News - Amazon sets a precedent: signs author exclusively for Kindle

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The battle of book distribution takes another turn as Amazon by-passes traditional publishers.

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Well, they're welcome to try it I suppose, but personally, my reaction would simply be to not buy any book that I had to use on a Kindle. Many ebooks are overpriced enough as it is.

With books, you're paying for something tangible. With ebooks, you're paying lots for the reader, and then you're paying for something which costs nothing for them to distribute. That's what stings, shelling out for something that seems to cost the distributor, i.e. Amazon, nothing.

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Originally Posted by miniyazz

With books, you're paying for something tangible. With ebooks, you're paying lots for the reader, and then you're paying for something which costs nothing for them to distribute. That's what stings, shelling out for something that seems to cost the distributor, i.e. Amazon, nothing.

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No different to an MP3 or video distributed online.

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Originally Posted by schmunk

No different to an MP3 or video distributed online.

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I suppose, it just seems different somehow. Perhaps that with a book, you can just read it, whereas with other forms of media you need special equipment (OK so a CD player isn't particularly special, but still).

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Originally Posted by schmunk

No different to an MP3 or video distributed online.

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That's true, and as a writer, I certainly endorse the notion of creative types getting rewarded for their work, so creating the work in the first place (be it book, music, whatever) has a cost.

But I take Miniyazz's point too .... if they can sell a work for £x when it involves the cost of production, distribution etc of, say, a book, how come you can't at least discount the final retail price to reflect the lower costs because, after all, you're not paying for paper or printing, let alone the considerable costs of physically shipping printed books over over the country/planet, or the costs of several extra layers of middlemen and service providers to do it?

I think that's one thing that gets up people's noses about digital distribution - common sense says the cost has to have gone down, but the price rarely seems to reflect that .... and indeed, sometimes goes up.

Personally, I will not pay a premium for what, after all, seems like physically less because I'll feel like a muppet if I do. Sure, a digital copy gives you some utility a physical one does not (like loads of books on a small, light e-reader, but then, a physical copy gives you utility a digital one doesn't, like not needing expensive hardware to use it and, in some cases at least, DRM or format hassles.

Not reflecting reduced costs in price seems like exploitation, and people don't understand it, and IMHO .... don't like it.

and another step is taken on the road to authors and novels being exclusive to a particular brand of e-book reader. How long will it be before Amazon (or any other ebook retailer) signs an exclusive deal that means a novel(s) can only be purchased in an ebook format for a specific ebook reader?

As for the argument over price apparently the physical cost of books, shipping, distribution e.t.c. is only a small (insignificant) part of the cover price.... according to what the publishers of ebooks say. Personally I just can't get my head round that, I understand that there will still be costs associated with producing ebooks that apply to paper books and that there will be certain extra costs, but surely the physical side will be a significant cost, far more than for cds and dvds I would imagine.