06-04-2011, 06:10 PM | #1 |
Chasing Butterflies
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New Dead Horse: Faulkner!
I freely and upfront admit that this is a COMPLETELY DEAD HORSE, but speaking of pricing and eBooks and backlists...
I've been waiting for Faulkner to be turned into ebook goodness because I'd like to replace my copy of "The Sound and the Fury". Faulkner, it should be pointed out, died in 1962, but his works are still under copyright in the U.S. due to the Mickey Mouse extension, or so I understand. B&N had an excited WE HAVE FAULKNER NOW COME BUY post on their blog the other day and I wrote a little "buy sound and fury" to-do note for myself, and zipped over to the story today and... $9.99 for the Nook Book edition. And $8.12 for the paperback, brand new. Guess I should have seen that coming. So now I'm sitting here thinking to myself, "Self, you haven't read 'The Sound and the Fury' since college and the odds of you digging it out to read it for pleasure any day now are basically zero. Just sell the copy you have to Half Price Books for the penny they will offer you and go on with your non-cluttering efforts." And, the thing is, that's probably what I'll do. I'd LIKE to have Faulkner's classic work in my e-library, but there's just no way I'm going to spend more than $5 for a should-be-public-domain-anyway book that I can pick up in paperback form for a dollar. Seriously. But I feel bad about that. Probably it took forever to convince the folks down at Knopf Doubleday that the effort of slapping Faulkner into ebook form would be profitable, and I hate that I'm not helping out to prove that publishing the backlist can be successful, BUT... a classic I'm not going to pick up and read anytime soon and that I'm mainly acquiring for "library-stuffing" isn't worth more than $5 to me. Without overly BEATING A DEAD HORSE, and without a lot of side-nonsense about piracy and so forth, can we talk about how it makes people feel when their hoped-for backlist items come out at (what they feel is) a prohibitive price? I'd be interested to hear about that from a brand-loyalty perspective, if nothing else. Thanks. |
06-04-2011, 06:28 PM | #2 | |
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06-04-2011, 06:30 PM | #3 | |
Chasing Butterflies
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I'm a bit of a collector and I've been trying to use ebooks to clear out my shelves. Hence my heavy sighs when these things occur... |
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06-04-2011, 06:32 PM | #4 | |
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06-04-2011, 08:10 PM | #5 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Actually, it gets worse. What do you do when a backlist title comes out and it's poorly proofed? I have a list of around 20 books I'd like to buy, but if I have to do heavy reproofing, it's not worth the money/bother.
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06-04-2011, 08:42 PM | #6 |
Chasing Butterflies
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Proofing is also a major problem.
I HAVE found that if I bug B&N (or whoever) about it, it sometimes gets fixed, but as you say, I'm not being paid to be a gorram editor. |
06-04-2011, 11:28 PM | #7 |
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If you can wait until 2013, and Canada doesn't give in to the US/EU and bump up their copyright term, it will probably show up for free at PG-Canada. Strictly speaking, Americans aren't supposed to download works that are still in copyright in the US from there, but my view is that I'm not interested in paying a lot of money to money-grubbing estates and publishers. When Faulkner wrote The Sound and the Fury, he expected the copyright to expire in 1986. It's not like he's motivated to write anything else because of the copyright extensions, either.
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06-05-2011, 12:51 AM | #8 |
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They say an image represents 1000 words:
I think copyright is legit when you are trying to prevent others from manipulating your work. I don't agree when copyright is applied by third party's, defending the work of another because of the profits. |
06-05-2011, 12:52 AM | #9 | |
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06-05-2011, 04:02 AM | #10 | |
Chasing Butterflies
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Slapped in a DVD yesterday to watch and it had that unskippable YOU WOULDN'T DOWNLOAD A CAR stupid anti-piracy commercial on it, and I was furious. I'm like, I already bought the DVD, for gawds sake. If I was a pirate, I'd be downloading the rip that DIDN'T have this stupid commercial. QUIT PREACHING TO ME AND LET ME WATCH MY MOVIE. |
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06-05-2011, 04:12 AM | #11 |
Old Git
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Then as well as the stupid anti-piracy ads, you get lots of ads for films being issued on DVD at the same time by the same company. In some cases this includes the ad for the film you have bought the DVD for!
I wonder when they are going to realise how this sort of nonsense is playing into the hands of the "pirates". |
06-05-2011, 04:31 AM | #12 | |
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06-05-2011, 06:56 AM | #13 | |
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06-05-2011, 09:21 AM | #14 |
Chasing Butterflies
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That graphic is poetry. I wanted to weep, it's so true.
I actually don't mind previews that much... and lately everything we've bought has let us skip, so that's good. (Although I have the Blu-ray commercials. HEY MOVIE-MAKERS. IF I BOUGHT THE BLU-RAY VERSION, YOU DON'T HAVE TO SELL ME ON BLU-RAY ANY FURTHER.) But the PIRACY IS ILLEGAL warnings are ludicrous, because I bought this DVD dangit. Go away and let me watch it in peace. |
06-05-2011, 12:42 PM | #15 | |
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