It's honestly why I don't have much hope for the DCC show going the distance. Really... with how expansive and wild and whacky and long its been and will be.. do we really think Peacock is going to give it 10+ full length seasons to tell the story? These tv execs are completely fine mining and cancelling as long as they get a few seasons worth of cash out of it. I also think we get objectively worse stories when showrunners can't write a multi season arc and have to wrap everything up in a season in case they don't get more. Or at least try to wrap up something. And you lose new audiences who say I'll wait and see and binge (but that's a problem authors face too when people wait for more but don't realize failing to pay an author now hinders their ability to produce more).
Kramer in my eyes is one of the most overhyped narrators around. Reading even worse. Just incredibly boring and dry. But I realize I'm probably in the minority on that one. Rosamund absolutely knocked it out of the park on the 4 books she did. Kramer when I did Way of Kings a long time ago put me in a pretty significant reading slump so I've held a bit of a grudge. I did my best with him during Dandelion Dynasty but never finished. Still not sure why he was the narrator for that one but oh well.
I love Kramer as an audiobook narrator! but, in fairness, I usually listen to audiobooks to help me fall asleep
so Kindle launched a "Story So Far" feature that'll give you a recap of what came before in a book, especially if you've taken a break from it. Of course, it's not available on Exodus, a 900+ page book that I read 200 pages of months ago and just now jumping back into. Fuck it, I'll catch on
I hear you on paying the artist for the art. I suppose I would walk back "way cheaper" from my initial comment and stick with "cheaper". More broadly, I think a physical book is more materially valuable than an ebook and more of a pleasant experience, and it also incurs more production costs (paper and glue and ink vs. bits and bytes), so charging more is reasonable to me. I guess I would phrase it as "a physical book should cost more than an ebook" rather than "an ebook should cost less than a physical book". And I'm far from an expert on the economics involved, but speaking from my own experience, when I sell a physical book via a third party (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.), I make about $2–$3 for my Garden Knight books and about $5 for The Servant. When I sell ebooks I make about a dollar less across the board, though they're priced significantly lower ($3 vs. $9, $5 vs. $12/$22/$40 for different formats). That's how things work out for me to make a bit per sale while also keeping the costs down for readers. I think it's generally reasonable to pay $9 for a paperback novella or whatever. (When I sell direct, I make a lot more profit overall because I've cut out the middleman, so I'm able to drop prices, and that ends up working better for everyone.) Anyway, the point is that, at least for me, having ebooks be cheaper than physical doesn't significantly reduce my compensation for my art, it just balances out the production and delivery costs, so that seems okay. Now, I don't necessarily feel that making $5 for selling a nice hardcover of a book that I worked on for 25 years and poured thousands of hours and all my energy and creativity and passion into is fair compensation; but I'm not sure how to do the math on that that doesn't end up costing a reader like $100k or something haha. The economics of scale have to factor in, but a lot of artists aren't going to reach the threshold of readership to balance out the scales, I don't think. Anyway, a bit of a ramble here. I agree with your point about paying the artist for their art. As a reader, I am more than happy to pay someone a fair price for something that is artistically valuable and meaningful. As an artist, I like getting compensated for my efforts. All that said, I don't mind selling my ebooks for less than my physicals, but part of that is because it's a somewhat pared down experience and I find the price commensurate.
We really should just cut publishing cuts way down and give authors more across all platforms. Especially digital.
I have no first hand knowledge whatsoever, and this is something I've asked @OwainGlyndwr about in the past, but it always felt to me like other people with their hands in the pot (Amazon, publishers, etc.) were jacking up / keeping up ebook prices and the authors themselves were not the ones seeing that money - I can see how physically printing & publishing books entails a certain amount of costs, not so much for just sending someone a digital file
I don’t know the economics of ebooks vs physical but when you create an ebook once for probably a diminimis amount of money vs having to produce physical books at some cost whenever there is the need, I feel like an ebook should just be less expensive than they are.
I agree, but also @Helloelloallo 's point about paying an artist for their art & how much is their creation & work worth wasnt really something I had considered
Amazon and the publishers have colluded to keep ebook prices high because they would lose probably half of their print market (if not more) if they priced like the indies who are ebook forward
Anyway, people have been talking about used book stores in here but I live in an area where there’s only one. Never been before so gonna go on Father’s Day to check it out.
It costs $14.52 to print my 600-page dust-jacketed hardcover of The Servant. Like, those are just printing costs. About $4/copy to ship it to me when I order in bulk, more if they're shipping a single copy to someone else. I don't know how much it costs to send the 3-megabyte file of that book to someone's ereader, but I have to imagine it's cheaper than that haha. The margins are obviously closer for a 70-page paperback, but still, it's a valid point that tradpub and Amazon are really really pushing to still make a bunch of money off ebooks (especially since it costs them so little but they don't pay authors anything extra). And as Garrett pointed out the indie community has generally pivoted from that to great success overall. I don't begrudge Amazon/whoever taking some of the money, as they're the ones hosting and fulfilling orders and everything. But they're certainly getting paid more for their work than I'm getting paid for my work, which I hadn't really considered before. Though again I do really appreciate @Helloelloallo's point about paying a fair amount for art regardless of what could cost. I do like that mentality as someone who likes art.
most of the used bookstores around me closed, the ones I knew of at least. there's one that I still know of 2 or 3 towns over, but then there are places like Savers, and libraries usually do used book sales periodically too
I'd like to be buried in a used bookstore haha. The best ones feel like a community and it's a cool atmosphere to be surrounded by loved books. You end up finding cool stuff too.
I love used bookstores but they also make me conflicted because the author gets $0.00 from a used sale.