King's New eBook

NoProb writes "Yahoo has a story that describes Steven King's new book Riding the Bullet, which will be released in electronic format only. It also states that Barnes & Noble will be giving the book away for free today only. After that it'll cost you $2.50 to download it. " OK, sure the first major book in electronic format is cool, but part of the story that I thought is interesting is that Softlock, who's actually doing the selling part has buckled under the strain. The demand for electronic information continues to grow.

Comments

Why $2.50 is a good deal

[Arkanis]

I live in Canada. $2.50 to me is $0.25 to most people. Heck, yesterday I saw someone burning five dollar bills to keep warm.

But wait, it's probably in American money.. ack, there goes my days salary.

-Ark

"He who goes to bed with an itchy ass wakes with a smelly finger." - Prince Charles

New urban legend

[chandoni]

My daughter & I had just finished eating some chocolate chip cookies at an internet cafe & wanted to do some light reading. Because we love Steven King, we decided to browse a copy of "Riding the Bullet". The first chapter was so excellent that I asked if I could download the rest of the book. With a cute smile, the waitress said "sure, for two fifty". I said "just add it to my tab".

Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from the internet cafe, and it was $265! I looked again and remembered that I'd spent $5 for the cookies and about $10 for connect time charges. As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said "eBook - $250". Boy, was I upset!!! I called the accounting department and told them that I thought the waitress had meant $2.50. But they said there was nothing they could do and that I could go pour hot grits down my paints. Therefore, for revenge, I'm emailing a copy of this book to everybody on the internet, so nobody else will be fooled by this scam again.

Barns & Noble is backed up too.

[romco]

But you can give them your email address and they will email it to you. (we will see )

Here's the link
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookshelf/ebooks/k ing.asp?userid=4LN6ZHK7W8&srefer=

Competition?

[levl289]

OK, hear me out before you mark me as a troll and/or flamebait.

There are many people that argue big business is putting out mom-n-pop stores unfairly. Not only in the book industry, but in regular goods; stores like Wal-Mart, Tower Records, and Blockbuster.

Now, I'll be the first one to say that the above-mentioned treatment is unfair (the big online book-sellers getting the goods first), but in the big picture, is there really a problem with these big companies?
If I can go to B&N and buy myself a book for several dollars cheaper than I can at a mom-n-pop, I'm not gonna think twice about it. If I can go to Wal-Mart, and get myself a lawn mower for less money, same thing. Of course there's unfair trade practices, which I'm generally against, but business is business, and the lowest bidder gets mine.

To those that argue that the purchase money isn't working locally, I would disagree - the amount of money spent is being offset by the large workforce that these companies have. So yeah, while a refrigerator split between ma' and pa' is a big chunk of change, there's an even bigger chunk to be had by 30-40 employees working at the bigger stores.

Specialty stores will always exist if there's a need for 'em. I buy records (you know, vinyl?), all the time, putting my money into an industry that should have tanked about a decade ago...

But I digress, if geeks are supposed to be libertarians, you should be able to see this all pretty clearly w/o me.

(BTW, if you have stories of unfair practices by said companies, please post them - I'm always open to learning :).

Re:Competition?

[Pinball Wizard]

This is a clip from an older news story, but this lawsuit is still very much active. For more information, see http://www.bookweb.org/home/news/btw /2883.html

For us at least, its just a matter of wanting an equal playing field, not preferential treatment because we are a smaller business. And in reply to those that assume that the smaller stores will have higher prices, well, all I can say is we get a lot of traffic from bestbookbuys.combecause our prices are often the best - without a big advertising budget, this is one of the few ways we can get exposure.

March 18, 1998, Tarrytown, NY - The American Booksellers Association (ABA), on behalf of itself and more than 20 independent bookstores, announced today that it has filed an anti-trust lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Barnes & Noble and Borders. The suit alleges that these large, national chain stores are using their clout with publishers to obtain secret and illegal deals and preferential treatment. The lawsuit further claims that these illegal deals put independent bookstores at a serious competitive disadvantage and pose a threat to their survival and to the diversity of American bookselling. The suit contends that these illegal dealings come in many forms, including soliciting special discounts on both large and small orders, the granting of more favorable promotional advertising terms, threatening large returns to obtain extra discounts, and other illegal dealings. Further, the suit alleges that these activities violate a federal antitrust statute, the Robinson-Patman Act, passed in the 1930's to protect small and independent retailers from unfair competition by chain stores. According to lawyers for the plaintiffs, this is the first time a group of independent businesses and their trade association have used this anti-trust statute to fight back against large, national chain stores.

Glassbook

[Eric Seppanen]

Oh, goody. Let's all run out and support Glassbook, who's trying to push the same "secure copyright distribution" crap that the RIAA and MPAA are.

Think there's ever going to be an open source reader for their EBX format? Think again. I'll take dead trees over Big Brother.
--

Can I host an online book on a libraries homepage?

[antiquark]

Most likely not, but obviously people who can't afford the book, or dont have a computer, can't read this book.

Usually when you don't want to, or can't buy a book you borrow it from a library, with an _e-book_ this isn't possible. This is an issue that needs to be solved I beleive.

Re:King's eBook

[bloody_sputem]

Yes, but B&N engage in unfair business practices. Like opening up a bunch of stores in an area, selling books at zero profit for a year until the independents go out of business (they can't compete on the volume or volume pricing), then close down all but one store where they bring the prices back up to normal.

B&N have also engaged in intimidation of employees trying to unionize.

What's worse, however, is that they're all part of the same huge media conglomerates as the publishers. Gradually, access to independently published works will become so hard as to be unavailable to the bulk of people.

Reducing it to an argument of price/competition is a short-sighted view of the Market economy. Large corporations will always win in the price domain when they have to. When they don't have to ... well, those prices won't stay low. The classic view of the Market correcting things (i.e., if they jack up the prices, indies will bust in on their business) just doesn't hold up to examination -- look what happens when someone threatens, say, the recording industry or the motion picture industry. If you read slashdot, you've seen these stories...

"book" my butt

[spreer]

This 66 page work is better classified as a novella than a novel. When King (or anyone other best selling author for that matter) chooses to release a full length work online rather than in print, it will be a much bigger deal. Paying for short fiction online is nothing new. You might have been able to find something of this length in Omni online before it tanked. Before you start swooning and proclaiming "print is dead," consider that this work probably never have appeared in print. A novella is an awkward and difficult length. To short for seperate publication, but too long to be carried in a magazine, this piece probably could only have reached the public in a collection or, more improbably these days, serialized in a magazine. Is it any wonder that his publisher went along with it? This is just a cagey attempt to get a wider readership for it (as well as getting him a rep. for being "cutting edge") And more power to him. That said, I doubt we'll be seeing his next full length novel anywhere but in print. Then again, maybe he was just getting his feet wet before a full scale dive into electronic media. Who knows.

spreer

Also at chapters.ca

[tomblackwell]

You can also get it for free at Chapters.ca

File Formats and O'Reilly

[_Sprocket_]

In the interest of credit where its due - its interesting to see a mass-appeal author publish direct to an electronic format. But shortly after that first nod, we find a slew of questions... what format is it? What platform can I read it on?

Although it is a different situation... I would give O'Reilly more credit for pushing forward electronic publishing than the current King release. The CD Bookshelf series (covering subjects from Unix to Networking to Oracle/SQL) is a collection of O'Reilly technical books on a subject all bundled on a single CD. With example code. A search engine. And its HTML.

Yes... HTML.

No special OS-specific readers; no additional software. Fire up your favorite browser and go. Yes. Even Lynx. Want to search your collection? The search engine is JAVA. A little more involved in some cases, but still quite cross-platform.

Of course, the great thing about this collection is the ability to get at a large amount of data quickly, efficiently, and easily. Carry it with you. Load it up on your laptop. Mount it in your home system and SSH in to run lynx or w3m and browse. But there's another portability issue that O'Reilly's bold move to HMTL provides that other e-book proprietary formats do not.

You can access the data you paid for in any way that's usefull to you.

People have already pointed out they're not about to get comfy in front of their PC to enjoy a book. And its not likely to happen with a bulky laptop. I've found my Palmpilot makes a very functional platform for comfortable reading (others have complained about the size of the text - YMMV). Ahh! But I don't want to cram one of those large HTML browsers and the HTML file in to my limited Pilot's memory. No problem. A quick HTML to DOC conversion and I've got a few select chapters ready for handy reference away from a network or to study in the comfort of my living room chair.

I mentioned that O'Reilly has made a bold move. Their choice in a very functional, but technically unprotected, file system is an interesting one. Hasn't their use of an easy-to-copy format opened them to piracy? I've asked the question of Tim O'Reilly himself in more than one forum. No answer. But you'll note that they have continued to update and expand their CD Bookshelf offerings. Perhapse they know something that remains a mystery to even the publishers of Steven King.

King's eBook

[Pinball Wizard]

I run one of the online bookstores that is selling the eBook. This was suppossed to be a fair method of distribution, with each bookstore participating in Simon & Schusters promotion having an equal opportunity to sell the book. However, the moneyed players(Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et. al.) have been allowed to give the book away, effectively shutting us little guys out of the promotion.

I feel that this is a bad sign for the first major fiction publication that is strictly electronic. If you care about the future of ecommerce, don't just give all your money to the big guys! Ensure that smaller companies can survive on the internet by patronizing their businesses as well. Otherwise we will end up with an internet that is totally dominated by big firms.

For those of you going to Barnes and Noble thinking you are doing the right thing in boycotting Amazon - you're not. In the bookstore business, B&N are widely seen as the real enemy - they are the ones going around and causing all the independents to close down. There were over 5,500 independent bookstores in the U.S. in 1990 - today there are less than 3,500. We can thank the chains, and especially B&N for our new lack of diversity of information sources.