But there is no sense cutting off my nose to spite my face.

So do you put your books on Kindle?

Oh, absolutely, but not for the reason you might think.

Amazon takes such a chunk (esp on Kindle), that it’s useless to hope to make any money. So I think of my Amazon presence like marketing (i.e., like I’m paying for ad space).

The point is to make yourself available in as many venues as possible. If I could get on Fictionwise et al (they have certain criteria I don’t meet), I would.

Piracy is a non-starter issue for me. It happens, so I simply factor that into the risks of doing business electronically.

I definitely do NOT believe in DRM.

Yes, without DRM, people can steal ebooks and share them, BUT I believe there are more honest people than dishonest people in the world, and a lot of readers prefer print books.

If someone stole an ebook I wasn’t giving away for free, and shared it with someone who just read dead tree books, and that person liked it, well they’ve heard about me, and maybe they’ll go buy the dead tree version.

Somehow I feel the karma all balances out. But that might be naive of me. I don’t know. What I do know is that DRM pisses consumers off and is a shitty power play on the part of manufacturers.

And I don’t want to be on that end of the karma stick.

Eugene, for the B10Mediaworx bookstore, we decided to go with WordPress and the WP eCommerce plugin. We thought that would be a better fit for that application, but of course, we don’t know yet. We’ve tested it six ways from Sunday and it lacks one functionality we really want (and will need in the future), but otherwise, in testing, it seems to do the job. I still use Linklok for my other application because it works and I see no reason to change.

I haven’t set eyeballs on eInk yet, so I may have to trundle the Tax Deductions to Target and take a gander.

I think that’s the important thing about selling e-readers at Target: getting eyeballs on the product. I was surprised at how important the right technology was in my adopting e-books. I was disappointed with e-books until I found a gizmo I liked–and at the time, it was difficult to try gizmos because they weren’t sold in many places. I’d like to see other experiments placing e-readers in higher ed and as loaners in libraries.

It sounds like you’ve already heard about some issues with it. I imagine I’ll run into a glitch too at some point.

No, the glitches I heard about were the ones before this new edition came out. I am most CERTAINLY intrigued by your assessment of the reflow for PDFs, though.

Th. said:

For me, I wouldn’t really consider anything but eInk, which is still expensive. And I think the prices of readers and the prices of ebooks are both outlandish, but I’m a cheap bastard and buy few things at “market value” anyway.

I haven’t set eyeballs on eInk yet, so I may have to trundle the Tax Deductions to Target and take a gander. As for the prices of ebooks, some are outrageous, some aren’t. I don’t think ebooks should be priced the same as paper, for certain, but a lot of people think that just because they’re bits and bytes they should be next to free, and there are costs associated with ebooks, too. Just not…ones you can touch or otherwise conceptualize easily.

Take a look at Samhain Publishing’s ebook price chart, which I find to be more than reasonable. When I’ve posed the question on the romance blogs whether people pay attention to word count (or file size) versus price, the answer always comes back that yes, people assess that very carefully.

As for “market value,” one of the problems ebooks will always have because of the nature of them, is that you can’t resell them. No used ebook store, sorry. In that, I’m conflicted about price also.

The follow-up question is what download service to use. I’ve put the PRC and PDF of Angel Falling Softly on Payloadz (because it’s simple and free). But Clickbank seems to get the most recommends.

I haven’t really looked at Payloadz.

I went to Clickbank and looked at their titles and I didn’t see one fiction title amongst them. And their nonfiction titles looked…questionable. Their search feature didn’t help sift anything out, either.

I don’t know if your title is available through the Ingram List (Lightning Source?), but maybe you or Zarahemla could look into getting it listed on Diesel eBooks, Overdrive and Books on Board. I know that Fictionwise has stringent requirements for a publisher to get its books placed there, but I haven’t investigated eBookWise much yet, as it’s owned by Fictionwise. I don’t know that you’ll be able to get listed with any of these, but it’s worth a try.

Have you thought about just setting up your own little download center on your website with something like Linklok? I use Linklok for my other online venture and it works like a dream.

I wouldn’t take Steve Jobs seriously, no matter what he says. It wasn’t so long ago he was saying Apple would never ever ever make a phone.

For me, I wouldn’t really consider anything but eInk, which is still expensive. And I think the prices of readers and the prices of ebooks are both outlandish, but I’m a cheap bastard and buy few things at “market value” anyway.

So you’ve had glitches and they weren’t that annoying to you or you haven’t had any glitches?

I haven’t had any glitches, except one PDF that turned out to be corrupt (wouldn’t work on my computer either).

I was pleasantly surprised how well the page reflow worked on the Sony. When I was reading e-books on the computer, I wasn’t crazy about the pagination in either Mobipocket or Adobe Digital Editions. It actually works better on the Sony 505 than on my giant computer screen.

The reason I wouldn’t be surprised by glitches is that, in general, technology is like that; and more specifically, PDF files seem to be complicated, persnickety things. It sounds like you’ve already heard about some issues with it. I imagine I’ll run into a glitch too at some point.