Konrath and friends take on Turow

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Welcome to the 21st century; it is *nothing* like the 19th.

Every company that has forgotten or ignored that has died a horrible death or is on their way to doing so.

Kodak
Borders
Blockbuster (and a whole variety of other video stores)

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Gotta love tea leaf readers predicting other people's actions.
Not that any of it matters what with the Maya Apocalypse coming any day now.
Here, try this:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworst...an-amazon-one/



The moment Amazon even *thinks* of gouging customers, a dozen sharks will jump into the game. Their entire business is about selling cheap ebooks; the moment they stop being the place for cheap ebooks, they stop having an ebook business.
(Look at Paypal's little reversal on censorship. The moment they annoyed consumers, accounts started closing in droves.)

Welcome to the 21st century; it is *nothing* like the 19th.

Hey, if you are right on that, then why worry about publisher "price fixing" cartels? That's SOO 19th century! Obviously, there's no need for government intervention there, right? And no need for an open Internet policy,either, because we can trust Comcast and the cable companies not to throttle the competition. As for those consumer-friendly mobile carriers....

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is hes taken his latest John Rain book and made it unavailable for people who have previously read the series in ePub. That to me is not a nice thing to do for people who like the series and read eBooks in ePub.

Come on Jon. Nothing is preventing you from purchasing the books from Amazon, removing DRM and converting the book with Calibre. And even if you didn't want to go through that exercise, there's alway Kindle for PC that's freely available to all OSes, except Linux (damn that evil corporation).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Come on Jon. Nothing is preventing you from purchasing the books from Amazon, removing DRM and converting the book with Calibre. And even if you didn't want to go through that exercise, there's alway Kindle for PC that's freely available to all OSes, except Linux (damn that evil corporation).

I wasn't talking about myself. There are a lot of people out there who do read eBooks who can't buy from Amazon and get the eBook over to their ePub capable reader. Those people cannot continue the series because Barry has taken it away from them.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I wasn't talking about myself. There are a lot of people out there who do read eBooks who can't buy from Amazon and get the eBook over to their ePub capable reader. Those people cannot continue the series because Barry has taken it away from them.

Seriously Jon. Reread my last sentence. *Nothing* is preventing those other people (not you) from downloading and installing Kindle for PC/Kindle for iPad/Kindle for Mac/Kindle for Android/whatever Kindle for X that's out there, purchasing the books from Amazon and continue reading. Inconvenience? Yes probably. Cannot continue? Wrong.

Are you saying that an author can't make decisions about their property without checking with the reader base first?

[crossi]

No he hasn't. They can just continue the series on their pc or mac or ipad or smartphone or tablet.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by crossi

No he hasn't. They can just continue the series on their pc or mac or ipad or smartphone or tablet.

That doesn't always work. That's not the reason people chose the reader they have. They didn't choose it to then read a different format on a different device.

[osnova]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Hey, if you are right on that, then why worry about publisher "price fixing" cartels? That's SOO 19th century! Obviously, there's no need for government intervention there, right? And no need for an open Internet policy,either, because we can trust Comcast and the cable companies not to throttle the competition. As for those consumer-friendly mobile carriers....

Because, price gouging by one player is not necessarily illegal unless there is an abuse of a dominant position. If Amazon starts raising prices, the response would be competition.

Price fixing (agreeing on pricing by competitors) is illegal always and should be punished under the law because it prevents competition from working.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by monkeyluis

I read a blog post of his that said he didn't care how you got his books, even pirating. He seems to like amazon, as an author, because it is easier to deal with than any other means.

Konrath's really big about "Just read some ebooks, okay?" Not necessarily his, and not necessarily from legit sources... he's aware that authors do best when they have a huge set of reader-fans, and that reader-fans have always included teenagers, broke college students, graveyard-shift waitresses, and grandfathers in hospitals, who don't have the money to buy new books--but if they read & love an author, they might buy the next book by that author, and they'll otherwise tell people, and some of those will buy books.

Konrath understands that authors need to encourage *readers*, not customers; they're overlapping fields, and an author needs both long-term... but readers will create customers, and it doesn't work the other way around. Readers who enjoy an author will become multiple future customers. Customers who didn't care for the book won't--especially if they felt cheated on the price. People who got the book for free and didn't like it might tell a friend, "it's not to my taste, but maybe you'll enjoy it;" people who payed $13.99 and found it flat & boring will tell their friends "it's a rip-off; don't bother."

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by osnova

Because, price gouging by one player is not necessarily illegal unless there is an abuse of a dominant position. If Amazon starts raising prices, the response would be competition.

Price fixing (agreeing on pricing by competitors) is illegal always and should be punished under the law because it prevents competition from working.

+1
Specifically, it prevents competition among the *conspirators*.
Among the "coincidences" that launched with the Price Fix Cartel is the fact that *all* ebooks moved to exactly the same price range. And that the minimum price set by the price-fix six just happened to be a 30% increase over the Amazon pricing that so offended them.
In cartel cases, those "coincidences" are called smoking guns.

Here's an example of a busted cartel:
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/45c6f...#axzz1p2oCOGEg
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...676539124.html

Pretty much the same practices, no?
A cartel is a cartel is a cartel whether it fixes prices for oil, soap, or digital files.

Price differences between detergents were generally aligned, although two brands were allowed to be slightly more expensive. The cartel also co-ordinated promotion policies.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem is he's taken his latest John Rain book and made it unavailable for people who have previously read the series in ePub. That to me is not a nice thing to do for people who like the series and read eBooks in ePub.

Depending how you look at it yes. However, it is DRM free, so that should be supported - and makes it trivial to convert to whatever you want.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I wasn't talking about myself. There are a lot of people out there who do read eBooks who can't buy from Amazon and get the eBook over to their ePub capable reader. Those people cannot continue the series because Barry has taken it away from them.

There can't be many that can't download a file from a website, surely? Ok, a few people will be too dumb to do that - but some of them can be shown.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I guess, once again, I'm the outcast. First, I think the marketing surveys are accurate. They certainly reflect my habits and those of people I know. More importantly, as large as the online bookselling marketplace is, more books are still bought at b&m stores. That may be changing, but it hasn't changed yet.

Second, every naysayer (and me, too, as a non-naysayer) regarding the marketing surveys isn't buttressing the contrary view with any fact, just anecdotal evidence or personal experience. Which leads me to one of the failings in MR discussions: too many of us take as established fact that represents the views of the majority (or even a plurality) of book buyers and readers both anecdotal evidence that supports our perspective or our own personal experience -- and we become adamant that our "facts" are the only true "facts". Perhaps we are deluding ourselves.

Well that is quite true. For me the difference between how adventurous I am online as opposed to in a bookstore could be characterised with words such as 'staggering'. So it's probably natural for me not to be able to see any veracity in a mentioned market survey that says otherwise.

But of course, my case is also different because I'm in Australia. The cost of books in bookstores actually prohibits experimentation for me. Whereas the noticeably more friendly costing in online purchasing - whether for physical books or ebooks - encourages the opposite. The only time I find that a b&m bookstore encourages any kind of wild purchasing is at the bargain table, where you can pick up ludicrously cheap novels that the store is trying to get rid of.

My experience in b&m stores is that I tend to limit my perusing to my favourite genre(s) because at that price I don't want to take too many risks. Then I look over the bargain table to see if any pops out at $5 that I can take a punt on. Alot of that changed when I realised I could purchase from Book Depository for a third of the price and I could explore more widely knowing that I wasn't going to waste any money in the bookstore anyway, but that was a relatively recent thing.

[MV64]

Originally Posted by caleb72

Well that is quite true. For me the difference between how adventurous I am online as opposed to in a bookstore could be characterised with words such as 'staggering'. So it's probably natural for me not to be able to see any veracity in a mentioned market survey that says otherwise.

As someone who works with ebooks and ereaders every day, I have an extensive "marketing study" of personal experience to fall back on. Of the thousands of people I've talked to or helped, a great majority read MORE now that they have ebooks, and are more willing to try new authors (especially free ones and classics) because it is not cost-prohibitive. Also looking at the rankings of non-popular authors that shoot up charts in ebook formats is a good indicator that people are finding titles okay.

But I don't think one is better than the other. I personally like going and looking through the books myself, but it's not hard to do an Internet search and browse that way, either. I would say neither holds a statistical advantage over the other.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That doesn't always work. That's not the reason people chose the reader they have. They didn't choose it to then read a different format on a different device.

It's still a matter of inconvenience, though.