The Truth About The Price Of Books

There’s a lot of talk about whether books are priced fairly. Ebooks especially get a lot of flak for being .99c or free.

Various arguments are made for paying a fair price, not flooding the market, quality control. A popular one is that people value things based on how much they pay for them.

The truth is all this fretting has nothing to do with money. It’s got to do with how you feel about yourself as a writer. It’s got to do with how you think other’s see you. It’s got to do with being valued as  a person, and worrying that you're not.

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Ebook Evolution

Personally I don’t believe you need to win the reader over with your first line or your first page. I don’t buy a book sight unseen, start reading without knowing what it’s about, and if I’m unimpressed by the first 250 words, chuck it in the bin.

The only people who read like that are agents.

Not that I’m not fussy about what I read. I may skim through boring bits, or give up on a well written book if it annoys me with its subject matter or unconvincing characters. But I’m not so demanding that I expect immediate brilliance from word one.

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Hurry! Free Stuff!

It’s pretty easy to download movies, music and e-books off the net. It’s pretty obvious none of the industries involved knows how to deal with this or which is the best way to proceed.

The problem is the established companies are not interested in just embracing the new. It still has to line their pockets. If the development of digital product results in cutting out the middlemen, then the middlemen aren’t going to like it very much.

Not only will they seek to dissuade people from choosing alternative methods that don’t line their pockets, they will actively try to fuck things up.

I’m particularly interested in how e-books will develop now that the age of the e-reader is upon us (this will probably be how Skynet gets started). Books are easy to pirate, there’s lots of demand,  and they take seconds to download. What can you do? I think an interesting way to see what the future has in store is to look at the rise of the podcast.

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