Readers Love eBooks. Too Bad Publishers Still Don’t Get It.

I didn’t think I’d ever get on board the ereader band wagon. But a lot of my favourite type books – Westerns, Sci-Fi Romance, Historicals that take place OUTSIDE of England, are scare in the NY print format I decided I’d best finally get on board. And I found it quite surprising really. Well I felt way behind and left out in romance land in getting an ereader, a Kobo in particular, once I did get it, I found I was in the advance guard in my day to day world. Very few people around me even knew what they were – though that is changing daily as more and more coworkers and friends get them.

I will always still love print books and continue to buy them, but I do love me ereader now for so many reasons. As opposed to some of the claims in this column – and I’m not saying they aren’t true – but I haven’t noticed them, the vast majority of ebooks I’ve been buying are available at the same time – and at much better prices than in print. The most glaring example is the latest In Death book. To buy it in the store here in Canada, because it’s in hardcover, would have cost me $31. Buying it online along with my Avid reader discount would have cut the cost to $19.44. The ebook version was on special for $9.99 and I had a 30% discount. So I ended up saving $23 by not getting it in the B&M store and instead getting it as an ebook.

I always wait for deals like that though not all so significant. So my ereader is saving me money.

I just recently purchased an IPad and I’m trying to figure out how to get my ebooks from the Kobo over to the IPad. So in just over a year, I went from saying never to having 2 different ereading devices.

Dawn – – Your books remain your books, you can download them again. But, of course, you would need to drop another large chunk of money on an e-reader. It was indeed the main reason I held off on getting one.

My siblings and I have had several generations of the Sony Reader since I got the first about 4 1/2 years ago. We currently have 505, 650 & 950 Readers. We all read romances & F&SF, so we have shared books for many years, and having all 3 Readers on my account lets us continue to share. Since I keep all books I buy, our physical space to add bookshelves ran out about when the first Reader came out, and now I buy 99+% ebooks, with just an occasional printed book I can’t get in ebook form. We still have the 20,000+ paperbacks, but I read new ebooks more often than the paper books because I read recent releases more often than backlists. Most of my rereading is still paper books. About Harlequin backlists, I’ve seen a lot of backlist titles show up in the Sony eBook Store, frequently in author-specific bursts (a bunch of titles by one author showing up at once). In fact, I’ve had better luck searching the Sony Store than the eHarlequin site. Either the eHarlequin search engine doesn’t include backlist titles or I’m missing some quirk in getting it to work. About Harlequin bundles, check BooksOnBoard to see how their Harlequin bundles compare to the old ones direct from Harlequin. (I know they exist but haven’t priced them.) About errors, this is copied from my recent posts in the Spelling and Grammar thread on the AAR Potpourri board: The absolutely worst formatted purchased book I’ve read to date was the ebook of Once Upon Stilettos by Shanna Swendson (Ballantine Books ebook 2006). This is the one I estimated at over 4,000 formatting problems (many per page): it was missing all apostrophes, all quotes, all em & en dashes, and all accented letters. It was so bad it was a real challenge to read and I reported it to the Sony eBook Store I bought it from, and they made a repaired copy available a couple weeks ago (months after I reported the problem). At a quick glance, the new copy looked much more readable. I thought I should explain what I mean by formatting errors. Most of these formatting errors CAN also show up in printed books, but DO so much more rarely than in ebooks. Extra hyphens [hy-phens] in words in the middle of lines. Broken paragraphs with an extra return in the middle. Shifts to/from italics in the middle of words. Extra spaces in the middle of words, after hyphens, en dashes and em dashes, or before other punctuation marks. [plea sure] [end– start] [a question ?] Missing blank lines between scenes. Word-wrap failures (or margin errors) causing words to vanish off the right side of the Reader screen. Characters the Reader can’t map or display, producing a question mark. Missing accented characters, producing incomplete words. [fa ade for the version of facade using c with a cedilla] Missing ligatures, producing incomplete words. [ower for flower because the fl ligature vanished] The missing accented characters and ligatures are especially problematic. In some cases, there is a blank visible so one can tell there is a character that can’t be represented on the Reader due to the publisher’s failure to use the right character set, but sometimes there is no hint of the missing character other than an incomplete word (or an inappropriate word when the lost characters create shorter words as in my example above). Formatting errors aren’t common in most ebooks, with most ebooks having from zero to just a few that I notice, but a few ebooks have dozens or more and in a few really bad cases I estimated the count at thousands. (If I see too many errors I don’t actually count them, I just estimate based on the book’s page count.) I blame publishers for carelessness or use of poor ebook creation software (poor conversion from word-processor files). I have a strong suspicion that most broken words and extra hyphens come from bad translation of conditional hyphens used by some word processing software. I suspect missing quotes, apostrophes, em dashes and en dashes also come from bad translation of word processing software. Years ago Microsoft Word used special coding (and probably still does) for all four of those characters (curly quotes, curly apostrophes, em & en dashes, and ligatures aren’t in the 7-bit ASCII characters set, requiring either ANSI or Unicode), and some ebook creation software probably doesn’t handle those codes/characters right. I don’t even record poor word-wrapping… Read more »

How long do you htink it will be before an e-book reader will be sold that is compatible with all sellers, as well as the electronic books in libraries? Am I dreaming or do you think it’s a great possibility?

I have a Kindle. I prefer to read on screen these days. In particular, I’ve used the device to pick up reads from authors who are unknown to me. I’ve bought a number of works from small publishing houses and self-published books, too. It’s easy enough to download a sample to check on quality before committing to a purchase. Sure, there’s some awful stuff out there – but some of it is exceptionally good and much better than the franchised rubbish churned out by the big houses.

I have my Sony eReader for about a year and a half, and I’m still a mixed convert. What I usually do when I want a particular title is check for pricing differences between the printed book if I go to the store, the price if I order it via Amazon, and then if I’ll get any kind of price break if I download the e-version. If I do get a price break, then I go the ebook route. Otherwise I’m just as likely to order via Amazon.

I love having the ebooks, but one of my biggest issues is the whole DRM problem. When I buy ebooks at the Sony eReader store, I can’t upload them on to any other device. Granted, I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to strip DRM, but I shouldn’t have to. If I buy a book at the store, I own it outright and can take it anywhere I want. But if I buy the book for my Sony eReader, I’m stuck. That’s a huge turn off for me.

But my bookshelves are starting to overflow, and I love that I can just slip my eReader in my bag and have a virtual library of choices.

I fully support writers who go rogue, especially if they aren’t being allowed to write the books they want to write based on publisher demands or restrictions.

I’m very unhappy with how the publishers have treated those of us who buy their ebooks. In fact I was so annoyed after the recent decision by HarperCollins to add restrictions to library lending on their ebooks that I’ve officially stopped buying ebooks and print books. Instead I bought a nook classic to read library ebooks and I buy only used print books. Before Agency Model I was happily spending $100 a month on ebooks for my Kindle but I’m much happier now and reading even more with the library ebooks. I joined the Free Library of Philadelphia as a non-resident to have even more ebook borrowing options.

I have contacted publishers and Amazon maybe 30 times in the past 2 years about poorly formatted ebooks riddled with typos. Guess how many have updated those ebooks to fix the errors? None of them and all the ebooks are still for sale. Publishers need to stop looking for ways to raise their already high ebook prices and focus on giving us a quality product first.

BTW, I agree about missing the cover art on many ebooks.

I have a sony, nook and the kindle app on my android phone.

I was an early e book adopter. I have had the sony for about 3 years now. It surprised me that I did not miss the feel of a book but I admit the convenience and privacy afforded me with my e-reader has totally sold me on e books. And with the wireless option, I don’t have to wait to have a new book in my hands. :).

I am frustrated by Agency pricing and I think publishers are not considering the big picture and the move of technology when they adopt such practices. The pricing model has caused me to reduce my purchases from some publishers largely because of distaste with the practice. Given how much I spend on books, the publishers should want to remain my friend.

These practices plus the limitations placed on authors regarding the types of books they want to write will cause me to follow authors who decide to go the ePublishing route. Frankly if more authors went rogue maybe the “”New York Publishers”” would have to get a clue and start being more proactive with the new digital marketplace and stop being hinderances to the changes that are on the horizon.

I’ve been reading on my iPod Touch and iPad for about three years. I still have a boatload of paperbacks, although most of them are from USB’s. The only time I buy an Agency-priced book is when I find it for 25% off at Target.

I just finished a paperback last night. I enjoy holding books, and have a nice fabric cover with an attached bookmark ribbon. On the other hand, an ereader is so doggone handy, especially if I’m away from home.

I’m sorry that Michele has chosen to remove Connie Brockway books from her store. Change can be difficult, especially when it happens as quickly as the ebook tidal wave. I’d suggest she take a step back, look at what she CAN do to keep her store profitable, and concentrate on that. Removing merchandise from the shelves isn’t going to add to her bottom line.

As far as Brockway’s decision to strike out on her own, I’m delighted. I’m keeping track via FB and Twitter of the status of the new releases she’s working on.

Yes, I own a Nook.

Yes, I sometimes miss the feel of physical books, and read them often as well. I don’t miss having to store a bunch of books I purchased though, or tote a ton of them around with me on a trip.

I am increasingly enraged by the fact that e-books are not much cheaper than real books. And the formatting errors are an extra annoyance, given the price I’m paying!

I’m also super annoyed with the proprietary aspect of many readers. I bought the Nook solely because it would let me read library books. I actually wanted a Kindle, I like that machine much better, and now Kindle is saying later this year, library books will be an option. Which somehow just ticks me off even more, because I put off buying an e-reader until a couple months ago, hoping Kindle would see the light, but now I’m stuck with Nook, because I can’t read their books on a Kindle.

I’d give an author going out on their own a try, but if the price was higher, probably not.

Basically, I really have mixed feelings about e-books.

I was not sold over the whole e-reader idea until I got my Android. Then I got Alibris. Now any time I am waiting in line, at the doctor’s office, or anywhere I need to sit around like my time isn’t valuable too, I now take the power back and read short stories on my phone. I can get free books or purchase them from any site that sells epub. I will not pay the same price for an e-book as the paperback because I figure they have saved on the printing, shipping, store space, etc. and should pass the savings onto me. If they decide not to do so, I just by it used–I can wait and will not explode with anticipation.

What does this mean to my buying habits? I still buy print books by authors I know and love, especially if I already own all their other books that are in a series. I also don’t want to read longer books on a small screen so until I actually buy a proper e-reader, I will not buy longer books in e-format. The real difference is in the new authors I read. I am willing to buy shorter novels, short stories or anthologies by new authors if the price is good; I will no longer pay full price for a new author I have never heard of and there is usually no need to–there are too many sites where authors self-publish or were I can get points towards future purchases or rebates to try a publishers products.

i don’t have an e-reader — yet — but i recently put the kindle app on my pc and i’m delighted with it. and i applaud those authors who are going to e-publishing to have more control over their careers, more flexibility in what they write and publish, and a higher share of the profits. you go girls!

i can understand where a bookseller might be miffed at being (potentially) deprived of their livelihood but i think the attitude of some people is pretty peevish and spiteful.

the convenience of having lots and lots of books in a light-weight electronic device just sounds great to me. being able to adjust the size of the print, too, for when my eyes are tired. woo hoo!

and while i love buying books that have lots of illustrations — quilt books especially — i have a feeling it’s not going to be too much longer and e-books will have all the capabilities that the WWW gave us back in 1995. when i first went online in 1991 with prodigy, graphics was still in the future, videos and youtube and hulu and all that stuff was hardly a dream.

somehow or other reviewers are going to have to adapt, too, and start making some provision for the e-published material. maybe in addition to the a,b,c,d,f, and dik grades, dnf will have to become part of the grading scale. sometimes all it takes is a chapter or two to know it’s just not going to be worth spending time on, but if there’s the chance to find a new author, why not??

elaine

@Sunita — Well, obviously I don’t know what rights Harlequin has to rerelease in digital Betty Neels’ books. She’s dead, so they would have to negotiate the rights to the books they don’t already have going to e (there’s a baker’s dozen of Neels’ titles available digitally) with her estate. Whatever the status that legal situation, I would think there’s money to be made even if they have to kick back some percentage of the sale price to Neels’ heirs. (Which they must already do in those cases where they have the rights to rerelease in a digital format. It could be her heirs would ask for a larger percentage going forward.)

My point, of course, was not to criticize Harlequin for not acquiring the rights to certain authors’ backlists (with the hundreds of authors and thousands of titles, which backlists do you pay to release digitally?), but simply to say that if they have those rights, don’t release books one at a time. Yes, I was thinking of Betty Neels’ because I do know that they were (or are) releasing her books digitally one per month. But there have to be other authors that Harlequin can legally release digitally. And in those cases, it would make sense to me to get everything released as quickly as possible so that someone looking for one of those titles for an e-reader can buy it now.

Incidentally, the earliest title of Betty Neels’ backlist that has been released digitally was first published in 1995. If HQN’s contract with the late Neels (who died in 2000) had boilerplate language that permits rerelease in all formats including digital as early 1995, there are at least 16 titles they haven’t released yet. So — if they do nothing else — release those 16 titles.

I have a color Nook which I absolutely look. I still have their older version which I take to the gym most days. I purchase about 75% ebooks and the rest are either PB or the very occasionally HC. I have gained the ability to travel with just a small, thin device rather than 4 or 5 books in my bag. I also can get a book with just a few clicks or finger points. Ebooks have opened up a entire other world of books that I would not have seen if I did not have the ereader. There are now several ebook only publishers and I have bought several ebooks from them. Books that I would not have been able to read otherwise.

The things that do frustrate me is publishers discounting the PB but not the ebook and most of all those that do not release the ebook the same day as the PB. Really…..I have to wait how many more days for the ebook?!?!

I will certainly continue to purchase PB/HC but obviously in much smaller quantities. I have a lot more storage space on my shelves and keepers are right there when I want to re-read them. The nook allows me to shelve my favorites, to place bookmarks on favorite pages, highlight sections and even write notes.

As for those authors who are going to self-publish: The quality must be high or else I will not return. Even for favorite authors, if the book is not well edited, has major format/font issues or does not display well, I will not purchase any further. That means “”get it right the first time””.