Ebook prices all over the place

[silvania]

Originally Posted by hamh

wow, I never know there is such big difference on price....

may be the sony ebook reader is the best to get economically

As long as they're still in the ebook business a year from now, yes.

A lot of people think large companies are safer to buy from than small. Keep in mind that large companies will drop product lines after spending millions on them the first time they have 2 bad quarters in a row. A smaller company who has been alive for a few years and whose only business is ebooks has other risks, but at least you know they aren't going to just choose to exit the ebook business based on short term bumps in the road.

I could rattle off several prominent examples, but i think you all are familiar with the history of ebook roadkill

[JSWolf]

Amazon is a good example. Try to redownload any of the ebooks youi've pruchased from them. Good luck.

[junkml]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Amazon is a good example. Try to redownload any of the ebooks youi've pruchased from them. Good luck.

Exactly. I bought quite a few ms reader books from amazon. Now, if anything happens to the copies on my machine, I'm SOL.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by silvania

As long as they're still in the ebook business a year from now, yes.

I think that's the crux of the problem: All of this is too new for sellers, distributors and publishers to have come up with a workable, profitable sales model, and it's further skewed by publishers and/or authors reluctant to participate in the e-book market due to concerns about piracy and just plain lack of information. Everybody's still trying to figure out what works, and a lot of them will turn out to be dead wrong.

I'm pretty sure the beginnings of the print industry went through a lot of this inequality, thanks to new marketers trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. Eventually, workable e-book models will also be worked out, and the industry will settle into predictable patterns, and more homogenous sales models. It should happen sooner, once the publishing industry begins to ease up on its innate fear of change (or is forced to embrace it, whether they like it or not), and begin to honestly try to support and pursue the e-book market.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Amazon is a good example. Try to redownload any of the ebooks youi've pruchased from them. Good luck.

I was just reading this thread over at the Adobe Digital Editions forum:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bc4a07a

People upgraded to a different version of the reader software and now can't open their books. There are students that couldn't read their textbooks, people who had large libraries of purchased material that they can only read by downgrading to the old version. It's been over two months and not a peep out of Adobe on fixing this. My public library's Overdrive portal flatly warns people about upgrading versions. Sadly it seems more and more of their new offerings are Adobe rather than Mobipocket. So many people in that thread are screaming that they'll never buy another ebook again. It's hard to heat up the ebook market when you have some of the biggest players actively cooling it with poor customer service.

[JSWolf]

WOW! Adobe is really screwing people over but good. They are not even trying to help with a problem that they themselves caused. I'm glad I've had the foresight to never purchase any books in PDF.

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I think that's the crux of the problem: All of this is too new for sellers, distributors and publishers to have come up with a workable, profitable sales model, and it's further skewed by publishers and/or authors reluctant to participate in the e-book market due to concerns about piracy and just plain lack of information. Everybody's still trying to figure out what works, and a lot of them will turn out to be dead wrong.

I'm pretty sure the beginnings of the print industry went through a lot of this inequality, thanks to new marketers trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. Eventually, workable e-book models will also be worked out, and the industry will settle into predictable patterns, and more homogenous sales models. It should happen sooner, once the publishing industry begins to ease up on its innate fear of change (or is forced to embrace it, whether they like it or not), and begin to honestly try to support and pursue the e-book market.

Valid points...but dude...the industry has had 25+ years to prepare for this...I simply do not buy into the "...we are all so confused by this new fangled digital format called a...a..???...ebook...is that it?..."

horse pucky...hehehehehe....but I hear what you are saying and it's the authors I feel sorry for...that is who has always gotten the short end of the stick.

[HappyMartin]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Valid points...but dude...the industry has had 25+ years to prepare for this...I simply do not buy into the "...we are all so confused by this new fangled digital format called a...a..???...ebook...is that it?..."

horse pucky...hehehehehe....but I hear what you are saying and it's the authors I feel sorry for...that is who has always gotten the short end of the stick.

The digital wave has been sweeping over various industries for some time.

Graphic designers, repro, photography and so on. Every industry seems to think firstly that they are a special case and so for them nothing will happen. Then they think the technology will fail, that the price will remain too high, that no one will adopt the technology and if they ignore it it will all just go away. Then the wave dumps a whole lot of them on the beach with sea sand up their bums while their smarter brethren swim off into a successful financial future.

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Valid points...but dude...the industry has had 25+ years to prepare for this...I simply do not buy into the "...we are all so confused by this new fangled digital format called a...a..???...ebook...is that it?..."

Spend some time inside the book publishing industry. After that, it's not that hard to believe, really. Denial is a powerful force.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

Valid points...but dude...the industry has had 25+ years to prepare for this...

Well, 25 years may be a stretch. After all, PDFs can arguably be called the first e-books (in potential, at least), and they didn't start to become prevalent until the mid-nineties. But yes, the publishing industry panicked and collectively stuck their heads in the sand, when they could have jumped into the driver's seat and showed everyone how to do it.

The rest of the print industry (as HappyMartin pointed out, and as a fellow alumnus of the print industry, I concur) has fallen into 2 factions: Those who followed the wave, and became digital printers and web producers; and those who have steadfastly remained in the traditional press business, and who have seen their numbers dwindle to a bare fraction of what they were pre-1970.

The publishing industry faced the same challenges, but instead of some of the publishers taking it on, it seems almost all of them passed, leaving the challenges to be tackled by new players. Therefore, any of the problems they suffer as a result of technology steamrolling over them is certainly their own fault.

That said, it doesn't help us get over the issue, which is a chaotic and uneven market, too many formats, and multiple DRM-damaged sales models. And we will continue to have these issues, as long as the traditional publishing industry fights the progression of e-books through their hold on an old and unresponsive system.

Instead of spending too much time berating the publishing industry, and getting nowhere, it would help if we could find some way to finally get them on-board with us, and work together to a common goal. If we can't do that, we will be faced with many more years of a screwed-up book market, until the publishers finally roll over or die off, leaving the rest of us to pick the gems out of the ashes.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Instead of spending too much time berating the publishing industry, and getting nowhere, it would help if we could find some way to finally get them on-board with us, and work together to a common goal. If we can't do that, we will be faced with many more years of a screwed-up book market, until the publishers finally roll over or die off, leaving the rest of us to pick the gems out of the ashes.

Well, said. Telling them to just remove DRM and all will be well is not a solution that they will accept currently so it is beating a dead horse which happens a lot around here. Better solutions need to be found considering all the goals, including the use of these documents in a public library.

Dale

[JSWolf]

The best solution would be for one reflowable format to be prevalent without DRM. That would solve the Tower of eBable issue we currently have. I receive email from Sony telling of new books. One of them looked interesting... [i]The Last Days of Kryptoni/i] by Kevin J. Anderson. Anyway, I went looking for it elsewhere and found it's notreally out that much in ebook form. Most of the shops don't have it.

Also I was looking at the book Strange Candy by Laurel K. Hamilton and found they ebook shops have it at the HC price and it's in a god awful PB format (but cheaper then the HC) and I sent email to PaperBackDigitial, BooksOnBoard, and Fictionwise. PaperBackDigital & BooksOnBoard both got back to me saying it's the publisher who sets the price, nothing they can do. And Fictionwise has yet to reply. But what they could do is go to the publisher and mention the price issue with see if they will lower their price.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I receive email from Sony telling of new books. One of them looked interesting... [i]The Last Days of Kryptoni/i] by Kevin J. Anderson. Anyway, I went looking for it elsewhere and found it's notreally out that much in ebook form. Most of the shops don't have it.

Fictionwise, eReader, Mobipocket, BooksOnBoard, Diesel & Connect all have it in their various formats. Didn't see it at PaperBackDigital.

Also I was looking at the book Strange Candy by Laurel K. Hamilton and found they ebook shops have it at the HC price and it's in a god awful PB format (but cheaper then the HC) and I sent email to PaperBackDigitial, BooksOnBoard, and Fictionwise. PaperBackDigital & BooksOnBoard both got back to me saying it's the publisher who sets the price, nothing they can do. And Fictionwise has yet to reply. But what they could do is go to the publisher and mention the price issue with see if they will lower their price.

This is the biggest problem I've had with some ebooks. I've been looking for certain books & I just can't get myself to pay HC price, sometimes as high as $28, for a book that's been out in PB for sometimes years.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The best solution would be for one reflowable format to be prevalent without DRM. That would solve the Tower of eBable issue we currently have.

Best solution for who? DRM is a fact of life and unless someone can find a better way to satisfy publishers we are stuck with it so get over it. There are ways to improve DRM.

Long before I started using mobile books I was using Bible programs on my computer. There is an interesting phenomenon in that market that may be applicable here. All major publishers in that market use DRM - so if you can't trust a Pastor who can you trust? No one that I know complains about DRM in that camp since it is a fact of life. Now having said that there was a movement many years ago to adopt a single format among the manufactures, publishers of these programs. It was called STEP and I bought into it. The DRM was actually the same in all STEP books no matter who you bought from and the books could be freely moved between applications as well. It worked wonderfully.

Then Parsons (the company behind STEP) was purchased a couple of times and the impetus of XML appeared and every programmer on the planet wanted to adopt the format so slowly the STEP support eroded and will likely disappear completely, to be replaced by several other "standards." Vendors provides upgrades for customers to their new format and even upgrades to competitor books. In some cases these were free and in some cases these were cheap to cover the copyright expenses for the author so I ended up spending quite a bit of money upgrading considering the number of books I own. Since these are study books, not just reading books, you never really get done with them.

I am not exactly sure where I am going with this but to say that even when there is a solution it may fall apart after a few years. By the way, these same companies are in the mobile market as well but they don't allow the same license to cover the mobile version and you have to rebuy books you already own although discounted. There is quite a bit of work needed in this market as well. I really wish I could integrate my mobile reading to include these books too. (For more information on this topic see my web site.) Sorry for the rambling but mobileread does not have a forum topic for this kind of discussion. Thanks for reading.

Dale

[nekokami]

I don't think you were rambling, and I think you're right, the STEP system is relevant as history to our current situation. And you're right about the warning of eroding format support, too. Which is part of why so many of us feel uncomfortable accepting DRM at all (especially those of us who re-read heavily).

I personally don't see a need for DRM outside of library loan systems and the like, but I know most publishers aren't there yet. I guess we'll see if what's happening in the music industry changes their minds at all.