An SMH opinion piece in love with the Kindle. Some lively comments…including the point that the Kindle is not the only e-reader out there. But the Kindle’s ease of use is hard to beat.
You know how women are supposed to go nuts for handbags and shoes? Well, okay, I have a little thing for handbags, but what I really, really have a thing for are handmade notebooks, and these ones are cute and eco-friendly too. Remember, writers, your little notebook is a tax-deductible expense.
The big publishers are continuing their creeping progress towards acceptance of new technologies, with Penguin Book’s release of a try-before-buy iPhone app for new SF/F book The Left Hand of God. It’s got a great blurb…and the chapters certainly held my interest…unfortunately, paying $20 for an ebook I can get in physical form for less than $15 kind of lost my interest (I’m not a pay-more-for-instant-gratification kind of gal — I like going to the bookstore). To be fair, books in Australia do cost more than $20 so we are getting the printing cost subtracted with that app price.
I don’t understand why ebooks cost so much.
Well, the publishers still need to pay for the design and layout and conversion-to-20-million-formats and distribution and marketing, and the author’s time and effort is still just as valuable.
The way I see it, those production costs were always factored in to the price of the book, and reduce over time as more copies are sold (until the magical now-profitable point is reached). Whereas, with ebooks, every single time one is bought, it saves on the print and transport costs associated with that one copy. Why aren’t those reduced costs being reflected in the price?
In the case of the book app, it costs a lot to produce an app. But I have to say, as interesting as it was to try out The Left Hand of God, the experience of reading it on the app was no better than buying a DRM-free version and reading it on Stanza. In fact, in some ways, worse, because I don’t want an app per book. I want one app, lots of books, ie Stanza and Kindle.
So instead of the publishers developing an app per book, how about working on releasing excerpts via Stanza and making Fictionwise and other ebook sites better ie easier to browse and find new recommendations a la Amazon?
The app thing is another version of DRM. Publishers are still too busy thinking about what they want to consider what it is their readers want.