to change their ways.

Oh I agree - and if OSC were a new writer with a huge fanbase online but not much of a track record, then ebook afficionados staging a boycott might hurt. But for someone at his level I suspect we're a drop in the bucket.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

@leebaseI remember being surprised how fast it was available, and since I could download it for free I couldn't really figure out how pirates where making money off of it.

The pirates, in general, are not making money off the content they release. They're not doing it for money. Sometimes the host websites are making money (well, often, they're making at least enough from ads to keep hosting the site), but the people doing uploads are trying to share content, not get money.

And that kind of motivation is really hard to fight with courts; if a person doesn't mind being anonymous, it's going to continue to be easy to distribute free content.

Originally Posted by leebase

I don't see ANY sense in simply withholding the ebook for a year. Money is money. If the ebook is priced to give the publishers the same money...what's it to them if I read the hard back or the ebook?

Tor belongs to Macmillan, which doesn't allow its ebooks to be distributed to libraries. They don't like ebooks. They know ebook DRM can be stripped; if you buy a hardcover, you can't upload it to a filesharing site. And they want to sell more hardcovers, even if they profit just as much from ebooks--they don't *like* ebooks. If you buy a hardcover, you could loan it to a friend, who might buy their own hardcover copy; if you buy an ebook, you can't loan it to a friend, so they don't get that extra possible sale. (The fact that they're the ones stopping you from the loan is irrelevant to them.)

Buy the hardcover, and friends might see it on your shelf and ask about it. Doesn't work that way with ebooks. And anyway, why should you care which version you buy? It's the same text either way!

But Tor isn't giving me my "pay now" option in ebooks. That makes no sense.

This is quite different from complaining about the price of ebooks and how it costs nothing to make them and therefore I should be able to buy new release popular fiction at used paper book prices. THAT line of reasoning I've never agreed with.

It's all part of the same package: many publishers do not want ebooks. They want them to be an exotic "extra" that some kooky people buy, or that some people with disabilities use. They want them to be the weird-fringe thing, or maybe like audiobooks: a solid niche, but still a niche. They want "readers" to mean "readers of paper." They want to control how you access their content.

All that hassle over the Agency pricing and how publishers' other choice would be windowing ebooks... and they're still windowing ebooks.

As far as I can sort out, the logic is one part "we will avoid releasing legit ebook versions early to boost hardcover sales," because they need to prove to their investors that hardcover's not a dead format, and one part "we will avoid releasing a legit version in order to cut down on piracy from the crack-DRM-and-share groups," which, aah, will indeed delay the release of the pirate versions... by a matter of hours. Days, perhaps, if the book's not as popular as they'd like it to be.

Give it three days, and you'll be able to download a PDF. By next February, the unauthorized Kindle version--with typos fixed--will already be firmly entrenched in the torrent networks as part of several collection.

[tecweston]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I'm a fan of boycotts, but considering that OSC has managed to annoy GLBT allies with his public statements and his "Hamlet" rewrite, it'll be tough to sort out which parts of his lack of sales are due to their ebook shenanigans and which are due to his off-putting public persona.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I am a big fan of Card's "Ender" series but after reading this I will not be giving him another dime of my money.

Originally Posted by Orson Scott Card

There is a myth that homosexuals are "born that way," and we are pounded with this idea so thoroughly that many people think that somebody, somewhere, must have proved it . . . The dark secret of homosexual society—the one that dares not speak its name—is how many homosexuals first entered into that world through a disturbing seduction or rape or molestation or abuse, and how many of them yearn to get out of the homosexual community and live normally.

http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2011summer/card.shtml

[anamardoll]

(in reference to ElfWreck's excellent post)

You know, and this is the crux of things.

I didn't initially buy "The Help". I've been burned by bestsellers before. I put it on hold at the library and I waited my turn (a long turn, for that one), and I read it FOR FREE.

And THEN I bought it.

I didn't have to buy it. I could have ripped the DRM off that library copy. Gods know my $10 wouldn't have made much of a difference to the bottom-line on that hugely successful book. But I bought it anyway, as do -- I believe this as a matter of faith -- most people who like a library book and want a legit copy for their own and have the resources to afford it.

I bought a book after I read it for free at the library.

A few weeks later, the publisher for that book announced that they won't provide new releases to libraries anymore. Maybe never again, forever. If they'd made that decision a few years ago, I wouldn't have read the book I ended up buying. And if I couldn't try it first, I wouldn't have bought it.

It's not a loss for ME. There's an effectively infinite amount of good reading material out there for me. I could read from tomorrow until I die and not run out of good stuff.

If there's enough of people like me, these "no library edition, no ebook" publishers are going to feel the pinch eventually. I spend literally thousands of dollars a year on books -- it's my biggest and nearly my only entertainment expense. I'm still going to keep spending that. Don't want a piece of my wallet? Fine by me. There are other authors and publishers who do.

/rant

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Abridged is cool. You get done quicker. As a kid, I read Classics Illustrated.

yeah, 'enhanced' is padded!