An Amazon spokesman told the [Wall Street Journal], "Authors get the most publicity at launch and need to strike while the iron is hot. If readers can't get their preferred format at that moment, they may buy a different book or just not buy a book at all."*Readers that prefer paperbacks don't get them at the release of the hardcover. They have to wait an average of 12 to 18 months. Oftentimes, the audiobook is released a few months after the hardcover.
These arguments on behalf of the consumer are incredibly lazy and untrue and self-serving. Amazon.com has lost all credibility with me as they try to sell their Kindle reader and increase their profit stream at the expense of reader, booksellers, bookstores (of whatever ilk), authors, and publishers.
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*From the Thursday 10 December 2009 issue of Shelf Awareness, as a response to news that Simon & Schuster will be delaying the release of E-book versions of frontlist authors until a few months after the release of the hardcover edition of the same.
6 comments:
While I agree his statement is total tripe, I push it into the column of typical Marketing noise. Then again I was never fooled by prices ending in 99, 95, or 91, I have always rounded up and always will.
Amazon isn't really any worse than other large companies. Just watch as Barnes & Nobel tries to jump on the bandwagon with its own eReader. As for the Kindle, you will have to pry my Kindle from my cold dead hands.
Meuryc:
I agree with you in principle about Amazon. B&N is just as bad, and, true to form, late to the party. (And in the interest, I worked for B&N as a receiving manager for 5 years.) I boycott them both.
I don't have a problem with eReaders as such. I think they provide another medium for reading, which is wonderful. I think some of the inflammatory (almost religious) language behind their salvific qualities (wink, wink)is mind-boggling, most of it coming from those who gain to profit from it.
As you cling to your Kindle, I cling to my unwieldy volumes of paper and pulp.
Thanks for stopping by and dropping me a few lines.
Troy's Work Table.
Blah! I'm sure it's wonderful to be able to carry a ton of books with you in a little electronic thing, but I will never be for it! For me, books are thing to be held in your hand, and touched and smelled! (yes, I'm a book sniffer). Reading a book on a tiny screen will never have the same feeling as holding one in your hand and turning the pages. I tried to read "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on my friend's iPhone once and I was finished. It leaves something to be desired...
Elizabeth:
Like you, I am a book sniffer. I love the smell of the various papers and the printer's inks of new books. I love the smell of older and/or used books—the musty, musky scents.
I also find it nice to be able to focus on the text of one book and escape from the hectic world of HTML and hyperlinks that I spend much of my time in, both at work and in my free time. If I want to jump around within its pages, then I simply flip back and forth.
I want to hold something in my hands that is solid and real rather than fleeting and ephemeral. I want to feel its weight.
I've had the opportunity to read a few things on my brother's iPhone and on a friends eReader and just find it lacking for me.
Keep up the good fight of reading an "unwieldy" paper-and-pulp book!
Troy's Work Table.
I didn't intend to give the impression that I think the Kindle is better than a bound volume. I love the feel of a quality leather bound book. I also love reading books in hardback.
I hoard books, my bookcase groans under the weight of them. They fill every shelf, some two deep, and books are stacked on the ledge in front of the bottom shelf high enough to hide said shelf.
I will agree the iPhone is not a platform for reading books. My Kindle is. I take it everywhere and never worry if I am close to finishing a book, because I have the next one already on it. The font is easy on the eyes, in fact I have it scaled up so I can read with or without glasses. Reading a regular book with my glasses on gives me a headache, the words are too small.
Will my Kindle totally supplant the environmentally unfriendly paper versions? No. But I do love reading on books on it.
Stick with your glue and pulp, I support your right to choose. After all those dinosaurs may be worth something some day.
Meuryc:
I didn't take it to mean that you are unfriendly to analog books. I suspect that many of the lovers of the Kindle are those who are lovers of books of all kinds.
Amazon.com, however, keeps trying to bully us into believing that everything is heading in the direction of eBooks and that the bound volume is "on its way out." (How many times does this tired trope have to trotted out?)
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I like the idea of scalability on the Kindle, to help my aging eyes. That is a feature which definitely intrigues me.
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I am sure that as much as I blather on negatively about eReaders, I will someday break down and purchase one. I once declared I would never use a debit card, and now cannot imagine NOT using one. (I haven't completely abandoned physical currency, though.)
To paraphrase Whitman: "I contain multitudes."
Troy's Work Table.
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