And now Jane has a post with a take on the e-book marketing and Macmillan situation.

This would be a good time to make the round of our three blogs and see what’s going on.

7 Comments

Daze on February 2, 2010 at 1:01 pm

Also worth reading LE Modesitt’s take on this (plus ensuing debate in the comments) here: http://www.lemodesittjr.com/blogs/blog/2010/02/why-amazon-and-some-readers-are-wrong.html

sweetbo on February 2, 2010 at 2:56 pm

The more I look into this the more I’d prefer to buy books from the writers. Good grief. What is becoming clear is that in the next 10-15 years the only services publishers could preform are maybe editing and cheerleading (publicity). Everything else isn’t needed. And even at that you could probably hire your own editor and hire a cheerleader that can freak’n cheer for your books and get them to readers. Publishers have been failing at that for years now. If this was an audition they are not making the grade and haven’t in those areas for a while now. I am surprised they are even listing publicity as a service for any writer at the mid-range level. Yet in the link above they are saying they deserve be paid for it.

sweetbo on February 2, 2010 at 4:46 pm

Harper Collins following the trend?
http://gizmodo.com/5462724/another-blow-in-the-great-amazonapple-publishing-war-harpercollins

Huh. Well, I guess I’ll be reading a lot of public domain books for a while (That’s not really a bad thing. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is very readable) and waiting until prices go down on expensive ebooks. Or visit a library. Way to stick it to the readers.

Like someone said in the comments there (referring to Kindle vs iPad): Who knew competition could drive prices up?

nighthawkatshejidan on February 3, 2010 at 10:38 am

Article in the Washington Post today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020203910.html

Includes comments on publishing, ebooks, etc. The author, Steven Pearlstein, also led an online discussion on the topic today. Thought some of the participants here would find them interesting.