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Because it's not nice to rant at strangers
I read a lot of publishing & ebook related blogs. (Including Teleread.) That means I see a lot of links to other blogs, that I don't regularly read, and forum discussions in places I don't normally hang out. And *that* means I see a lot of posts that express opinions I sharply disagree with, and after over a decade of getting into screaming flamewars experience with online debate, I've realized that very few bloggers (or anyone else, really) love to have a total stranger show up after they post something controversial just to say "dude, you are so damned wrong about that."
In this particular case, I don't think she's "horribly wrong" as much as "has a skewed perspective."
She's comparing the price of ebooks to the price of songs, by word count, and pointing out how hard authors work, and how they deserve to be paid for that, and how buying a car doesn't entitle you to free tires, and therefore buying a Kindle doesn't entitle you to free or even cheap ebooks.
I didn't get an e-reader because I thought that would make free books happen for me. I bought an e-reader because I wanted to read the free books I was already finding, all over the place, and wanted to read them away from the computer, on the train, in the car (I don't drive), and waiting at the doctor's office. I got it to read Baen library ebooks. I got it to read those author-promo-freebies. (This was three years ago; Smashwords was almost nonexistent.) I got it to throw fanfic into a portable format.
PAYING for ebooks is what I do when I'm feeling generous towards the industry that taught me to love reading. I'm grateful. Really. But I don't think I'm morally obligated to pay more for pixels than I would for paper... and if I were buying paper, I'd mostly be buying used paperbacks.
Am I to believe I was immoral, all those years when I shopped in the remainder bin at the bookstore? When I bought half-cover-price books at the used bookstore? When I bought the $5 bag-o-books at the White Elephant sale? In those cases, I got cheap books to read, and the author got no royalties.
Oh, they say, but those wear out. They don't last. Not like ebooks; you can't re-read them hundreds of times and make a zillion instant copies without damaging the original. (To which my reply is: SO WHAT? Yes, that's true; what's that got to do with whether or not the author's getting paid for my reading habits? I'm going to be reading, a lot, regardless of whether an author gets paid for it.)
The comments in the post get downright nasty: "the reader who wont’ pay more than 3.99 for a book was never a book buyer/lover/supporter in the first place." Because, of course, poor people aren't real book lovers.
I had a realization yesterday: I can *comfortably* read 100,000 words during a busy day. Non-busy day I get to devote entirely to reading? Quarter-million words, easily. Swamped-and-exhausted day? 15-25,000 words. While I am *thrilled* to be alive in culture that allows me easy access to, from my perspective, endless literature, I am not going to be convinced I'm morally obligated to pay $10 a day for reading material. Nor am I going to be convinced that I should only read one book a week, or one a month when times are hard. I developed this reading speed *because* I had access to near-infinite content, and I want to wallow in it.
And I'm willing to pay for that privilege. I *like* supporting the people who bring me such pleasure.
Only, when they're engaged in conversations that assume that people on a budget are illiterate cretins or casually support artificial scarcity ("A publisher I know explained that Kindle prices will be set to match paperback prices so more readers will buy the paperback"), I'm not so interested in supporting them.
And, heh, more fish in the sea, and all that. Because I am not running out of reading material. I am not, like many people who only read books based on what's on the bestseller lists, limited to a specific genre range or publication date for my reading material. I can read anything that catches my fancy--and I have an active imagination with plenty of fancy to spare.
Authors have *never* been paid for every reader. Have never been paid by word count, either, except for one-shot payments in the short-story market.
I'm in favor of authors getting paid. I'd like them to be aware of the marketplace... which has changed drastically in the last few years. My book-budget is pretty much fixed--it's not going to double in size if ebooks double in price. Authors who want a slice of it, need to convince me I should be paying them instead of someone else.
Anyone who tells readers, her potential customers, "Well, get over it, ya whiny little bitches," is not acting like someone I want to financially support.
"But if you don't support authors, THEY WILL ALL GO AWAY!!!" sometimes comes the answer.
My take on that? If all the authors in the world who called readers "whiny bitches" in public* stopped writing, I think I could survive. Authors who think maximizing the value of a book budget is selfish and immoral are welcome to find a new career.
*I don't care what they say in private. To their spouses. To their friends. To their publishers. Everyone in a service industry is allowed to grumble about the nuisance customers, and occasionally lump the good ones & bad ones all together. Blowing off steam is fine. Insulting your potential customers on your career blog is a different matter.
In this particular case, I don't think she's "horribly wrong" as much as "has a skewed perspective."
She's comparing the price of ebooks to the price of songs, by word count, and pointing out how hard authors work, and how they deserve to be paid for that, and how buying a car doesn't entitle you to free tires, and therefore buying a Kindle doesn't entitle you to free or even cheap ebooks.
I didn't get an e-reader because I thought that would make free books happen for me. I bought an e-reader because I wanted to read the free books I was already finding, all over the place, and wanted to read them away from the computer, on the train, in the car (I don't drive), and waiting at the doctor's office. I got it to read Baen library ebooks. I got it to read those author-promo-freebies. (This was three years ago; Smashwords was almost nonexistent.) I got it to throw fanfic into a portable format.
PAYING for ebooks is what I do when I'm feeling generous towards the industry that taught me to love reading. I'm grateful. Really. But I don't think I'm morally obligated to pay more for pixels than I would for paper... and if I were buying paper, I'd mostly be buying used paperbacks.
Am I to believe I was immoral, all those years when I shopped in the remainder bin at the bookstore? When I bought half-cover-price books at the used bookstore? When I bought the $5 bag-o-books at the White Elephant sale? In those cases, I got cheap books to read, and the author got no royalties.
Oh, they say, but those wear out. They don't last. Not like ebooks; you can't re-read them hundreds of times and make a zillion instant copies without damaging the original. (To which my reply is: SO WHAT? Yes, that's true; what's that got to do with whether or not the author's getting paid for my reading habits? I'm going to be reading, a lot, regardless of whether an author gets paid for it.)
The comments in the post get downright nasty: "the reader who wont’ pay more than 3.99 for a book was never a book buyer/lover/supporter in the first place." Because, of course, poor people aren't real book lovers.
I had a realization yesterday: I can *comfortably* read 100,000 words during a busy day. Non-busy day I get to devote entirely to reading? Quarter-million words, easily. Swamped-and-exhausted day? 15-25,000 words. While I am *thrilled* to be alive in culture that allows me easy access to, from my perspective, endless literature, I am not going to be convinced I'm morally obligated to pay $10 a day for reading material. Nor am I going to be convinced that I should only read one book a week, or one a month when times are hard. I developed this reading speed *because* I had access to near-infinite content, and I want to wallow in it.
And I'm willing to pay for that privilege. I *like* supporting the people who bring me such pleasure.
Only, when they're engaged in conversations that assume that people on a budget are illiterate cretins or casually support artificial scarcity ("A publisher I know explained that Kindle prices will be set to match paperback prices so more readers will buy the paperback"), I'm not so interested in supporting them.
And, heh, more fish in the sea, and all that. Because I am not running out of reading material. I am not, like many people who only read books based on what's on the bestseller lists, limited to a specific genre range or publication date for my reading material. I can read anything that catches my fancy--and I have an active imagination with plenty of fancy to spare.
Authors have *never* been paid for every reader. Have never been paid by word count, either, except for one-shot payments in the short-story market.
I'm in favor of authors getting paid. I'd like them to be aware of the marketplace... which has changed drastically in the last few years. My book-budget is pretty much fixed--it's not going to double in size if ebooks double in price. Authors who want a slice of it, need to convince me I should be paying them instead of someone else.
Anyone who tells readers, her potential customers, "Well, get over it, ya whiny little bitches," is not acting like someone I want to financially support.
"But if you don't support authors, THEY WILL ALL GO AWAY!!!" sometimes comes the answer.
My take on that? If all the authors in the world who called readers "whiny bitches" in public* stopped writing, I think I could survive. Authors who think maximizing the value of a book budget is selfish and immoral are welcome to find a new career.
*I don't care what they say in private. To their spouses. To their friends. To their publishers. Everyone in a service industry is allowed to grumble about the nuisance customers, and occasionally lump the good ones & bad ones all together. Blowing off steam is fine. Insulting your potential customers on your career blog is a different matter.
no subject
The pro authors are starting to sound remarkably like the big music companies about used CD stores. GUYS, THAT IS NOT WHO YOU WANT TO SOUND LIKE. And yeah, it's absolutely true that writers don't get paid for every reader, or every copy. Hell, in the Victorian age when the novel exploded, a big reason for that was lending libraries. Even before the box chains stopped stocking midlist books and indie bookstores were dying off, I found about a lot of authors from used bookstores, thrift stores and libraries.
Oh, they say, but those wear out. They don't last. Not like ebooks; you can't re-read them hundreds of times and make a zillion instant copies without damaging the original.
....WHAT? FFS, I have really cheap paperbacks that were published in the sixties that I bought for a buck ten years ago that I can still read. I have hardcovers published in the 1920s (not fancy first editions or anything, just regular old books) that are still in fine if not pristine shape. No, you can't make a zillion copies of a paper book, but I'm wagering paper books will last a lot longer than ebooks because for one thing you don't have to worry about formats and ereaders. (Just silverfish and water damage.)
Those low-priced paperbacks have been available on Amazon for a long time. They made Amazon
....I don't think Amazon started selling used books until at least 2000. I could be wrong. I know a lot of authors hated logging in to check on how their just-published book was doing and seeing the ARC offered for half the price, but I don't see them complaining about Powells.com, which has been selling used books for FOREVER. Hell, Powells even has ebooks now.
I actually buy more ebooks than I might because I feel so guilty pirating books, but at $10 a pop average, I'm not going to buy a lot of stuff I might, either. I really truly don't buy the "it takes just as much time/money to put out an ebook as it does a paper copy" song, especially when so few books I see nowadays even from Big Six publishers appear to have been proofread at all. And that's hard copies -- I think nearly every ebook I've ever bought, especially for the Kindle, has had at least several glaring formatting errors. If it costs exactly the same, why are the ebooks in shittier shape?
no subject
I have paperbacks that are more than 10 years old. (I have paperbacks more than 50 years old, but that's a separate issue.) They're still readable.
All the ebook formats sold 10 years ago are obsolete now. The only stuff that's still around is public domain (txt & html formats) and user-produced content in deprecated formats (.lit, .imp, .pdb).
I really truly don't buy the "it takes just as much time/money to put out an ebook as it does a paper copy" song
It does... if you're doing *one or the other.* If you're doing both, the *extra* time to produce the ebook is a lot less than producing a paper book from scratch.
If it costs exactly the same, why are the ebooks in shittier shape?
Didn't you catch her answer, buried in the comments? Publishers make ebook prices high in order to sell more paperbacks. They don't *want* ebook sales, so of course quality is low and prices are high.
no subject
I got the e-reader in the full expectation of lots of free books - there are manylots of out-of-copyright converted texts. I am also aware that there are many thousands of people who will write for nothing, and post their work online (and which I can then snag to the reader) hoping only for occasional kudos if the work is good enough. I read them eagerly. And, every month, I put down £15 or so on books I already know I like and new authors. However, I am stuffed if I am ever putting down £15 on *one* book. I am much more inclined to try a new author for £1 than for £5 and not really at all inclined to try for £8 unless there's a free sample and it turns out to be absolutely gripping.