Oh the irony...

[haertig]

I often times preface a technical suggestion to someone who appears non-technical with "no offense intended". There are many things that are obvious to someone with the technical knowledge needed to understand an issue, but completely foreign to those who don't have the required experience or training. When you suggest something that is obvious, some people will take offense at that. Others are exceedingly glad that you did not assume they knew something that they didn't, and provided them the solution.

You run into the above case a lot on computer forums, say, one for the Linux operating system. I am on those forums as well, and you do your best to determine if the person you are replying too is a guru or a newbie, and tailor your response so as to help, but not offend - depending on if you misjudged the guru vs. newbie thing. It's not always easy to tell what experience level you are talking to. This is less of an issue on other basically non-technical forums, MobileRead for example.

So it depends on context - "no offense intended" can indeed be used in a nice and friendly manner. I see it used in this manner frequently, and do so myself. But as you pointed out, the phrase can be also used in a condescending manner in different circumstances.

I take no sides in judging the motivation behind the phrase in the particular instance being discussed in this thread. I am just pointing out that what you presented as an undeniable fact regarding usage, is not.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by haertig

I take no sides in judging the motivation behind the phrase in the particular instance being discussed in this thread. I am just pointing out that what you presented as an undeniable fact regarding usage, is not.

I stand by my comment. "No offense" starts at patronizing or condescending and goes on from there. People whose motives are pure should eschew it and assume that their sterling intentions are obvious. And if the addressee is an ingrate, that's their problem. Soon resolved, as people will stop going out of their way to help them.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Hitch

but it was Amazon that was on the side of making them cheaper.

As she also says--you don't like the pricing, don't buy them, right? Like any other product.

Hitch

I like everything else you said. However, Amazon was not on the side of making ebooks cheaper. Amazon was on their own side of buying up a market and running competitors out of business.

No? Well, Amazon had a choice to accept windowing over agency...allowing Amazon to continue selling ebooks at a loss. But no. Amazon knows that there is a finite time where interest is high and MOST of the sales of a book that are going to happen, happen. To be "windowed" out of the market would mean Amazon missing the market.....AND....it would make Amazon's Kindle tablet a LOT less appealing.

So Amazon chose their own self interest and gave pricing control to the publishers because, frankly, Amazon had already established their near monopoly position already.

Amazon and Walmart both do work hard to lower prices....but as retailers so powerful that they can hammer the actual creators and manufacturers into submission. Sounds great for the consumer, until all the profit is taken out of a market killing further innovation.

If you want the quality of Kindle Unlimited to become THE quality of books going forward...keep voting with your dollars for the $.99 Amazon ebook.

[haertig]

"People whose motives are pure should eschew it..."

If we want to continue down the micro-triggered, perpetually offended path, that phrase above where you are telling people to change their words to match your view of things sounds a bit condescending to me. You are implying that if we don't eschew the phrase, then our motives are not pure. I'll agree to disagree on that.

FWIW, I totally agree with you on the offensiveness of "Look, lady". It's hard to imagine that one in anything other than a condescending context. "Look, mister" is not much better. I can usually let those go with the understanding that I am talking with someone who has no more valid arguments to offer, and is kind of on their last breath before starting to shout out obscenities or initiate a fistfight. I might be able to imagine one of those phrases as part of a sarcastic joke, meant to be humorous, but ending up being cringe worthy. In that case I wouldn't jump right to unpure motive, I'd maybe take a smaller step to "should have thought it through a little better". It's good to keep an open mind and not immediately question motives. One of my favorite phrases is "Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by stupid." Of course that's sarcastic humor, but the point is obvious. Not everything that turns out bad was intended to be bad.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by leebase

I like everything else you said. However, Amazon was not on the side of making ebooks cheaper. Amazon was on their own side of buying up a market and running competitors out of business.

No? Well, Amazon had a choice to accept windowing over agency...allowing Amazon to continue selling ebooks at a loss. But no. Amazon knows that there is a finite time where interest is high and MOST of the sales of a book that are going to happen, happen. To be "windowed" out of the market would mean Amazon missing the market.....AND....it would make Amazon's Kindle tablet a LOT less appealing.

So Amazon chose their own self interest and gave pricing control to the publishers because, frankly, Amazon had already established their near monopoly position already.

I short-handed the discussion, because everyone here already know the story of Amazon vs. the BPHs. In short, the prices ended up lower. The morality of the how and why, and whether Amazon was the white hat or black, etc....meh. The net result to the consumer was, much lower prices for the buyer. Was Amazon selfish? Yup, but the end result, still in the buyers' favor.

Amazon and Walmart both do work hard to lower prices....but as retailers so powerful that they can hammer the actual creators and manufacturers into submission. Sounds great for the consumer, until all the profit is taken out of a market killing further innovation.

It's an argument--but has it stifled creativity in the music biz? It seems to have done just the opposite, with garage bands now being the norm, able to publish cheap "records" and videos. The consumer gets to vote with the click.

If you want the quality of Kindle Unlimited to become THE quality of books going forward...keep voting with your dollars for the $.99 Amazon ebook.

I won't be here in 50 years to see if that argument holds up--but I'm not convinced that it will. Great writers will still rise; books will still be written. You're somewhat cavalierly asserted that if Jane Doe author sells her book for $0.99, it's automatically bad. I'm not at all certain that I agree with you.

Hitch

[leebase]

Anybody selling their books for $.99 does so because they CANT attract an audience willing to pay more. Publishers who can only sell books dirt cheap...can not invest in developing talent. They can’t market on behalf of the author. They can’t give up front payments to let a good number of authors write for a living knowing that only a few of those investments become best sellers.

If you want art to exist, support it financially

[crich70]

Originally Posted by leebase

Anybody selling their books for $.99 does so because they CANT attract an audience willing to pay more. Publishers who can only sell books dirt cheap...can not invest in developing talent. They can’t market on behalf of the author. They can’t give up front payments to let a good number of authors write for a living knowing that only a few of those investments become best sellers.

If you want art to exist, support it financially

Or they are new authors who haven't yet established an audience. An unknown author can't expect to charge as much as a Stephen King or a James Patterson can for a book. It's always been a case of a few author's make it big while others struggle to establish themselves.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Raphi'Elohim

Now, I have already bought the book in the past so it is not too pricey for me it is just illogical. For instance, if a paperback is only $15 dollars then it makes sense to sell the ebook for only $3 dollars at $13 but as books go up in price from $25 to $50 etc... the percentage knockoff should scale accordingly and that is just thinking perfectly logically in a mathematical way but most people are not perfectly logical.

Since the production cost (printing, binding, shipping) of a $15 hardback is the same as for a $50 hardback, it's perfectly logical that the ebook versions should be priced at the same fixed discount (say, $3) from the hardback price.

You are the one looking at this illogically.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by leebase

If you want the quality of Kindle Unlimited to become THE quality of books going forward...keep voting with your dollars for the $.99 Amazon ebook.

Why are you so stuck up on the $.99 price? It is the lowest allowable price greater than free on any ebook at Amazon, but it is not the norm even in KU. Is there a whole bunch of books priced that low? Of course there is, and more at other prices as well. To say that "the quality of Kindle Unlimited" is the same as your typical $.99 book is a little bit unfair, though. The same can be said about the BPH. The quality of the average book from a BPH is a whole lot lower than the few superstar bestsellers. So please don't try to convince anyone that the quality of the BPH is what their bestsellers are.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by leebase

Anybody selling their books for $.99 does so because they CANT attract an audience willing to pay more. Publishers who can only sell books dirt cheap...can not invest in developing talent. They can’t market on behalf of the author. They can’t give up front payments to let a good number of authors write for a living knowing that only a few of those investments become best sellers.

There are regular sales on Amazon and elsewhere, generally between between 99c and $2.99.
These aren't terribly written trash, they are regular books, normally sold for more, that are on sale for a short period.
Recently, the Commissario Brunetti series by Donna Leon has been going on sale, a few books at a time, at $1.99 each, and I've picked up close to a dozen of them.
I won't enjoy them any less because I paid $1.99 rather than the regular price of $9.99.

The idea that you pay $10+ for a 'good' book, or a few dollar for a 'bad' one is just wrong, if you take the time to shop around.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Apache

I really like the people who think my 40+ years of experience at jewelry repair should cost them the same as the jeweler down the street with one year training. And of course having to fix something that has been butchered ends up costing them more. Cheapest may save you money up front, but it can cost you a lot more in the long run.
Apache

Yep. One sees the same thing in the home repair business. I would much rather pay more to get it done right the first time. The problem is finding someone who will get it done right the first time.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by issybird

I stand by my comment. "No offense" starts at patronizing or condescending and goes on from there. People whose motives are pure should eschew it and assume that their sterling intentions are obvious. And if the addressee is an ingrate, that's their problem. Soon resolved, as people will stop going out of their way to help them.

Generally speaking when someone says No offense, they are about to say something rude and offensive. Now, it's different if it's said after the fact as in "I'm sorry, no offense was meant", but I would suggest that if one finds one's self starting a post with "No offense..." that a real good signal that you either need to rethink how you say it, or not say it at all.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Generally speaking when someone says No offense, they are about to say something rude and offensive. Now, it's different if it's said after the fact as in "I'm sorry, no offense was meant", but I would suggest that if one finds one's self starting a post with "No offense..." that a real good signal that you either need to rethink how you say it, or not say it at all.

Perhaps one could also say that when a person says "Generally speaking when someone says..." that person thinks that all the societies, cultures, ideologies, social groups, speakers of regional and social dialects, etc. of the world cast, in general, the same meanings on strings of words in English as they do (or, if intolerant, mean that they should cast the same meaning as them and take offense if possible).

No offense meant .

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by leebase

Anybody selling their books for $.99 does so because they CANT attract an audience willing to pay more. Publishers who can only sell books dirt cheap...can not invest in developing talent. They can’t market on behalf of the author. They can’t give up front payments to let a good number of authors write for a living knowing that only a few of those investments become best sellers.

If you want art to exist, support it financially

Nope. My attitude is, for self-pubs, that they can damn well start out peddling their wares at a bargain price. If I stumble across them, or find them on Kindle Prime, (so that I get them for freebs), then I will be willing to take a shot and waste a bit of money and time on them. Once they've got a track record and 3, 4, 5+ books up there, go right ahead and raise the price. I've discovered any number of very readable authors this way and I don't mind now paying more to continue reading their series.

This is absolutely no different than the old minor league to major league route. Authors were pubbed by ROC or Bantam or Ace or any number of the "lower-end" genre fiction imprints for BPHs and their books were priced fairly cheaply at airports, drugstores and the like. If they caught on, they'd move up the latter to the "better" imprints and then, maybe, woo-woo, to hardcover. (In fact, that's Laurell K. Hamilton's arc, love her, hate her, or whatever. I started out loving her work, but..oh, well. I'm sure she's crying about my dislike all the way to the bank.)

I have an author like that now, one of my clients, had a bit of a cycle like that. He was with Brown, a midlister, for two decades. He self-pubbed his 1990's detective series with us (eBooks only) when it reverted. They still had his newer series--in paperback. He pubbed a new-new series with us, ebook only. They saw it selling and bought it from him, took the existing books off sale, and re-pubbed them under their own imprint. Longish story short, now his latest in that newest series isn't only in hardcover--it's front table at B&N when it's released. Obviously, all those books are quite wildly differently priced, over the years. But it's SSDD.

I've got some writers/self-pubs that I discovered for free, or for $1.99 and now I'm paying $7.99 for their new eBooks. I don't mind that, and they make a lot more now than they did. It is ever thus, really, in publishing. Start out at the bottom and work their way up. What's new about that?

All this disdain for a $0.99 or $1.99 book; the person who wrote it still worked hard. It might be excellent; without trying them, how can we know?

All this "support the arts" stuff. Let me be really clear about it, from my viewpoint--it's a business. We've all had this crap fed to us, that somehow, the "arts" are superior, noble, that these things--paintings, sculpture, poetry, songs, etc.--are created for the glory of the form, for the "art." I blame the Church for this idea that somehow, work done for money or to support the artist is "filthy lucre" or some lower form of the craft, like people disrespecting artists that work for ad agencies or magazines. What a load of malarky.

I think that the early church had this brilliant plan--we'll convince the masons and painters and sculptors and so forth to donate all their work, tell them it's for the "glory of God" and that they'll get their reward in heaven. (Thus, meaning, we pay a crapload less for the work. What a deal!) That led, of course, to "regular" people thinking that artists were superior more noble, because they were going to receive preferential treatment at the pearly gates, in recognition of their donations of "art" to the church.

It's morphed and ben retained down through the ages, so that now, we have this mindset that starving artists in coldwater flats and garrets are "nobler" than those working 9-5 for a paying gig. Why is that? Because they're starving for their art? What's noble about starving? What hooey. The work is the work and it either stands or falls on its own. What the author or sculptor or painter went through to create it is irrelevant to me. I like the book--or I don't. What matter to me if the author has a full-time job, making $250K/year or only $250/year?

Telling me to "support it?" Nonsense. I'll support it by paying for the art. That's how it works; whether some millionaire buys a painting in a gallery or it's just me, clicking on a book. There's this idea that somehow, art and artists are superior to the rest of us poor working slobs and that they deserve support that the rest of us don't, so that they can "create." Yah, well, look at the KDP--millions, millions of self-pubbed authors. Most of them have full-time jobs, families that they care for, and so on. Somehow, they've all managed to write books and publish them. Who supported them? PBS? The NEA? No--they supported themselves, earning a living and writing at night, in the mornings, on their lunch hours.

Same with all these garage bands. All these visual artists, now pubbed on Etsy, on places ranging from Adobe Stock to Fotolia to Pixabay. All these millions of people, trying to be artists, all supporting themselves at regular, boring old workaday jobs--all striving for artistic recognition and remuneration for their efforts. It's not a lot different than it was before, except now, EVERYBODY can try. Everybody can play. Not just "special" artist that find angels or backers or whatever.

In many ways, it's a far more democratic and merit-based system. The internet, ironically, IS "support for the arts." :-)

Hitch

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by AnotherCat

Perhaps one could also say that when a person says "Generally speaking when someone says..." that person thinks that all the societies, cultures, ideologies, social groups, speakers of regional and social dialects, etc. of the world cast, in general, the same meanings on strings of words in English as they do (or, if intolerant, mean that they should cast the same meaning as them and take offense if possible).

No offense meant .

Or it could simply mean they actually know what the word Generally means and aren't interested in playing internet word games.