The New e-reader War

3-8-12 Here’s an update.  Don’t know how long the link will work DOJ Takes on Apple & Publishers in Price Fixing

 

With days getting longer and temperatures getting warmer, my nose running and eyes watering, it sure does feel like spring is coming.  The other sure sign, no football.  SIGH!  It’s the only sport I actually watch, so when the season ends, it’s withdrawal time and weekends are not fun.

I was reading an article on the web about the revolt that’s slowly happening among ebook reader owners.  I often whine about the lack of value for the money with ebooks, especially those from small press publishers.  $5.50-$5.99 for a novella is just plain silly.  The vast majority of books I’m reading these days are purchased thru Amazon on the 4-for-3 plan.  I do buy some just released hardcovers by favorite authors, and I also buy used hardcovers and trade paperbacks.  With the 4-for-3 promotion, I’m paying $5.99 for a full novel – and many are 300+ pages and 120,000+ words!  Why I should pay  $5.50-$5.99 for 35,000 words of a badly done novella?  Is convenience worth that kind of money?  Makes no sense to me.  But the big problem with e-reader owners seems to lay with the price of of the ebook version of newly released hardcovers.  Not having a dedicated e-reader, and still reading most of my books in print, that hasn’t been a personal issue, but I do feel they have a point.

Americans love gadgets.  Especially electronic gadgets!  Smartphones are the hottest of the hot – until the cell providers start charging by usage, or throttling speeds on those who suck up too much capacity.  By 2013, air time will be really rationed as demand outstrips capacity, despite the FCC making more frequencies available.   But how cool is it to watch a movie on a smartphone?  Apparently, very cool.  Well, e-readers, Apple’s I-pads, and now Amazon’s Fire and B&N new Nook don’t call friends, but they are doing battle in the ebook and entertainment wars. Welcome to the brave new world – you can pay silly prices for little gadgets and watch movies on business card sized screens, or lose the phone and watch them on slightly bigger screens (Kindle Fire and Nooks), or join Apple I-pad and get the biggest screen.  Bottom line – what do you want, what will you pay upfront, and how much are willing to go on paying over the useful life of the product?  (Life expectancy being only slightly longer than that of the average fruit fly.)

In the beginning, the purpose of e-books was to eliminate printing, physical storage and distribution, bricks and mortar stores, and all the associated costs for the infrastructure and personnel.  OK, makes sense.  A HUGE chunk of the book cost just went away. (Yes, yes, I know there’s all the formatting crap for various software packages, but I do that all the time in my work.  It’s a pain, not brain surgery, so publishers spare us the drama queen act.)   The big plus for owners of e-readers remains the convenience of being able to carry hundreds of hardcover and paperbacks in a device that weighs less than a small paperback.  (The durability of such devices is a whole different issue I’m simply avoiding here.)  A win-win, right?  NO!  Seems basic human greed has entered into the equation.  It usually does.

Ebook readers were sold on the basic premise that ebooks would cost less than print and Amazon promised bestsellers for $9.99.  Makes sense. Early e-readers certainly had a hefty price tag, but cheap ones are out there these days.  It might just be a break even on cost, but the convenience is worth it, especially for those who travel a lot.  When Amazon introduced the Kindle, I ran the numbers on book pricing and figured it would take me 5 years to save enough to pay for the nearly $400 device – or 3 years longer than the device would last.  Well, now they sell (a MUCH smaller version) for as little as $79.  At that price, yes, you can get it back in savings if you read a lot of hardcovers, reap the convenience of an e-reader, but lose the ability to ‘send it on down the line’.  Now it’s just a question of personal preference.  Many people will pay for the convenience factor – and publishers are loving them!

From the beginning, my reason for not getting a e-reader had less to do with price than with value derived from sharing books.  Passing on the pleasure of a book to another.  Amazon tried to address that by allowing owners of ebooks to ‘loan’ their ebook for a limited amount of time.   Of course that other person would need a Kindle AND have to be in range of a cell signal.  (Hummmmm – that leaves my brother out!)  Well, I don’t want to be a librarian – despite the fact that I worked several happy summers in libraries in my youth.  I want to give my books away.  I want, “Bye Bye!  Have a good life where ever you go!”  Not, “So long.  See you in a few weeks!”

No question, in the convenience race, ebooks win hands down.  My house if littered with piles of books – and piles of corrugate from Amazon that needs recycling. My hundreds of ebooks sit unnoticed in computer hard drive.  But I can send the print books to my brother, and if his wife wants to read them she can.  Then they go to their friends or to PBS for swapping!  Or they head to a book sale as a fund raiser.  I give books to a neighbor who lets other neighbors select what they wants and takes the rest to the Friends of Library sale.  That works for me.  But all of that is work.  I spends hours each week wrapping and shipping books, packing books to be given away, and re-stacking the ever growing mountain of to-be-read books.  All that clutter would disappear with ebooks.  But then, so would all the third, fourth and fifth readers the books have, readers I’ve never even met.  Readers who can’t afford used books, much less e-readers and ebooks.

All my own warm, gooey sentiment for print books aside,  it’s the owners of e-readers that resent the current pricing structure – one that publishers control, not Amazon or B&N.  Understandable.  That Amazon 4-for-3 promotion that has me buying books like crazy does NOT extend to ebooks!  And take a look at the price of ebooks for current hardcovers.  It’s not the $9.99 that everyone thought they would be.  Publishers see ebooks as a premium service where their profits are larger. “You can afford an e-reader, well be prepared to pay!”  And Amazon is now selling more ebooks than hardcovers.  As long as that happens, it’s unlikely prices will come down any time soon. Publishers want their cash cow alive, well, and all theirs!   Some authors are getting clever and doing end runs.  The Detachment by Barry Eisler was released 6 months early in ebook prior to the print copy – from a indie publisher.  Welcome to publishing’s new frontier, well known authors going indie.  Can you blame them?  The only ones raking in more money on ebook price gouging are the publishers, not the authors.  And it’s readers who get their pockets picked.

I can sit back and watch the whole war play out.  I don’t have a dog in this fight, so let ‘em rip.  Amazon and the DOJ vs Apple and old line publishers.  The poor readers are forgotten.  Steaming about cost, and poor quality, they find themselves paying more than they ever thought for the privilege of convenience.  I read the Amazon reviews for a book and I am amazed at how many have blistering negatives not about the book content, but the ebook and pricing/quality issues!  That has got steam the authors.  The other side effect of this ‘luxury pricing’ attitude is the fact escalating ebook costs have cut deeply into my willingness to read novellas and short novels from small press pubs and new authors.  I’m a small scale user of ebooks, so I doubt I’m much missed, but I do try new authors all the time and I’m happy to promote the good ones here, on PBS and elsewhere.  Now, I’m reluctant to send the price of a discounted new print book for a novella or short novel in electronic format that I can’t pass on to friends.  I have to believe there are others out there like me.  Books are my one big vice, but even I have have my limits.  Plus ebooks are up against Amazon’s 4-for-3, PBS swaps, and used books, so they aren’t essential for my entertainment.   I’m good.  I don’t know for how long, but right now, I’m OK.  Let the ebook wars rage.  And may the consumer FINALLY win one!  Then I’ll buy an e-reader!  Maybe.

Somebody Hit the Snooz Alarm

I feel like I’ve been swimming in a sea of mediocre books lately.  It isn’t limited to genre either.  There are a slew of mysteries due for release in January – hardcover, of course – that I’m lusting for, but right now I’m just depressed over my inability to find an excellent read.  Over on PBS (Paperpack Swap) they mentioned a big book sale at Bookcloseouts.com.  Oh wow, did I go nuts.  No, the books I wanted the most weren’t there – big surprise – but a lot of others were.  I went crazy twice.  Once doing mystery/thrillers and whatever paranormal books on my wish list that I could find.  Then I went back and ran amok in the fantasy section – or wizards and nonsense as my brother dubbed it years ago.  Raymond Fiest, Robert Jordan and many others.  Soon, over 30 new hardcovers cost $2-3 dollars each will add to my alarming pile of to-be-read books.

Authors After Dark – In Retrospect

Well, it was quite a weekend.  There were a ton of authors and what a great group they were.  Unfortunately, Bianca D’Arc didn’t make it due to a sudden issue with her mother, which I gather was not good.  Then Jacquelyn Frank went dashing down the hall, caught her foot somehow and took a bad header.  She was taken to the hospital and spent the night there.  When I left around noon today she hadn’t made it back, but they were expecting her to be released.  I skipped all of last night thanks to a horrible headache triggered by the smell of the chemical sanitizer used in the hotel bathroom.  I understand I was not alone in developing a nasty headache, so maybe it was something in the ventilation system.

In Retrospect – Part One: Looking Back at Reviews

Like most people, or maybe unlike, I go back and revisit my ideas to see if they’ve changed.  There’s almost no way to keep personal likes and dislikes out of review.  If something makes you mad, or upset, or just violates your principals, maintaining an emotional distance just doesn’t happen.  In my work I deal with data and form my opinions based on facts, but even there two people can look at the same data and see different things.  If opinions vary when dealing with numbers and facts vary, it’s inevitable that reactions will vary even more widely when forming opinions on books – after all, a book is intended to elicit a reaction from the reader.

So I went back and revisited some of my reviews to see if I still felt the same way – positive or negative – about some of the books I’ve reviewed.  To do this, I looked primarily at those I like the best and the least.  I don’t give many A reviews and even fewer F reviews, so the lists aren’t long, but I did include a few B books that might be deserving of a second look.

The Pecuilar Morality of ‘The One’

You see it time and again in romance novels, ‘The One’, a Heart Mate, ‘Life Mate’, an inescapable destined mate – and more often than not, there can be only one.  Werewolves do it on an almost universal basis.  Dragons do it, especially shifter dragons.  Vampires do it, though it’s less universal.  Even some cats do it, though more often than not cats with just one mate are seen as the family oddball. (Nik Vorislav in Shelly Laurenston’s hysterically funny Here Kitty, Kitty)  But the morality around securing ‘the One’ seems to get a bit flexible.

The idea that a male has one true mate to exclusion of all others and is destined to monogamy with that One is remarkably attractive to women.  That makes it a very attractive trope in paranormal romance.  It might not insure they’re loved for themselves, but it does insure a faithful, caring male.  In the majority of the books I’ve read, the ‘One’ is often the only one capable of acting as breeder as well.  Occasionally, breeding is separate, but it is usually an exclusive right of the One. So now you have a male (on rare occasion a female) with a biological imperative that’s two fold, the need to secure a desirable mate and the need to procreate.  This makes the female irresistible.  It also provides the stability and emotional security for the female – the guarantee he will remain exclusively yours and value you as the prize you are.  A seductive idea with great appeal, but one that often comes at a price.  To reap the benefits, your mate must be a True Mate or Life Mate, as opposed to a mate (lower case), because otherwise it might well go the way of broken marriages in the human world.

Mental Meanderings

I regularly cruise blogs and forums on books and recently joined GoodReads.  It’s interesting to see how differently people view a book.  I made a HUGE exception to my ‘No Silhouettes Desire’ and got The Tycoon’s Rebel Bride from PaperBack Swap.  Why?  How could I be suckered in like that?  Simple – Maya Banks.  I can now plainly state that even in the able hands of one of the better writers out there this series is trite, formulaic, and unoriginal – in short, exactly what Silhouette and the Desire line readers wants.  On Good Reads it had anywhere from 5* to DNF.  I gave it 3*, mostly for the quality of the writing, not the plot or the characters.  I’m sure Ms Banks is being well paid for her trilogy, of which this is the middle book – and she should be.  Like many popular authors of full length novels, she has a living to make and these short books are perfect.  The story lines are constrained by the publisher so little innovation is possible, or welcome by readers, so they are far easier to write, yet sell well – if briefly.  Desire is and has been a hugely popular Silhouettes line for exactly that reason, so they’ve found a niche and authors and audience alike get to enjoy it.  Except for some of us who sit and wonder how anyone can read more than one of these a decade.  Naturally, the folks who DO read Silhouettes Desire line wonder how the hell I can slog my way through hundreds of pages of murder and mayhem, so to each their own I guess.

PaperbackSwap.com – Review to Date

If nothing else, I can be tenacious as a tick.  I prefer to think of it as determination, though others might account it closer to Missouri Mule stubborn.  After a really bad start and a less awful second portion I have now swapped over 100 books and I still don’t know it all.  PaperBack Swap is actually a bit more complicated than it appears at first blush.

I first wrote about PBS back in March and then did an update in April thinking I knew the site by then.  HA!  I’m still learning some of the things and frankly I do not get other bits at all.

At it’s most basic, you list books and swap them for 1 point per completed transaction and then request new books with your points.  See, very simple.  But a lot of the books swapped are well worn, so you then use ‘Requestor Conditions’ to limit this, as well as add things like, ‘currently in a smoke free home’.  Then you can swap with your buddies – those who have similar interests to your own.  But wait, there’s more!  (I’ve always wanted to say this while selling vegetable peelers that can shave shoes at 2AM in an infomercial.)

Blogging Fixations – Amazon, eBooks and the Future of Publishing

Every blog has its own fixations. Some concern themselves with the lofty analysis of romance in ways only academics care about. Some focus on the nature of the hero and what makes him a hero – flawed, as he is. Some address publication in general and do so with great perceptiveness. I mostly review books with the odd editorial. One thing book blogs seem to have in common is very strong feelings about the impact of the business models of Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, Borders and other major retailers on publishing and book distribution, promotion and the growth of ebooks as a market segment. #Amazonfail and its ripples are still being felt, and the importance of Amazon and Barnes and Nobel rankings to authors and publishers even makes it into novels themselves. (Death and the Chick Lit discussed it as an author talking point at a fictitious conference.) The latest concern combines the two issues as Amazon expands its many tentacled empire building beyond being the most powerful estore seller of books into publishing as well. Dear Author expressed their concerns this past weekend with their AmazonEncore post.

The Booksquare blog just a posted column on ebook costs and consumer perceptions of ‘value’ in formats with regards to the pricing of David Baldacci’s latest release, The First Family, on Kindle, priced well above the $9.99 Amazon had promised for bestsellers – at least temporarily. (See the link to Mike Shatzkin’s blog on the Booksquare link above.) Mike Shatzkin makes some truly excellent points and more importantly, technically correct ones. But there is still a lot of pricing reality that must be dealt with.

Paperback Swap – An Update on My Recent Experiences

Ok, I did an entry on my initial experience with Paperback Swap, the online book swapping site.  I shipped out 16 books, over half were trade paperbacks ($10-$14 ea) and all were in excellent to like new condition.

Here are my results so far:

First book (intro point) – excellent condition even though it was 4 years old.  Success!

Second trade (intro point) – such bad condition it should not have been listed. Worst failure to date.

Here’s what I did to avoid the issue in the future.  There is an area under the ‘Settings’ section of your account for ‘Requestor Conditions,’ where you can modify your book conditions.  Initially I required they be from a smoke free environment – I have severe allergies to smoke.  I rewrote them to add: “No broken, deformed spines or badly worn books.  No bookcrossing books.”  Surely this would resolve the problem, right?

Battling Blogs – The Romancelandia SMACKDOWN! Update

Having nothing much better to do, I perused some of the replies to the posts on Dear Author, Smart Bitches – who share many common members – and Romance B(u)y the Book, as well as bystander Teach Me Tonight.

I’d say the reactions have been less inflammatory and acrimonious than expected on the ‘mean girls’ blogs and about as smirkingly smug and self-satisfied as expected on the self congratulatory ‘nice girls’ blog.  Teach Me Tonight is wisely staying above the fray, but did link to the full text of Buonfiglio’s talk.

I’m inclined to give more points to the ‘mean girls’ for being very specific in their criticisms and critiques.  Plus they do include salient points about the need to ‘defend’ research and commentary in academic setting, including master’s thesis and doctoral dissertations.  Academia is as backstabbing and bloodthirsty as any other environment where you have 500 people competing for 5 positions.