a thought on ebooks

[tielan]

So, I belong to at least one community that provides DRM-free copies of ebooks.

In spite of being aware that author royalties get paid on sold books rather than books that got copied and passed along, I download a lot of freebies, including authors I would be happy to pay Ebook prices for - if the ebooks were offered to me at a price commensurate with that which my counterparts in the USA pay.

eg. I can buy a Loretta Chase romance in ebook format for around $12 AUD at Borders Australia website. Cheap compared to the paperback format, which would be at least $17-22.

On Amazon, the ebook costs ~$5. But you need an American address or credit card (my friend informs me that it's just the address, but I'm pretty sure it's a credit card) in order to purchase the ebook. So I'm paying $7 more for an ebook (no extra formatting, no extra shipping) just because I live in Australia.

(The difference between hardcopy books in the US and Australia is even greater: books you can purchase for $5 in the US sell for $20+ in Australia. Count the number of books in your library. Now multiply that by $15. That's a conservative estimate of how much extra you'd have paid for your library if you lived in Australia. And that $15 difference is for a trashy paperback novel, not a popular or famous title or a hardcover edition.)

Plus, I can only purchase a handful of Loretta Chase's previous novels - the ones that the publisher has the rights to publish in ebook format outside the US.

I would like to support the authors I read - particularly those who've written stuff I enjoy. I'm well aware that their royalties are dependent on books bought; and that as someone who aspires to be published, someday my income will depend on whether people are going to buy my books in whatever format they're published

I was thinking - maybe this is just me - but I'd be okay with, say, a PayPal button for my favourite authors, allowing me to donate directly to them if I acquired an ebook of theirs to read that I wouldn't otherwise be able to buy (not being in the US, possessor of a US credit card, inclined to the popular stuff - which is pretty much all you get in ebook format around here, or willing to pay around $35 for a paperback novel to be delivered to my house from the US).

Does anyone know of an author who does this? Who has this option? Is there a reason people don't do it other than that their publishers would probably get narky about the money queue skipping them? Or do they all cite the "you should buy the books through the authorised channels" line?

It's all very well to say that I should buy books legally, but what about when those books aren't available for me to buy legally in my country? And are unlikely to ever become legal in my country because there's apparently not enough demand for them?

Comments

[ailelie]

Catherynne M. Valente does that partially
http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/omikuji/

Small Beer Press has some books released under Creative Commons with a 'donate' link at the bottom of the page
http://smallbeerpress.com/creative-commons/

Sherwood Smith put book 4 of her Wren series online for free with a donate button, or you can buy it in eBook format (this book has been in limbo since I was in elementary school; so so so happy it is finally available)
http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/The-Sherwood-Smith-Bookshelf/Sherwood-Smith-Novels/Wren-Journeymage-1

[tielan]

Ah. Thanks for the links!

[havocthecat]

On Amazon, the ebook costs ~$5. But you need an American address or credit card (my friend informs me that it's just the address, but I'm pretty sure it's a credit card) in order to purchase the ebook. So I'm paying $7 more for an ebook (no extra formatting, no extra shipping) just because I live in Australia

That's just dumb. I knew about the difference in hard copy pricing - plus shipping costs - but I didn't know about the difference in ebook pricing. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot there, publishers.

[tielan]

Way to shoot yourselves in the foot there, publishers.

And the authors lose out, because they don't get paid royalties for the books.

That's where this conversation began: someone was promoting a free download of a book because there wasn't an ebook version for Europe. The book was by someone I know who's in financial straits right now, and I know that the sales of her last book weren't what she was hoping for, so I was trying to encourage people to buy at least one copy rather than straight dowload.

[sholio]

There was an interesting discussion a few months back -- hosted at marina's DW, I think -- about the pricing discrepancies between U.S./European book markets and the rest of the world. Prior to that, I had no idea that such huge differences existed.

Tip jars ... you know, back when I first got into self-publishing (comics/webcomics) in the early 00s, tip jars were everywhere, on everyone's website. Most people never made more than a few bucks from them, though, and they slowly died out. I can think of two webcomics artist I knew about at the time who actually made a living by providing a free webcomic with an attached tip jar, but this was only the tiniest fraction of those who tried it, of course.

But that was also a different world -- I was actually talking to an artist friend of mine the other day about how much more self-publisher-friendly the world has gotten in the last 10 years, in terms of the technology that's available (ebooks have leveled the playing field A LOT). Undercutting your publisher by, essentially, selling the book off your website is something that I would think most authors would be deeply leery of, but I can think of a number of end runs around it, such as what Barbara Hambly does: she sells short stories set in the worlds of her novels, making extra money without hurting her publishers. One thing I remember seeing in my webcomic days was authors running "donation drives", when they'd provide fresh content for each level of donations/tips. There are a lot of creative ways you could handle it without directly competing with your publisher (if you had a publisher -- for self-published people I can't think of a single earthly reason not to do that; well, okay, the reason why *I* never did it was because I felt weird about selling a product and ALSO having a tip jar on top of that, but I wasn't offering an e-version, and that changes the playing field a whole lot).

Ironically, I think tip jars are probably more likely to work today than when they were first introduced, in a world where people are a lot more accustomed to paying for content online, but they've already been abandoned as a failed experiment by a lot of small-press, mid-list and self-published authors.