Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Just a Thought



I'm going to take the unpopular path on eBooks. Here's why Amazon is right about the cost of eBooks: when you can buy a used copy of the physical book for significantly less than the eBook, eBook prices are too high! Neither the author nor the publisher benefit when we buy used books. But as long as eBooks are more expensive than used, I'm going to buy used every time, or not buy at all. Mainstream Publishers are so freakin' short-sighted on this issue and others that it's no wonder they are dead in the water and don't even know it.


When I publish an eBook version of one of my books, I make sure that it's $5.00 or less. The Kindle version of my novel Persephone's Torch is just a buck-ninety-nine. I don't feel that eBooks should cost more than that. They cost nothing to produce and are 100 percent add-on revenue. In asking publishers to reduce the cost of eBooks, Amazon is still allowing them to sell eBook versions for considerably more than they are worth. 


I've been in the book trade for thirty years and I know how it works. Mainstream publishers are simply Being Greedy on the one hand, and Fearful on the other: fearful that cheap eBooks will kill their sales. This is pure myopic bullshit. Publishers cannot continue to live in the Dark Ages for much longer and expect to survive. 


-- Freder

www.ducksoup.me

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