What is wrong with book publishers!?
by Branko Santo
Yeah I do have a Kindle, and it is an awesome tool. I have legal free access to a lot of PDFs and other format books. And read a lot in my spare time. Now I was thinking of treating myself to some wholesome gifts in book format. As I recently moved and my landlord has still to setup my postbox I am stuck without deliveries until new year.
No problem I say I will just purchase ebooks. Now I do like to get stuff free that I can, sure everybody likes. My feelings are summarized by the picture below.
Now the music industry is one thing. I don’t really hold them to a high standard of education and advancement of the human race. But look, books are good and reading a book which is at least decent will make you a significantly better person. So I pay for my books on regular basis hoping that a good chunk will go to the people who actually write them.
You can imagine how angry I got when browsing my wish list which is 100 books long and out of about 60ish books that are available for Kindle only like 5-6 are cheaper for Kindle than paperback. In which parallel dimension does this freaking make sense?!? Yeah I know that printing the book in paperback costs like $1-2 but why is the book then more expensive in Kindle format???
Amazon, you are making me hate you as much as I hate MTV Cribs!!!
Every book I can buy from the writer itself I will buy, for the rest I cannot guarantee. And even then I will buy Kindles for my whole family and circle of friends. You can register an infinite amount of Kindles on one account and they can read the same books for a single price. The only caveat is that a book can be only on 5-6 devices at the same time.
So a small introduction on how to legally get insanely cheap books:
- Organize a group of 30ish people of similar interests to buy Kindles
- Organize a mailing list for suggestions for new books
- Institute a $10-20 of yearly membership (30 x $15 makes for around 30 books a year)
- Make a weekly vote for books to be bought
- Read, enjoy and share the love for books
- Fuck you Amazon!
So who wants to make a group?
I don’t read fiction but am a nut for Psychology, Business, Economy, Brain Science, Children/Adolescent Education, Permanent development, Creativity etc.
Great post. I share your sentiment 100%. Using digital information shouldnt be as expensive and cumbersome as it currently is.
I dont have a kindle, but i do have an iPad. I have paid for books as well, but i really wish there was some way to share it with my family and friends. With a paper-book you can do this, and theres no good technical reason this shouldnt be implemented.
Again, the middle-men, just as in the music industry, is holding back the evolution. Instead of embracing it they do everything they can to ensure their old failing business model.
A good example would be the recent deal by Cisco Press (http://www.ciscopress.com/deals/) where you set a very reasonable price for the ebooks.
I hope this sort of business model will catch on with the publishers as the authors will happily go along with it, since their revenue would increase due to the fact that you dont have shipping/handling/printing and so forth.
Anyways… Great summary.
[...] I had a bad day two weeks ago when I was trying to buy books for my Kindle and used the F word publicly. I shouldn’t have, but I did and it is there, I am just not going to change it. But you see [...]