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Kindle books NOT a hit among Boing Boing readers
July 21, 2009 | 6:27 am
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By David Rothman
“I sold 25,000 Amazon books from BB links (supertechy audience!) last 12 mos; <2% Kindle books. Ebooks still commercially insignificant.” – Cory Doctorow.
The TeleRead take: Could the Kindle’s onerous DRM—and Amazon’s ability to zap already-bought books remotely—be partly why Cory’s readers are shunning Kindle books? Or could they be buying Kindles but insisting on nonDRMed books from sources besides Amazon?
That said, you said see why I’m furious at Amazon for hiding my novel’s trade paperback from typical shoppers. Amazon makes you first call up the Kindle listing for The Solomon Scandals before you even know a paperback edition exists. I assume this is just carelessness or stupidity. If it isn’t, however, and if I can summon up the resources, you can bet I’ll sue those responsible. I’m one of the loudest critics of Amazon on the Net. Why is my paperback covered up? Is this happening to other writers, either accidentally or because Amazon wants to drive people to buy Kindles?
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Comments:
As much as I admire Cory Doctorow’s work and his copyfighter message, I think it is highly skewed logic for him to base a judgment on the commercial significance of ebooks on the Amazon numbers for his audience and titles. As he points out — he has a “supertechy audience.” People looking for his books are likely to know that he gives away free, technologically superior e-book versions of his works. In fact, his business model counts on readers discovering his work through the free e-book editions, and then buying the paper. Why would someone discover his work through his free version, and then go to Amazon to pay for a different, crippled e-edition? The fact that he has sold ~25,000 copies to BB readers seems to prove his model works, but the fact that he hasn’t sold many kindle editions doesn’t necessarily prove that e-editions aren’t viable.
And on your situation with Amazon: that certainly does smell like malice aforethought to me.
I read Little Brother exclusively in electronic form and I bought the paper version because that is what the author told us to do (buy a paper copy and donate it).
I would normally have donated directly to the author, but he explicitly declines such an offer because he doesn’t wish to cut his publisher out of the loop. Kindle/Fictionwise versions don’t have the publisher issue, but, as Mike states, why pay for the crippled version when you can buy paper and donate (or pay nothing because payment wasn’t an option).