pagerd | Entries tagged with kindle

From Sep 2010
>I haven't disposed of any of my over thirteen thousand dead tree books, but I'm
>increasingly reluctant to pick up one of them to read. I've thought about scanning
>and OCRing some of my favorites for my personal use. I'd prefer it if the authors
>would just get their backlist up to save me the inconvenience and allow me to pay
>them a royalty.

Well, October 2011 I bought a stack paper cutter and started buying used duplicates
of the books I wanted to reread that are either unavailable or have the same digital
cost as the DTB version. I've since moved on to books I haven't ever read
before, dismantling my only copy.

The idea of stripping a paperback used to make me cringe, but I've gotten
pretty good at chopping the spines off of books. I started cutting almost
too much, but I know what I'm doing now. (October vs. January).

This is a picture of the spines of the books I've scanned so far.

I'm extremely nearsighted, but I can read a page of a pdf-ed book on my kindle
without my glasses easily. If I decide I want a mobi/prc version, the pdfs are
OCR-ready for me to proofread and format. If the author beats me to it and self-
publishes, I'll probably buy their version if it's not priced too much more than
a used book for the convenience factor.

I've read 110 of the 200 books I've scanned to date and have a pile of over one
hundred books ready for the cutter. I may be legacy publishing's worst nightmare.

Oh, I've also acquired over 500 kindle books from Amazon in that same time period.
294 were free, but the others ranged in price from ninety-nine cents to nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.

Robin said...

@Richard S Wheeler,

I'm not interested in your fiction (not my genre), but your memoir sounds interesting. Do you have the e-rights? I would have bought it five minutes ago if it had been available on kindle and reasonably priced.

@Anne Marie

I'll try to remember to look up your indie-pubbed book again after the product description posts. Right now I can't tell whether it's something I'd like or not. The cover's pretty, but not informative enough on its own.

I am what was termed an "intense reader" by someone in these comments. I bought 143 books on line from b&n in 2007, and over 50 others at brick & mortar stores that year. I regret delaying ordering my kindle as long as I did (I dithered for a day or two, which put me on the waiting list) since it took me five weeks to get it, but get it I did, on January 10, 2008 and I haven't looked back.

Unless it's a book by an author of whom I'm a fan, I will only buy ebooks and only if the ebook is less than the DTB. I paid $15 this week for the e-ARC of Bujold's Cryoburn from Baen. I am a fan of LMB. I have refused to buy Ender's Game because it's priced the same as the paperback at $5.99. I already have the paperback... and the hardcover. Ebooks don't have to support the printing, shipping, storage, and returns of paperbacks, and I expect to have at least part of that savings passed on to me as the consumer. If I thought it was going to the author, I'd probably go ahead and pay that price.

Concerning price points, I'm just as likely to one-click a $2.99 book as a ninety-nine cent book, if I think I'll enjoy the book. Knowing the royalty structure, I'd prefer the author getting 70% (less delivery charges) of $2.99 than 35% of $1.

I don't shop by the bestseller lists. I sort my genres by publication date, and check out the last thirty days. This is where the covers come in handy. I scroll through the "also bought" lists of my new purchases. I click on authors' names to see if they have backlist I've missed because they've been listed by their original publication date. I search names of the composers of blogposts that let it be known they've got kindle content. I found JL Wilson that way after she posted on this blog back in May. I bought one book at a $5.70 price point, and after reading it and loving it, went back and bought six others. I check out what other people found interesting enough to pricewatch on kindleiq.com. I check my amazon rec list. I use mysteria for non-kindled books and wonder why publishers are kindlizing some authors and not others. There are series I bought in 2007 that I haven't picked up since, because the publisher hasn't e-published the latest titles, at all. Those series numbers are dropping, not because of lack of interest, but because they refuse to publish in the format I want to buy.

Robin
librarything catalog

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/08/beginning-of-end.html

I think this (reading speed) might be a large part of the divide.

When I was a child, I was limited to the library and ten books at a time. I could finish those ten books in less than one week and not have anything to read until my next library visit. So, I re-read my favorites.

Then I discovered the paperback racks. No check-out limits, no due dates. But the selection was mostly romance and men's adventure. I branched out into new genres out of desperation. I even read the Mack Bolan books. I don't like much violence, so they weren't my true cup of tea.

When I began earning a living, I started buying books. And keeping them. And re-reading them. I'd go back and re-read all the books in a series when the new volume came out. My book holdings exceeded my personal living space long ago. I've paid rent on one of my storage rooms since 1982.

I just finished reading the new Meg Langslow book and am wanting to go back and re-read them all, but not all are on kindle. I boxed up the paperbacks years ago, and they're in my storage room which is miles away and closed on Sundays. I can't get to them until Friday when I'll have energy and time to shift boxes. I probably won't do it, but I will buy and re-read them when they are kindlized (for a reasonable price). For this series, same as the paperback price is reasonable, because I factor not having to shift boxes into the cost.

I factored not having to rent another storage room into the cost of the kindle. The original K1 at the original price was worth it. And the refurbished K2us with collections was positively cheap!

Robin
librarything catalog

Current Mood: contemplative

>Really interesting listing. What exactly should be a fair price?

From previous discussions, the criteria fall in different places for different people.

Since this was MY list, I'll give you my reasoning.

I am a re-reader. I have been reading since I was four years old and there are some series that I re-read every other year or so. I have been known to buy a book in hardcover and then rebuy it when it is issued in paperback because the paperback is lighter. I read while I walk. I read fast. I used to carry a backpack in which I kept the book I was currently reading, the next book I was planning to read, and perhaps two others in case I finished that one as well. Since I physically received my kindle in January of 2008, I have read fewer than twenty DTBs (dead tree books, printed on paper) and stopped carrying the backpack. The kindle is just that much more convenient. The only DTBs I have purchased are comic strip compilations, graphic novels, or those I purchased for an author's signing. I have also bought the kindle version of the books I bought to be signed. I read the kindle version.

I will NOT pay full mass market paperback price for an ebook that is currently being sold as a mass market paperback. There are no printing, storage, shipping or returns costs for an ebook, so the publisher has no reason to recoup those costs. If they are making a profit on the mm pb, the ebook profits are gravy, after recouping the one-time conversion charges. I've converted large documents into mobibook format using Joshua Tallent's book. It's not that hard, especially if you're starting with a fairly clean electronic version of the manuscript.

If the book has been published in hardcover and is a recent release, the anchor price for me is the DISCOUNTED hardcover price, not full cover price.

I bought "The Clinton Tapes" the week it came out, paying $19.25. It did eventually fall to $9.99, but I had finished reading it by then. The list price was $35, but at the time I bought my copy, the HC was selling for $21 or so. I treated the extra cost as a premium for my impatience.

I feel the publisher is being greedy, if the publisher is putting up an author's backlist at full current paperback price. These are books that a lot of people would be getting at a used bookstore, garage sale or at a library's paperback swap rack, none of which would garner any royalties for the publisher or author. The W.E.B. Griffin Brotherhood of War series and Corps series were twenty percent below the mmpb price. I purchased and reread the nineteen books in these series during June 2008. I had these books as hardcovers on a bookcase in my bedroom, readily at hand. Jove and Amazon got $121.41 from me for books I already owned. That's the right way to handle backlist.

Macmillan's handling backlist by reprinting fifty year old books as trade paperbacks for books that are in their perhaps 115th printing and expecting readers to be willing to pay that price for an electronic version. That's the wrong way to handle backlist.

Of the decisions I made yesterday, I would have bought the $7.99 titles at $1.00 off, the $5.99 titles at $5.29, I would have paid $6.39 for the books originally published in the forties and fifties, $9.99 for the Zelvin since the sequel is already out (I might have paid the $10.99 if it hadn't been), and the Ariely at $8.35 with the hardcover currently available for $9.35.

Robin
librarything catalog
I have over 2500 books still to add, most of which are ebooks.

Current Mood: contemplative

> Is there a way to print a list of my books on kindle? Or at least the ones
from Amazon?

Sign in to Amazon.

Click on "my account" in the upper right hand corner.

About two-thirds down the page, there's a header "digital content". To the right of that, there's a header "your media library". Click on "your collection".

There's a drop-down menu under "View". Click on "kindle items" or "kindle books" if you don't want to include your magazines, blogs or newspapers.

Sort by title, date acquired or creator at the top right hand side. Unfortunately, it sorts by first name.

If you click on "print", it creates a page that includes covers. If this is what you want, send it to your printer. Otherwise, cancel out the print job.

To have a simple list of author and book, you have to do a little more work.

While in the page, hit control-A, then control-C. Open your notepad, then hit control-V. This strips out non-text from the list. Delete the stuff you don't want to print using "replace".

I tried to just copy and paste the thin list, but you have to scroll down a page at a time and wait for the system to load each screen. I currently have 1885 kindle books purchased from Amazon.

Robin

Current Mood: geeky

Today is payday. I went shopping at Amazon.

Here is a list of the kindle books I did NOT buy today by publisher, then author, title, kindle price, paper price, notes and year of copyright. The books without a paper price are those that would have been repurchases of books I have previously paid for in hardcover, paperback or both and was NOT willing to spend yet another $9.89 or more on a digital repurchase. The cover price of some of my original purchases ranged from $1.95 to $5.99. Most of these books were on my Amazon recommendations list and I clicked on the item page and decided NOT to buy. One was on the kindle front page; I clicked and decided not to buy it based on the price.

Harper Collins
Ariely, Dan Predictably Irrational $9.99 $9.35 (June 2009)
Chase, Loretta Lord of Scoundrels $6.99 $6.99 (1995)
Chase, Loretta Not Quite a Lady $6.99 $6.99 (2007)
Chase, Loretta Don't Tempt Me $6.99 $6.99 (2009)
Chase, Loretta Your Scandalous Ways $6.99 $6.99 (2008)

Macmillan
Asimov, Isaac The End of Eternity $11.99 (would be repurchase) (1955)
Asimov, Isaac The Stars, Like Dust $9.99 (would be repurchase) (1950)
Asimov, Isaac The Currents of Space $10.99 (would be repurchase) (1952)
Asimov, Isaac Pebble in the Sky $9.99 (would be repurchase) (1950)
Beck, Jessica Glazed Murder $7.99 $7.99 (I have never read this author) (April 2010)
Card, Orson Scott Ender's Game $5.99 $5.99 (would be repurchase) (1985)
Card, Orson Scott Ender's Shadow $5.99 $5.99 (would be repurchase) (1999)
Card, Orson Scott Speaker for the Dead $7.99 $7.99 (would be repurchase) (1986)
Card, Orson Scott Shadow of the Giant $7.99 $7.99 (would be repurchase) (2005)
Card, Orson Scott Shadow of the Hegemon $7.99 $7.99 (would be repurchase) (2001)
Card, Orson Scott Xenocide $7.99 $7.99 (would be repurchase) (1991)
Card, Orson Scott Children of the Mind $7.99 $7.99 (would be repurchase) (1996)
Card, Orson Scott Heartfire $7.99 $7.99 (would be repurchase) (1998)
Card, Orson Scott Songmaster $9.99 (would be repurchase) (1979)
Heinlein, Robert A Space Cadet $9.99 (would be repurchase) (1948,75)
Zelvin, Elizabeth Death Will Get You Sober $10.99 $23.95 (I have never read this author)(April 2008)

Bantam
Stout, Rex Where There's a Will $9.99 (would be repurchase) (1940)
Stout, Rex The League of Frightened Men $9.99 (would be repurchase) (1935)
Stout, Rex Before Midnight $9.89 (would be repurchase) (1955)
Stout, Rex The Father Hunt $9.89 (would be repurchase) (1968)
Stout, Rex Might as Well be Dead $9.89 (would be repurchase) (1956)
Stout, Rex The Final Deduction $9.99 (would be repurchase) (1961)

I just entered these prices in a spreadsheet: the publishers are asking $247.42 for books I would have gladly purchased at $185.50. I judged the price I would have paid willingly by the books I actually bought. Only ONE of these books was originally published this year and that one is definitely a midlist book. A good majority of the others have been reprinted many times and earned out their advances decades ago.

Here is a list of books I did buy during the last two weeks, since May 27th (Penguin books came back to Amazon on the 29th) by publisher, title, author, price paid, paper price and any notes (an x in front means I have also read the book in the past two weeks).:

Macmillan
Dorsai Spirit (omnibus) Dickson, Gordon R $9.99 $20.99 (repurchase-preorder)
Murder With Peacocks Andrews, Donna $7.99 $7.99 (clutch to bosom repurchase-anomaly)

Penguin
Magic Strikes Andrews, Ilona $6.99 $7.99
x Death Threads Casey, Elizabeth Lynn $5.99 $6.99
x Miss Wonderful Chase, Loretta $6.99 $7.99
x Mr. Impossible Chase, Loretta $6.99 $7.99
Lord Perfect Chase, Loretta $6.99 $7.99 (3rd in the trilogy; currently reading)
Tressed to Kill Dare, Lila $6.99 $7.99
x Lead-Pipe Cinch Evans, Christy $5.99 $6.99
Longshot Francis, Dick $6.99 $7.60
Silks Francis, Dick & Felix $7.99 $9.99 (kindle price is up to $8.99 today)
x Monster in Miniature Grace, Margaret $6.99 $7.99
French Polished Murder Hyatt, Elise $5.99 $6.99
Grace Under Pressure Hyzy, Julie $6.99 $7.99
Reel Murder: A Talk Radio Mystery Kennedy, Mary $5.99 $6.99
Murder on the Eightfold Path Killian, Diana $6.99 $7.99
A Timely Vision Lavene, Joyce & Jim $6.99 $7.99
Death in Show McCoy, Judi $5.99 $6.99
The Cat, The Professor and the Poison Sweeney, Leann $5.99 $6.99

Bantam (Random House, sold by Amazon)
I, Robot Asimov, Isaac $6.29 $7.99 (Spectra is Bantam)
Foundation Asimov, Isaac $6.39 $7.99
Foundation and Empire Asimov, Isaac $6.39 $7.99
Second Foundation Asimov, Isaac $6.39 $7.99
The White Road Flewelling, Lynn $6.39 $7.99
Three Doors to Death Stout, Rex $5.09 $7.99
Prisoner's Base Stout, Rex $6.39 $7.99
Three at Wolfe's Door Stout, Rex $6.39 $7.99
The Golden Spiders Stout, Rex $5.20 $6.50
The Doorbell Rang Stout, Rex $6.29 $7.99
Three Witnesses Stout, Rex $5.59 $6.99

Dell (sold by Amazon)
Ceremony Parker, Robert B. $6.39 $7.99

Simon & Schuster
Iron Lake Krueger, William Kent $7.99 $7.99 (1999-mmp) $10.20 (2009-tp)
This was a judgment call; since the lowest paperback price was for an edition published eleven years ago, I compared it to the trade paperback issued last year instead. I have never read this author, but the series was recommended to me.

Sourcebooks (Amazon)
Frederica Heyer, Georgette $6.99 $10.04

Wild Rose Press (Amazon)
x PhDs, Pornography and Premeditated Murder Wilson, JL $6.25 $12.99
This author commented on J.A. Konrath's blog in May. I looked at her kindle listings, bought one book to check her out, read it, loved it, and have now purchased and read seven of her books.

Krill Press (Amazon)
The Well Meaning Killer Walker, Miranda Phillips $3.99 $16.95

Self-published (Amazon)
A Small Fortune Braun, Audrey $2.99 $9.32

There are only two books that have the same price as the paper edition and those two I've annotated why I was willing to pay that price. Every other book was less than the paperback.

I have spent $223.22 on kindle books at Amazon over the past two weeks. I still have over $200 in my "willing to spend until next payday" pot. That $185.50 is money that Harper Collins, MacMillan and Bantam have literally left on the table.

This list of Penguin books is why I thought Penguin might have been paying attention. The bestsellers everyone else was waiting for weren't on my radar. I think the midlisters and bestsellers have different marketers at Penguin.

Robin

Current Mood: frustrated

And in retaliation of not being supplied the e-book versions of Penguin's latest hardcovers, Amazon slashes prices on new releases.

I read the comments for this WSJ article and had to comment myself.

Comment follows:

Speaking from an Amazon kindle customer's perspective, Amazon cut the hardcover prices as an apology to the people who preordered the ebooks and had their orders canceled on them. It's just good customer relations.

Of course, there are those of us whose homes are already full of DTBs (dead tree books) that have no interest in purchasing more now that we've converted to digital personal libraries. Some of us also have no interest in buying full paper cover price for a digital file. We know there are no printing, storage, shipping or return reserve costs associated with ebooks. Ebooks for previously published titles are found money once the conversion costs have been recouped. The smart publishers put their authors' backlists on kindle at a decent discount from the start to encourage repurchase. Of the 1,854 ebooks I have purchased that I've classified in this way, 633 are books that I have in hardcover, paperback or both.

Those publishers (such as Macmillan) that waited until the agency model went into affect before they made authors' backlist available, at the same price as the non-discounted paper book cover price, have earned my enmity/rage/scorn/ire/bafflement. It's not going to make the DTB more attractive; I already have it. I want to be able to read the text of the book on my kindle. I want to be able to increase the font as the daylight fades. I want to be able to start the next book in a series the minute I finish the first without having to figure out what bookshelf it's on or what box it's in.

All they are doing with their current pricing model is leaving money on the table. I was made aware of a book I was waiting for had arrived on kindle. I searched for it - saw the price was ten cents lower than the paperback, debated myself, and hit the buy button. I had somehow gone to the international page and was redirected to the US page where the book was the same price as the paperback. I have three copies of this title already: trade paper, mass market paperback and an anniversary reissue. I decided to pass. At a ten percent discount I would have bought it. There are at least twenty of this author's titles I am not going to buy with this pricing model.

Robin Page

Postscript: One of the things I forgot to mention in the comment was that not all of the DTBs were purchased new, therefore the author and publisher didn't get a dime from me. Every kindle purchase earns a royalty. Another of the reasons for my replacing my favorite books is to make sure I'm supporting the authors I like while freeing up display space on my bookshelves.

As a kindle owner, I discovered Karen's books when Erma Bombeck came up in conversation November 6th. I plugged Bombeck into kindle search and "Lies I Told My Children" popped up. No books by Erma, though. The description was interesting, and I was willing to risk $1.49. (Referring back to one author's upset at being referred to as an "impulse buy", this is the true meaning.)

I read the essays, enjoyed them and bought a few more of Karen's books.

Robin

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/04/interview-with-karen-mcquestion.html

Cyberbooks by Ben Bova is available as an ebook from Baen in the omnibus "Laugh Lines" which also includes Starcrossed as well as some short stories.

ebook link

book details

Most Baen books don't turn up on kindle, but they are sold in all the major formats without drm at their own websites for reasonable prices. Once you've purchased the book, you can download it in any and all formats. They also maintain a library of free books which include first books of series.

Robin
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/04/publishers-ebooks-epic-fail.html

Most of my notes have nothing to do with the book I'm reading. I use my clip file as a kind of diary. If I buy something somewhere that doesn't give me a receipt, like some fast food restaurants, I add a note of 141 to the page I'm reading to remind myself I spent $1.41 for a burger. Or "bus" as I pay my fare. The date-time stamp lets me fill in my Quicken information later. The kindle.amazon.com site doesn't sort by "most recent" and the date-time stamp doesn't carry over. I did check it out when it first showed up. And of course, the site only shows amazon books. "My clippings.txt" picks up notes and highlights from all your files.

Also, I have 967 books on my kindle page as of this moment, I find it's easier to find highlighted passages in "my clippings.txt".

YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary, for acronym newbies).

114 pages. Mostly on my SD card.

657 books purchased from amazon, $.01 to $18.67, 110 amazon freebies, and 173 books from other sources. I also have magazines, which do group, and lots of personal documents.

Keeping the metadata clean and sorting by author lets me find everything easily. I dislike the azw1 extension 'cause I can't use mobi2mobi on them.

I've been replacing books, which I kept on my apartment's shelves for rereading, with kindle versions. I am using the shelf space for things other than books. I freed up an entire shelf when the Lackey books were released. The only DTBs I've been buying are comic strip compilations and graphic novels.

If a book doesn't have an ebook version, I add it to my public wishlist, hit the "tell the publisher" button, and wait for Mysteria to notify me.

I did buy the latest Diana Wynne Jones in DTB version last year. It was kindlized before I got around to reading it.

I don't like having to turn pages now.

I celebrated by watching a Warner Brothers movie. I went to the 9:30 am showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. No spoilers. I liked it, but was not blown away.

I browsed through Hallmark afterward, and found some HP ornaments and a Star Trek ornament that I want. I had taken my gold crown card out of my wallet a couple years ago when they semi-abandoned the HP franchise, so I decided to wait to get them.

I did my grocery shopping while I was already out. I picked up the Potter issue of Movie Magic on impulse (I would have got a discount if I'd waited 'til I got to Barnes and Noble).

De-cluttering (or shifting variety of clutter) project progress:
I bought 13 kindle books today; five titles were re-buys of books I can take off my shelves and box, and eight were books I haven't read.

Current Location: Home

I ordered my kindle on Dec 2nd, after receiving an email from Diane and reading reviews for an afternoon. By the time I placed the order, they were out of stock. I subscribed to a yahoo group, kindlekorner, that same day. After reading postings on the list, I started getting antsy on the seventh and upgraded to one-day shipping.

After five and a half weeks of waiting, it's here!

I charged it and downloaded the single book I let myself order before receiving the unit.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Location: Office