This is a pretty awesome deal when you consider it for a whole family. I go through a couple books a week reading with my daughter (generally in Kindle format on an iPad). We get what we can from the library, but she really likes series, and if we finish book 4 while book 5 is still a two week wait to check out I'll typically just buy it. Throw in my personal reading and my wife's and we're buying an average of 3-4 books each month.
Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
151–160 of 240 posts
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was a kid I got books from the library too. Then, like most people who enjoy reading, I began buying books of my own. Libraries are fine when you just want to find some books you haven't read before but owning your own books has significant advantages, which I hope need not be restated here. How this goes for authors depends on how Amazon are purchasing the rights to the ebooks. Having seen what streaming has…
Just like the music industry, I think more writers are going to become acclimated to the book-signing aspect of the industry in order to support their themselves financially. Subscription based models and piracy that originated from the disruptive nature of new technology sounds like it would discencetivize writers from creating new works, but I think if you model the economics of future distributions, it will eventu…
How do you sign an e-book?
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#153The business is in owning, managing and curating media catalogues, not in distribution anymore. Almost anyone of us here is capable in setting up a torrent server and distributing any number of books to any number of consumers. Same is valid for music and movies.
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's unpopular but I really enjoy reading on my phone. It's small, it's always with me, it's much more convenient than lugging around a physical book(and I love physical books). But that's why I buy ebooks(they're just expensive which sucks). It's interesting to listen to the cascading excuses when bringing up books with friends. "Why not use a kindle?" "I like holding the physical book." "Oh, then why not go to the…
Happy medium. I use the library for my 'summer reading books', the books you read once, enjoy and never thing about again. I use Kindle for books I really enjoy and want to read again (or for free/cheap summer books that the library doesn't have). I buy physical books for reference or if the library/kindle/nook/ebook provider does not have it available.
> Happy medium.
An appropriate term to use in a discussion that's literally about different media for books.
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#155Interesting. I wonder what this implies for authors. Amazon might take a cut currently, but the lion's share ends up with the author -- a royalty based scheme significantly changes the playing field, and I worry that it could be for the worse ( http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25217353 ). EDIT -- and what it implies for publishers.
It'll definitely be interesting to watch. The article you linked talks about the effects of Spotify on making a living as a musician. Spotify economics are, as you've pointed out, much tougher for authors than for songwriters. Books take a lot longer to create than songs. Also, people listen to the same songs hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of times before getting sick of them. People generally read books once. M…
>The economics of subscription suggest a shift in incentives away from the years-long creation of 300+ page tomes, and toward serialization or shorter forms.
This has already happened. For smarter writers, Amazon's distribution model killed the Big Novel model and pushed them to a cheap installment-of-the-month model.
Dickens used to publish like this (not through Amazon, obviously) so it's not necessarily a bad model.
But writers are notoriously bad at business, which is why mainstream publishing contracts have gotten away with being so larcenous and exploitative for so long, and why it's been so hard to make a living out of fiction unless you top the best-seller lists.
Amazon changed that. A lot of authors were finding they could support themselves from self-published fiction, full-time - which was never possible with trad-pub contracts, because they give mid-list and lower writers a tiny advance, insultingly small royalties, and take up to two years to get a book into the stores after the writing is done.
Those self-pub writers are going to be looking at this nervously to see how it changes the economics again.
Not that they should be surprised. A lot of people predicted this.
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a regular user of the local library, but I notice that most people in my "class" (i.e. tech people earning a lot) don't go there. It's easier to buy it on your Kindle for $10-$15 than to make a trip to the library. I'm gonna be a jerk and say that most people also like to hang out in expensive coffee shops with other members of their class, and not in the library where there are lots of poor people. It's a little…
Wow... I don't know what libraries you go to but libraries are generally not full of poor people...
Any library in an area with a significant homeless population.
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#157Lots of people in this thread are talking about this being scary for authors. When I was a kid, I got to read a ton of books any time I wanted. I got them at this place called a "library" where they let people come in and take books home with them to read for free . People have always had the option to read books without buying them. In those days, going to the library was effectively the same effort as going to a bo…
I'm a regular user of the local library, but I notice that most people in my "class" (i.e. tech people earning a lot) don't go there. It's easier to buy it on your Kindle for $10-$15 than to make a trip to the library. I'm gonna be a jerk and say that most people also like to hang out in expensive coffee shops with other members of their class, and not in the library where there are lots of poor people. It's a little…
I regularly have four or five books from my library (one or two tech books, a fiction book and two or three comics) at any one time.
Not to mention the, literally dozens, I get for my kids every month.
I use the library to sample books and because if I bought every book I read, despite my healthy income, I'd be broke. I am an information devourer.
I am pretty sure there are a lot of people like me, at least in the Austin area, because I have to wait on some of the books I'd like to read that I don't think very poor people would be interested in.
YMMV because my library is pretty awesome and well stocked, but I think libraries are a shamefully underutilized resource.
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I buy physical books because they're cheaper than ebooks. I'll usually pay about $.50 to a buck for them. Sometimes my friends just give me a box of books they're done with. The local thrift store often has bestsellers for a buck. The usual price for a used book on Amazon is $.01, which with shipping comes out to still far less than the ebook.
For ebooks, Amazon already has one free "rental" per month of select books, for Prime members. There are other good sources of free books include this blog: http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/category/books/free-fiction...
I was not aware of this. Do you get to chose the book?
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'll definitely be interesting to watch. The article you linked talks about the effects of Spotify on making a living as a musician. Spotify economics are, as you've pointed out, much tougher for authors than for songwriters. Books take a lot longer to create than songs. Also, people listen to the same songs hundreds (sometimes even thousands) of times before getting sick of them. People generally read books once. M…
>The economics of subscription suggest a shift in incentives away from the years-long creation of 300+ page tomes, and toward serialization or shorter forms. This has already happened. For smarter writers, Amazon's distribution model killed the Big Novel model and pushed them to a cheap installment-of-the-month model. Dickens used to publish like this (not through Amazon, obviously) so it's not necessarily a bad mode…
Absolutely. Although I'm maybe more optimistic on this point:
"Those self-pub writers are going to be looking at this nervously to see how it changes the economics again."
I dunno. For the time being, many of them will need to think carefully about how this shift changes things. But they're the ones who stand the benefit the most here. Self-pubbers who have been playing a volume and catalog game -- as the more successful ones have for years now -- are going to understand how to play this new game. Traditional authors, who've never been much for business or self-promotion as a group, are going to freak out. People with large catalogs are going to win. People with one or two Big Novels are going to lose (unless those Big Novels happen to be bestsellers already). People who can produce reams and reams of new material every year, nurturing mailing lists and activating fan bases, are going to keep doing that, and it will keep serving them well.
Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just like the music industry, I think more writers are going to become acclimated to the book-signing aspect of the industry in order to support their themselves financially. Subscription based models and piracy that originated from the disruptive nature of new technology sounds like it would discencetivize writers from creating new works, but I think if you model the economics of future distributions, it will eventu…
How do you sign an e-book?
You get your picture taken with the author/talent instead.
Do I want my Louis CK DVD autographed? Or do I want a picture with him? I'll take the picture every time.