but with $2.99 fast becoming the accepted price for an SF eBook, the Heinlein oeuvre that's finally and very belatedly making its way to the electronic marketplace is horribly overpriced, going for anywhere from $6.39 to $9.99 per selection.
Folks, Bob and Ginny made their pile (insofar as it was a "pile") off those books already. And they -- and I suppose now the estate -- owned the copyrights to most of them. So where's all that money going now that they're gone? (Please don't tell me "to support the Heinlein Society" -- because, if so, would you PLEASE spend some of that money and hire a decent web designer? Kthxbai.)
I just don't think it's right to stiff me for full freight for ecopies of books I already own in paper- and hardback. And it sure as hell isn't how you get the next generation of prospective Heinlein fans to read his books. I know TANSTAAFL, but the pricing is a slap in the face to fans old and new alike.
So, ebooks aren't the financial boon the publishers think they are, after all. Just like the movie distributers getting $12-$15 per seat for shitty movies, they are in such a hurry to snatch cash from buyers that they don't care about the overall plummet in purchases across the board. At least not until they wake up one morning and actually read something on their reports other than the bottom line. By then, Borders is gone, B&N is struggling, and Amazon is trying to drive everything to Kindle sales. All because they are jumping through their ass thinking ebooks are the savior of the industry (as opposed to publishing more and better books).
But the consumer won't pay full paperback prices for ebooks because they were sold the damn things based on saving trees and hard copy costs. Apple made iTunes a huge success by demanding 99 cent price points from the record companies. Ebooks will only succeed in the long term if they stay priced less than 25-30% of paperback prices. Unfortunately, the 23 year olds are hired by publishers because they are "hip" and are making idiotic marketing decisions based on their own whizz-bang wishful thinking, not on the habits of the consumers who actually buy the books and support the industry.
Haverty's is delivering more bookcases to our house tomorrow. I will buy a Kindle when Hell freezes over.
From what I've read about the fiction market, $2.99 is pretty much the maximum revenue price. I don't know the Sci Fi market is the same. But everything I've read leads me to believe you sell a lot more copies at $2.99 than $5.99.
I know that Jerry Pournelle is in the process of putting up his back catalog at the $2.99 price point. Which is why I can't fathom the idiocy of the Heinlein back catalog going in electronic format for print prices.
But I'm really just bitching about back catalogs. I don't know about new books. $4.99 is probably not a bad ebook price point for a book that's never before been published, and it ought to cover the editing/marketing overhead for an ebook.
I agree with you, Chris, about print books. I will always have more of them than I can conveniently shelve. But I'm happy reading fiction on the Kindle, and if you were to look at my Kindle, you'd see that's just about all I have on it. Easier to hold than a heavy print book, too.
I will also make the point (since you mentioned movies and the ridiculous ticket prices being charged these days) that just because ebooks make it easy for authors to distribute their work doesn't mean that the books that are going to "print" these days are worth a damn. Just look through the Kindle Science Fiction store sometime (and I mean, really look through it -- drive about 100 pages into the catalog). The sheer amount of self-published, derivative, unedited and mostly unreadable shite is unbelieveable. If other fiction ebook markets are like that, it may eventually add up to a surprise for Amazon.
The biggest market for ebooks is, not surprisingly, romance novels. Makes sense: professional women who derive guilty pleasure from reading trash novels are loving that co-workers don't see tawdry covers in their purses and subject them to snide commentary. But the cult of the amateur now dominates the ebook market as everybody with a shitty manuscript in their drawer can now peddle their wares to the world with no filter. And the books coming from mainstream publishers get shittier as the age, skill level, pay scale and taste of editors are driven ever downward.
Another interesting backlash against ebooks has been the textbook market. Students are finding out they get no used book discount nor a used book buyback with Kindle versions, making it a losing transaction all the way around when the book just disappears at semester's end.
Amazon now rents college e-textbooks, though. Which is more than you can say for college bookstores. Talk about legal rape. Sally is using her Kindle for school, in point of fact.
This. This is exactly what I was trying to say in my comment above :) You'll note that I haven't even considered e-publishing my crap; I have too much consideration for the rest of the world than that :)
I love my Kindle. But I haven't bought a book for it from Amazon in quite some time. On the other hand, I've bought several from Baen and I download classics all the time from Gutenberg. And I'm sorry, Chris, but it's a hell of a lot easier to carry the Kindle on a plane that it is the half-suitcase-load of books I used to take. :)
By the way, Chris, I'm glad to see that you're still feisty as ever. I guess you can cut the boy without cutting out the spark :)
Yes, the Amazon and B&N stores are full of 99 cent books, most of which are overpriced. But if you check the reviews, you can buy six books for the price of one Heinlein and if half of them are duds, you're still ahead of the game.