eBurns
I love Amazon. Their books sometimes ship with missing or cursory packing in the boxes. But most of the time they come very well packed. Occasionally other problems crop up: the wrong books show up, books listed as available really aren't, etc. They used to discount all books, now they don't. They used to discount books more or less uinformly; now they don't. They used to have a "featured book" listed on their home page at an extra special discount; now they recommend something based on your buying habits. I HATE this. I already know what I like, open up new doors and introduce me to something I might not be familiar with. At the very least, allow me to choose whether to see a featured book or the ones based on my history. It'd be easy enough to do (but they declined when I e-mailed them).
Now I must make clear how top notch their customer service is. They are accessible, they speak English over the phone, and despite some occasional odd responses to issues via e-mail, they do everything that can be expected to make you happy. Yay, Amazon.
But...
Along comes their Kindle eBook, their expensive and bludgingly obvious named eBook reading device. Everyone knows about it. eBooks scare me, though, mostly because I see too many comments from people saying things like, "Print books will disappear and be replaced with electronic devices. I wish it weren't so, but technology is technology and if it can be done electronically, it must be better."
I'd say this is utter hogwash, despite the fact that I have and use a Sony Reader (I use it instead of large print books to work my repaired right eye; plus, it's good on the road if I'm away from home for long enough periods). But I can't discount the notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I think publishing is enough out of touch with the reading public that someday they will only offer us eBooks, tell us that's what we, the market, really want, and poof! it will thus be so.
The point in all this is that I caught part of an Oprah a few weeks ago where she gushed over the Kindle, said it was her new favorite thing or some such, and gave everyone in the audience one to take home. Cool stuff. But more than once she talked about how much money everyone will save on books. I've written before about how this just isn't the case although logically you might assume that it would. After all, there's no paper in an eBook, no shipping, no packaging, no handling.
A while back Amazon began showing their Kindle bestseller list right below their print book bestselling list. I took the top five from each list, which were all the same titles, and compared their current prices:
Title Book Kindle
Breaking Dawn 12.64 11.38
Eclipse 10.99 9.99
The UltraMind Solution 16.50 14.85
New Moon 6.04 6.04
Twilight 6.04 6.04
In other words, I could buy the print editions of all of these books for a total of $52.21. Since the amount is over $25 I'd qualify for free shipping. If I bought the Kindle editions of these books, I'd be spending $48.30. I'd save a whopping $3.91, assuming I'd already shelled out $359 for the Kindle and didn't mind having DRMed files that are useless to me without batteries.
Sadly the other notion regarding eBooks that I can't seem to let go of is that they will just be an attempt for publishers to charge the same price while lowering their costs by a whole lot. This will not change publishing, it will further change readership. I can't see how that would be a good thing.
Lastly, I'll repeat something I've said before: a collection of books is a library; think of all that word entails. A collection of eBooks is a floppy disk. Or maybe a CD. I suppose even a Kindle. All of that is something different.
Now I must make clear how top notch their customer service is. They are accessible, they speak English over the phone, and despite some occasional odd responses to issues via e-mail, they do everything that can be expected to make you happy. Yay, Amazon.
But...
Along comes their Kindle eBook, their expensive and bludgingly obvious named eBook reading device. Everyone knows about it. eBooks scare me, though, mostly because I see too many comments from people saying things like, "Print books will disappear and be replaced with electronic devices. I wish it weren't so, but technology is technology and if it can be done electronically, it must be better."
I'd say this is utter hogwash, despite the fact that I have and use a Sony Reader (I use it instead of large print books to work my repaired right eye; plus, it's good on the road if I'm away from home for long enough periods). But I can't discount the notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I think publishing is enough out of touch with the reading public that someday they will only offer us eBooks, tell us that's what we, the market, really want, and poof! it will thus be so.
The point in all this is that I caught part of an Oprah a few weeks ago where she gushed over the Kindle, said it was her new favorite thing or some such, and gave everyone in the audience one to take home. Cool stuff. But more than once she talked about how much money everyone will save on books. I've written before about how this just isn't the case although logically you might assume that it would. After all, there's no paper in an eBook, no shipping, no packaging, no handling.
A while back Amazon began showing their Kindle bestseller list right below their print book bestselling list. I took the top five from each list, which were all the same titles, and compared their current prices:
Title Book Kindle
Breaking Dawn 12.64 11.38
Eclipse 10.99 9.99
The UltraMind Solution 16.50 14.85
New Moon 6.04 6.04
Twilight 6.04 6.04
In other words, I could buy the print editions of all of these books for a total of $52.21. Since the amount is over $25 I'd qualify for free shipping. If I bought the Kindle editions of these books, I'd be spending $48.30. I'd save a whopping $3.91, assuming I'd already shelled out $359 for the Kindle and didn't mind having DRMed files that are useless to me without batteries.
Sadly the other notion regarding eBooks that I can't seem to let go of is that they will just be an attempt for publishers to charge the same price while lowering their costs by a whole lot. This will not change publishing, it will further change readership. I can't see how that would be a good thing.
Lastly, I'll repeat something I've said before: a collection of books is a library; think of all that word entails. A collection of eBooks is a floppy disk. Or maybe a CD. I suppose even a Kindle. All of that is something different.
posted by Rick Ollerman at 10:18 AM
4 Comments:
Your nerd friend from GA here. If the price on the Kindle was under $200 I'd buy one. Not because curling up in bed with a Kindle appeals to me any more than curling up with a Ken Doll - but for a lot of reasons this thing is pretty neat. One, in your example the pricing is not that great - but you could have your books and read them in 5 minutes with the Kindle. (If you didn't live in rural South-Canada.) I like it - but the technology I REALLY want is the one promised for so long, where you go into a shop and they have a computer. You ask for a book and they say give us 5 mins. You have a cup of coffee and they print a book just for you. WTF is that? Certainly is technically possible so what's the hold up? Not the coffee, I'd wager.
That's have them "to read" not have them AND read in 5 minutes. LOL.
And what's wrong with "rural Southern Canada"? I had the kids at the park the other day; we were wearing shorts and t-shirts while the background in the east were the snow covered Presidentials and to the south the snow covered of Franconia Ridge. Anyway...
I think that what SHOULD go away are discussions of printed books OR eBooks. They both should be around, the eBooks filling a certain niche, and life should go on. What makes me nervous, eBooks or no, are the nonsensical pricing practices along with the blockbuster advance policy, that make things scary and unpredictable for any kind of book.
If it weren't for discounted resellers, my days of buying new books would be over; as it is I buy mostly used. I buy almost no mass market pbs but that's because there are almost no titles available of the books I want (the inch-taller, ten dollar devilspawn editions don't qulaify).
The obvious guess for the lack of while you wait machines is the huge cost of each machine. My prediction at this point would be that it will never happen in favor of a Kindle-like form of eBook distribution from a bookstore. The other problem I'd have with the things are the likely quality of the product. I envision it as being on the order of a cheap POD volume which kinda sorta isn't all that impressive. I'd have to feel I was getting a book worth whatever money I'm spending.
But as usual, that's just me...
Saw a t-shirt last week that said:
There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that accept false-dichotomies and those that don't.
Perfect example here. There will ALWAYS be books as long as we have the tech to make them. You can't have technologies like lulu and then have the Kindle come along and say, F-that I want a plastic book I have to plug in every now and again.
Although... I did get my niece an ipod touch for her graduation present and I have to say that's a pretty sexy way to read a book...
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