Do some publishers have any idea?

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by GlennD

You’re in luck, $3.99 for three of them.

https://www.amazon.com/Three-James-H...kbubemail13-20

Too late! I already bought each one individually for a total of around $45. Oh well, perhaps from the comments about the length of the omnibus I'm better off with the individual ones.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by barryem

I've never read the Herriot books and probably won't but I was curious about this so I looked on Amazon and found that each of the books individually is over 450 pages long but the omnibus is only 470 pages. I won't pretend to know what this means but it if I was thinking of reading them that would make me want to study the situation before buying the omnibus.

Barry

I looked at books 4 and 5 to compare, and used the 'go to' option in the iphone client;

Book 4 has 252 pages and 6096 locations, while the "about" page lists 388 pages.
Book 5 has 343 pages and 5730 locations, and "about" lists 355 pages.

The omnibus of the first 3 books doesn't bring up a "go to" for pages, but has 21121 locations. It lists 64/48/48 chapters for the three books, and all of them are present and accounted for.

I am no expert in ebook formatting, I just read the dang things. I'm not sure how the locations count is generated, or whether it's a reliable measure of the size of the book. All I can tell you is that it sure looks to me like the entire content of the three books is included.

[lumpynose]

Originally Posted by barryem

I've never read the Herriot books and probably won't ...

Barry

Some things to note about these books.

If you watched any of the TV episodes on PBS, the guy who plays Siegfried, his boss, is nothing like him in the books. The TV Siegfried character is definitely unpleasant.

From the descriptions you might think the books are about him doctoring animals, but the animal stuff is the backdrop; the stories are all about people. They're definitely very people-centric.

They're warm hearted and often funny.

[barryem]

Originally Posted by GlennD

I'm not sure how the locations count is generated, or whether it's a reliable measure of the size of the book.

As I recall each location is 128 characters and that includes letters, numbers spaces and all invisible formatting characters.

I went by the page counts listed in the descriptions on the Amazon page for the Kindle versions. It's possible that the omnibus used a different method to count pages. I have no idea why that difference exists. I just know that according to their listed page counts the Omnibus is very slightly more than 1/3 the number of pages of the first 3 books combined. It's entirely possible that's legitimate. If I was buying it I'd want to know.

Barry

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by lumpynose

Some things to note about these books.

If you watched any of the TV episodes on PBS, the guy who plays Siegfried, his boss, is nothing like him in the books. The TV Siegfried character is definitely unpleasant.

From the descriptions you might think the books are about him doctoring animals, but the animal stuff is the backdrop; the stories are all about people. They're definitely very people-centric.

They're warm hearted and often funny.

Try James Herriot's biography (which was written by his son) and a very good read. It gives a lot of extra background and put the other characters like "Siegfried" into context.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Thasaidon

Try James Herriot's biography (which was written by his son) and a very good read. It gives a lot of extra background and put the other characters like "Siegfried" into context.

But read the books before the biography. While the biography is fascinating, the father is a much better writer than the son.

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But read the books before the biography. While the biography is fascinating, the father is a much better writer than the son.

I'll give you that one.

[binaryhermit]

I wonder, on this book https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Worth-T...dp/B07JD93HJ9/ 464 pages, $12.99 ebook, $17.70 hardcover, which one actually makes the publisher more.

Anyway... At full price I could get about 40 days of kindle unlimited for that money. Or (various calculations of how many ebooks I could get at a cheaper price). And I don't really want to read it $13 bad.

So I threw it on a wish list.

PS: is this Harlequin Digital Sales Corp. that is listed as the seller by Amazon the same Harlequin that is best known as a romance publisher, lol?

[lumpynose]

Look at this one; same price. I'm ordering the paperback; I'm still happier with paper over ebook, for no particular reason. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/146420862X

[leebase]

Originally Posted by crich70

Ah but when I buy an ebook I'm using my ink and my page (i.e. the ereader) so why should I have to pay more for the ebook version than I would if I were to buy a paper and ink version of the same book? That's the main crux of the problem for many of us I think.

I doesn't matter. I know...it matters to you and LOTS of other people. But really, price of a product is almost never about the cost to make the product.

What keeps me from buying more ebooks? Podcasts. Streaming tv and movies. Television. My wife and children take up quite a bit of time. Twitter. Facebook. The web in general.

I do like reading....but there are a LOT of other things competing for my time. And yes, I've bought more books already than I'll finish reading for years.

I even quit Audible just recently because I have a couple dozen books I've bought and haven't listened to yet. I've been an active Audible subscriber since they came out and there was no such thing as smartphones.

So...ebooks need to be EVEN CHEAPER for me to buy? Not me. I will buy any Orson Scott Card book. I will buy any Jack Reacher series book, or Jack Ryan, or Jason Bourne, or Dune universe or David Weber (grumble grumble on his latest book, the only one of his that disappointed me).

They don't come out that often that the difference between $14.99 and $4.99 means that much to me.

And I'm buying up Military Sci Fi series from $1 to $5 for the whole series because Amazon has figured out how to target me. I gotta stop cuz I already bought more than I can read.

The best Author's can command the price they charge. People like me exist in enough numbers to keep that going. 1 of me with is worth 15 people who will only pay a dollar.

If you like it and can afford it, pay it. If you like it but can't (or don't want to) afford it, read something else.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Timboli

That's a weird thing to say. Are you rolling in the money or something?

Does it matter? Seriously. There are cheaper options and free options. Read what you want at the price you are able to pay. End of story.

Use libraries to get books you want to read but don't want to pay for. Read something else while you wait.

You've already mentioned that you have more books in your possession than you will have time to read before you die.

Why expend emotional energy on something you can't change...and isn't "wrong". Everyone has desires to buy things they can't or don't want to afford.

Enjoy life. Read what you like to read. Withhold your money from publishers and authors who aren't selling their books on the terms that you would prefer.

I write this, not to chastise you, but to free you from your own mental chains.
Everything you want to happen is already happening. Already there are authors willing to sell books for less, a lot less. Already there are free ebooks. Already you can buy a second hand copy of a physical book. Already you can use the library.

Already -- publishers who aren't lowering their prices, who aren't distributing their ebooks DRM free -- are suffering their fate as the market wills.

Already you can fill up your house with books. Already you can ALSO have more books than you could ever read on a device you hold in your hands.

It's a GREAT time to be a reader.

[binaryhermit]

I'm also kinda interested how price of the legal version of a book compares to the prevalence of illegal acquisition of the book in question.

[darryl]

@leebase. I strongly agree that reading is indeed competing with other forms of entertainment, though some do seem to be in denial about this. And yes, the cost of producing a product is relevant to determining how low a price can be set and still make a reasonable profit. In theory the more competitive the market is the lower the price will be. I am presently in the fortunate position that I can afford to pay $14.99 for e-books, though I choose not to. There are enough people like you who are prepared to pay that price for e-books from favourite authors. Big 5 e-book pricing is showing signs of a very rational strategy to maximise their revenue by making sales to both people like you and people like me. You pay a higher price and get the book immediately. I wait, sometimes for a long time, for them to lower the price or have a sale, or I borrow from the library. However most of the tradpub authors I used to follow religiously have been replaced by Indie authors. There is, after all, only so much I can read. It is, as you say, a great time for readers. Possibly the best time ever. It is wonderful that we are both currently being catered for. Yes, I would like to have every new tradpub release at Indie prices, but the world is not tailored to what I would like. Yes, one of you paying $15 is worth 2.5 of me paying $6. But with later price reductions etc. the only readers lost are those who would have bought the book initially but are not interested later when the price is reduced, and those who obtain pirate versions.

@binaryhermit. I too am interested in this question, but there seem to be no reliable studies. Some people who want a book now but are not prepared to pay resort to piracy. Some would have bought a legitimate copy if the price was lower. Some would not have acquired the book at all if it was not available to them for free. The only conclusion I think we can draw is that piracy rates are sufficiently low at today's prices to allow a flourishing e-book retail industry to exist, despite the fact that as I understand the situation obtaining a pirate copy is trivially easy.

[binaryhermit]

then again, the book in question is written by an anchor from the evening news on a US over the air tv network, which strikes me as something that would sell better in dead tree format than digital format.

And I do get the impression that the big 5 (or however many there are right now) are trying to prop up the dead tree book market at the expense of the ebook market.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I'm also kinda interested how price of the legal version of a book compares to the prevalence of illegal acquisition of the book in question.

I suspect that publishers don’t take the activities of thieves into account when setting prices. I know that when I want to buy a product I never think to myself “should I buy it or should I steal it?” but simply “is it a price I’m willing to pay?”.