J.K. Rowling Publishes Harry Potter Ebooks on Smashwords (April Fool)

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Neil

Waaaaayyyyy too many April Fool's jokes here. The people in charge should now flag this and the other thread as jokes in their titles and take down ant prank articles on the front page. I have a modest sense of humor but I'm not finding much funny on April 2nd wasting my time with this stuff. Also I suggest that these be taken down soon so as to limit the problems with spiders adding them to Google references for years to come and making real information harder to find in the future.

You see a title that's too good to be true, you look at the date it was posted and you know, right that instance that it was a joke...

But I agree that those April Fool's thread should be marked as such...

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

But I agree that those April Fool's thread should be marked as such...

Look at the tags for this thread.

BOb

[Gaurnim]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Look at the tags for this thread.

BOb

While it's written in the tags section, it is pretty small and only at the bottom of the page.
I didn't need them to determine it was an April's Fools joke, but the tags are not the most visible part to put this information.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Gaurnim

While it's written in the tags section, it is pretty small and only at the bottom of the page.
I didn't need them to determine it was an April's Fools joke, but the tags are not the most visible part to put this information.

I agree. I have no problem modifying the thread titles. I'm not sure what other moderators think. However, we have alot of tread titles that don't really mean what they say when you read it.

BOb

[Smashwords]

When we ran the press release on PRNewswire, they modified the headline to note it was a prank. I certainly don't want people for months to come to discover this thread and get excited only to be disappointed by an old prank. On the other hand, if it's identified as a prank up front, it could help raise reasonable questions as to why she or other authors don't publish in e-. I'd suggest modifying the heading here to "(April Fools) J.K. Rowling Publishes Harry Potter Ebooks on Smashwords" It's up to the moderators.

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by Smashwords

Hi everyone, I hope I didn't cause anyone any undue trauma.

I'm hopeful that one day, it won't even be a question for authors whether to publish in e- or not.

Best wishes all,
Mark

Not worry. Anyone mortally offended just needs to relax. I got caught big time, and then laughed.

[Alphapheemail]

It's really dumb of Rowling to try to hold out only to reap bigger rewards on the sale of paperbacks. If her main concern is pirating, I have a source that tells me that some of the "thieves" or "robin hoods" of the net have made her books available already.

Soo... um... yea...

Ms. Rowling: Where the is a demand, there will be a supplier. Might as well just be the supplier and make alot of people happy.

[Smashwords]

Right on, Alphapheemail. As we parodied in the release, she's not making a penny on pirated sales (and this is too bad, because she has a right to profit from her books!). She has the ability to publish each book in e- for 80% off the $35 list price yet still make a per copy royalty equal to or greater than if someone purchases the dead tree version. She'd make a lot of people happy, and she'd earn many more millions in well-deserved profits. It's a win-win all around. And I'm serious about the offer in the press release to donate our proceeds to charity for the first year, or, if she were to take us up on our open offer to be the first #1 former NY Times best-seller to publish with us for 100% net royalty for the first 12 months, she could donate everything to charity too if she wanted. She does have an impressive philanthropic record, so why not.

Originally Posted by Alphapheemail

It's really dumb of Rowling to try to hold out only to reap bigger rewards on the sale of paperbacks. If her main concern is pirating, I have a source that tells me that some of the "thieves" or "robin hoods" of the net have made her books available already.

Soo... um... yea...

Ms. Rowling: Where the is a demand, there will be a supplier. Might as well just be the supplier and make alot of people happy.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I agree. I have no problem modifying the thread titles. I'm not sure what other moderators think. However, we have alot of tread titles that don't really mean what they say when you read it.

For the particular case of "April Fools"-like threads, I think the best action is to add an appropriate label (maybe to the title) once the day has passed. So now I would modify the title of this thread to: "[April Fools] J.K. Rowling Publishes ..."

[Neil]

The only problem with adding the April Fool's title and not deleting the thread is the informational content of search engines in the future. I don't think we need to have people type Rowling Potter ebooks in Google for the next few years and coming here to read this thread. I appluad changing the title. I would cheer deleting it and the other joke(s). This is NOT just a Mobileread problem but these kind of things all over the Net just get my e-goat.

[pshrynk]

It's a Mobile Read policy to not delete threads unless they are single user threads that are spam.

[pilotbob]

Isn't there some type of Latin that applies here:

caveat empt google.

BOb

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by Smashwords

Right on, Alphapheemail. As we parodied in the release, she's not making a penny on pirated sales (and this is too bad, because she has a right to profit from her books!). She has the ability to publish each book in e- for 80% off the $35 list price yet still make a per copy royalty equal to or greater than if someone purchases the dead tree version. She'd make a lot of people happy, and she'd earn many more millions in well-deserved profits. It's a win-win all around. And I'm serious about the offer in the press release to donate our proceeds to charity for the first year, or, if she were to take us up on our open offer to be the first #1 former NY Times best-seller to publish with us for 100% net royalty for the first 12 months, she could donate everything to charity too if she wanted. She does have an impressive philanthropic record, so why not.

Sigh. If only....

[EowynCarter]

Shame that one isn't true.

I have prc converted from cracked pdf E-books. Thus full of mistakes, poorly edited...
And yes, i would galdly pay for these, even if i already own 4 copy of each potter book.
Jo, what are you waiting for ?

Ironicly enought, i fist read harry potter on my calculator's screen. Then, some time later, than, when arriving to book 4, i thought to the hell with it, I went in a bookshop to get the fist 4 books. (5 wasn't out at that time). Book 3 had made a Harry potter fan

[pdurrant]

How odd. I understood that a group of fans have made unauthorised PDFs of HP that were were amazingly accurate, down to including the correct fonts to match the (USA) printed editions in layout exactly. But I suppose there will be more than one set of unauthorised ebooks out there.

Oh - and they won't have been 'cracked' PDFs, since there are no commercial DRMed PDFs available to crack. Badly OCRed, perhaps.

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

I have prc converted from cracked pdf E-books. Thus full of mistakes, poorly edited...
And yes, i would galdly pay for these, even if i already own 4 copy of each potter book.