Discoverability

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by darryl

Thanks. I'm delighted you replied with examples. It seemed to me that with agency pricing this should not be happening with non-Indies, and I would be surprised to see Amazon beaten in price on Indies very often.

I have only checked the first book on your list, In Truth and Claw. With this book at least you seem to be comparing prices in different countries. In Australia, for instance, the book is currently available on both Amazon and Google Play at $A7.47 including 10% GST. (€4.78 at current exchange rates). Amazon US currently have the book at $9.99 with the price set by PRH. Kobo US also, as expected, have the book at the same price. Amazon.de have the book for €5.40. I don't have a US Google account and would have to jump through too many hoops to get the US price. However, given agency, if it is cheaper at Google Play books in the US I suspect Amazon and Kobo would want to know why!

If your Google Play Store account is in one country and your account with Amazon is in a different country you may well find many instances like this. An account with Amazon.de may be worthwhile for you if Amazon will allow it. Kobo users have long recognised the benefits of "travelling", though Amazon are not quite so accommodating with this practice.

Both accounts are in Estonia. My Kobo account is in Germany, because otherwise Kobo won't let me use PayPal. I have not "traveled" with Amazon, because I've heard they're much stricter than Kobo in that regard.

Most tradpubs I see at Google and Amazon are UK editions. Why the differences in price, I've no idea.

[darryl]

@John F. That's interesting. An agency ebook in the US cheaper at Google Books than either Amazon or Kobo. I suspect this one is a glitch.

@Sirtel. You quoted all Amazon prices in dollars (presumably US dollars) and then converted them to Euro's, always resulting in significantly higher Amazon prices. This to me seems to indicate that, wherever your Amazon account may be, you are buying from a store outside of the EU. Estonia does not yet seem to have its own Amazon store so I suspect you may have an Estonian based account with amazon.com. As you say, Amazon does not encourage "travelling", though I'm not sure how they feel about separate accounts in different countries, or whether it actually breaches their terms of service. I suspect that you are probably better off with your existing setup in most instances, since the EU is hardly noted for its competitive book pricing.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by darryl

@Sirtel. You quoted all Amazon prices in dollars (presumably US dollars) and then converted them to Euro's, always resulting in significantly higher Amazon prices. This to me seems to indicate that, wherever your Amazon account may be, you are buying from a store outside of the EU. Estonia does not yet seem to have its own Amazon store so I suspect you may have an Estonian based account with amazon.com.

Yes, that's right. I cannot buy from any other Amazon store without changing my country and I'm leery of doing that. There have been instances of Amazon closing a person's account for "travelling". I could use a VPN, of course, but at this point it's just simpler to buy tradpubs from Google or Kobo. All my books go into Calibre anyway.

[pwalker8]

Now that Apple has rolled out the new operating system and the new ebook store is fully up and running, I thought I would revisit this with my impressions of the Apple book store as well as other thoughts.

By an interesting coincidence, tor send out their news letter today with a couple of interesting articles, the first was an article on what the author considered the 10 best completed SF&F series. Given that it's a tor newsletter, it's heavily weighted towards Tor authors and series with similar styles as the Tor style. (Just as a comment, if the author considers Glen Cook a lesser known SF&F author and has Harry Potter and LOTR at the bottom of the list, then we likely have very different taste) The other was 17 fall books we cannot wait for. Once again, heavily weighted towards Tor authors.

The Tor news letter is something that I really wish all the imprints would do. Hey, I'm a reader who buys lots and lots of books. Let me know about your books and authors, both new and backlist. I can't say that there are a lot of Tor authors that I really like a lot, but there are a couple. How expensive can it be to put out something like this?

Ok, my impressions of the Apple ebook store. My initial impression is I'm impressed. It's very similar to the Apple music store and movie/tv store. Lot's of curated lists, best seller lists and related books lists. It definite appeals to the way that I approach book buying.

One nice feature is they have what they call free series starters, a bunch of free first of the series books, including several that I had actually heard of (Basilisk Station, the first Honor Harrington book for example[and yes, I know that it's been in Baen's free Library for ages]). Also a lot I had never heard of. This is a situation where cover art makes a difference. If it's got a cover that looks like a Romance book, the odds are pretty good that it's a urban fantasy/romance book.

The various books that I checked in the curated lists also had books in the series (if it's a series) as well as related books (i.e. Amazon's if you like this, you might like one of these other books). Most of the time where I was familiar with the initial book and books in the related books list, the suggestions seemed reasonable.

The other thing is they seem to have a much better selection that they use to. I went ahead and got a Fafhrd and Grey Mouser omnibus by Fritz Leiber and the Legends of Camber of Culdi Trilogy omnibus by Katherine Kurtz, both put out by Open Road.

All in all, I think that this is good competition for Amazon. I'm certainly going to start using the Apple bookstore as a tool. While Apple's FairPlay DRM is more cumbersome to remove, I can do it, so I'm not worried about losing access to these books or format shifting the books if I want to read them on my Kobo as well as my iPad.