I was getting worried until that last sentence. I read an advance copy of a book about a month back, and literally just an hour ago the author sent an email saying the book had been published and letting us advance readers know we could now post. I was starting to think it was pretty odd timing, if I got shot down before I had a chance to get over there and post a review.
The evening route for FedEx at our place regularly runs between 7 and 8 p.m. Packages often show up while we're putting the kids to bed. UPS is usually a little earlier, but after I'm home from work, so 6-7. USPS is around noon, and only ever then.
Aw, don't go all slippery slope on me. For a scam like this, even 10% would have been more than enough to indicate that the book wasn't worthwhile, because it didn't have that much substance in it, and was poorly done.
If it's like mochi, the red bean comes out pretty sweet, and not too weird, even for an American palate. Not any weirder than rice pudding or bread pudding, really.
I ran a game for a while that developed something of a meme with people saying they were kicking one of the other players. I don't think he cared, but over time it got kind of heavy and seemed a little aggressive, so I put in a snippet of code so that any time someone said "kicks playerx" it would say "hugs playerx". There were workarounds, of course, like the punctuation above, but the first few times someone new stumbled one it and caught themselves hugging instead of kicking, it was pretty funny. Eventually I changed it back, once enough people had gotten the point, and the meme sort of dried up.
I don't fault your logic at all on the price. I buy used print quite a bit for the same reasons. Only commented because you transitioned from the price considerations to arguments about author rewards in a way that didn't make sense to me.
I do think a lot of indie ebook authors and publishers understand the economics the same way you do, but the big publishers for the most part haven't caught on yet. Still hoping they eventually do, rather than pursuing heavier DRM and more legal restrictions to try to protect the ebook market. As a self-published author, I agree entirely your principles: $5 for the ebook without DRM, $12.50 for similar profits on a physical book because print-on-demand is so darn expensive. I would think a large publisher could get that down to $5/$10 and keep the balance about right.
While on Amazon I can get a used paperback for $.01 regularly plus 3.99 shipping the kindle versions are almost always the same or more expensive as a new paperback. The kindle version doesn't smell right and in the end I can't donate it to charity or sell it back to the half priced book house in town. Just like the promise of digital music downloads, the much hyped cost savings never really materialized for the end users, just a cut in production cost for the publishers resulting in more profit. I doubt if the author's even see any of it.
I guarantee an author would get more from your digital purchase than from the used physical book, if that's a genuine part of your decision making process.
You can use the Kindle like a generic reader and do lots of management outside of Amazon. I've got ebooks from many sources (Project Gutenberg being a big one) loaded on my Kindle, no problem. And even Amazon sells some books without DRM. Probably not from any of the big publishers, but it's an option when you self-publish - I've done it myself with my books. I almost never do a direct purchase to Kindle from Amazon, though sometimes I'll push a sample or free ebook from there.
Well, it's possible with certain books from certain vendors, but that's far from being true about all ebooks/readers in all occasions.
You can get ebooks without DRM. You can get ebooks from lots of sources, and manage the files yourself without any outsider having any way to access/control them. You can often modify/strip DRM from books that have it, putting them in your control.
There was one incident, with Amazon and the book 1984 (I think?) years ago. The grandparent is acting like it happens all the time. The idea that books regularly disappear, and that there's no recourse, is, as a general philosophy, pretty ridiculous, bordering on paranoid.
and then you're thrown out into another galaxy to start from scratch. This is arguably the biggest Fuck You sent a player's way I've ever seen in a game.
If done right, NewGame+ is a fine concept. Starting over in a new galaxy wouldn't be a problem at all, if you got some variety out of it. What it sounds like here though is the implementation is so bad, the plus is entirely missing and it's just NewGame.
To be fair, the landscapes can often be quite beautiful. The procedural generation algorithm can have its limitations, but it also shows promise. It was just released too soon. It's actually IMHO the best part of the game.
One of the reasons I've thought about buying the game was to just show the kids alien planets and tickle their imagination. But that's when it hits a $5 bargain bin price; definitely not worth it at $60.
As a habit, no. But considering most of the interviews in my life I've been borderline desperate and/or anxious, I think maybe I could find a couple of hours one time, if I thought I could 1) enjoy it, 2) have a fantastic story to tell, and 3) make a point at the same time. It's like good karma, community service, and a practical joke all rolled into one. I've got to think someone on this site is both skilled enough, bored enough, and has just the right sick sense of humor to do it, once fed the suggestion.
Also, 4) it's easy to make a joke about what someone else should do.
Bah. Everybody's an idiot. Bikes, cars, pedestrians, doesn't matter. If I see someone take such an obviously lopsided stance, I know where they spend their time, but it's not conducive to good discussion. Anybody who hasn't seen terrible behavior from all sides is being willfully blind.
But you should respond. Go in for an interview, ask them about how much work they demand, and then laugh in their faces and waltz out. How else will they learn they're being ridiculous?
Language drifting doesn't bother me much in general. However, I would prefer to take a stand in cases where the drift would cause the language to lose functionality. In this case, "begs the question" is a short an easy way to convey a particular concept that doesn't have other analogues, whereas there's lots of other ways to say "it poses the question" or "it brings up the question". Given the choice between losing a useful phrase or telling people to learn their language right, I pick user instruction.
For self-published Kindle books, you can opt out of DRM in the Amazon store. If DRM is the main concern, that really shouldn't be an issue.
The other issue with Amazon is, some of the perks, like KDP Select, require exclusivity. For self-published authors in particular, who might not have a lot of marketing resources, the ability to let readers get the books for "free" (like Prime or Kindle Unlimited readers, who don't have to pay to read your book, but you still get paid out of a general fund for pages read) might be valuable. I've looked at trying to sell ebooks other places, but eventually decided it looked like I'd be better off staying exclusive to Amazon for the ebook. Admittedly, some of this is also laziness, because setting up with lots of vendors also seemed like too much additional work.
Without DRM, I knew my readers would be able to convert easily enough, though I'm not sure Amazon really makes it particularly clear when it's a DRM-free book.
Yeah. Promise made in 2014? Two years is basically how long it takes for a business to decide "forever" is up and the statement/contract/promise no longer applies. I learned that twenty years ago when many of my "fixed rate for life" service deals expired around 48 months, and the companies would just say "we have no record of such a program" and refuse to honor it.
I've been meaning to mention that, too. The related articles seem to have been frozen/broken ages ago. I think it's based on some function of high post count (those are all around 1000 comments). Might be vaguely related to topic, too. On a lot of articles the "Kentucky man shoots down drone" article shows up as top recommendation.
Regardless, that feature badly needs some attention.
I know many will disagree with me but I liked the least common denominator aspect of consoles. It meant that you could go to the store bring the game home and just play it. It worked and played the way it did in the store or on the TV commercial.... Where you have to buy the thing to find out it runs all choppy on your hardware or many of the cool visual effects are disabled etc.
I'm with you on this, because that's exactly the principle that got me into buying consoles rather than constantly fiddling with my computers. However, I've honestly had some issues with earlier Playstations. I can think of one PS3 game I've got that I've never finished, because there's a scene halfway through with some sort of memory error due to too many things on the screen. There are supposedly fixes, but I've never gotten them to work, and unlike a computer where I might add more RAM, on the PS3 I'm out of luck. I can think of another game that has PS3/PS4 versions, and while the PS4 version is nice, the PS3 version is slow and clunky and/or dumbed down. One of the most egregious cases I've seen is an instance where the PS2 version of a game is completely unrelated to the PS3 version of the same game, and also terrible.
I'm probably rambling, but I think my point is sometimes developers try to squeeze too much into a game on a system that can't handle it, or they run into trouble trying to straddle the generations, and one or the other versions of the product comes out massively inferior. I think the game that kept crashing and I couldn't do anything about it was actually the last one I bought for a console. I realized I was stuck and my money was essentially wasted on that game. Since then I went back to the computer for gaming.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought this was obvious, but this is the first instance I've seen, more than halfway through the comments.
Note: India and Indonesia are not the same country.
I was getting worried until that last sentence. I read an advance copy of a book about a month back, and literally just an hour ago the author sent an email saying the book had been published and letting us advance readers know we could now post. I was starting to think it was pretty odd timing, if I got shot down before I had a chance to get over there and post a review.
The evening route for FedEx at our place regularly runs between 7 and 8 p.m. Packages often show up while we're putting the kids to bed. UPS is usually a little earlier, but after I'm home from work, so 6-7. USPS is around noon, and only ever then.
Aw, don't go all slippery slope on me. For a scam like this, even 10% would have been more than enough to indicate that the book wasn't worthwhile, because it didn't have that much substance in it, and was poorly done.
With Amazon, you don't even need to pirate. You can get a free sample of the first 10% of the book right there in the site.
I prefer Mr. Dead (a buddy story with brainnnss).
A corpse is a corpse of course of course, that is of course unless the corpse is the zombie Mr. Dead!
If it's like mochi, the red bean comes out pretty sweet, and not too weird, even for an American palate. Not any weirder than rice pudding or bread pudding, really.
Is anyone else confused that they named a star search program Gaia? Isn't that supposed to be another name for the Earth?
I ran a game for a while that developed something of a meme with people saying they were kicking one of the other players. I don't think he cared, but over time it got kind of heavy and seemed a little aggressive, so I put in a snippet of code so that any time someone said "kicks playerx" it would say "hugs playerx". There were workarounds, of course, like the punctuation above, but the first few times someone new stumbled one it and caught themselves hugging instead of kicking, it was pretty funny. Eventually I changed it back, once enough people had gotten the point, and the meme sort of dried up.
... Corona.
And now I want a beer.
I don't fault your logic at all on the price. I buy used print quite a bit for the same reasons. Only commented because you transitioned from the price considerations to arguments about author rewards in a way that didn't make sense to me.
I do think a lot of indie ebook authors and publishers understand the economics the same way you do, but the big publishers for the most part haven't caught on yet. Still hoping they eventually do, rather than pursuing heavier DRM and more legal restrictions to try to protect the ebook market. As a self-published author, I agree entirely your principles: $5 for the ebook without DRM, $12.50 for similar profits on a physical book because print-on-demand is so darn expensive. I would think a large publisher could get that down to $5/$10 and keep the balance about right.
While on Amazon I can get a used paperback for $.01 regularly plus 3.99 shipping the kindle versions are almost always the same or more expensive as a new paperback. The kindle version doesn't smell right and in the end I can't donate it to charity or sell it back to the half priced book house in town. Just like the promise of digital music downloads, the much hyped cost savings never really materialized for the end users, just a cut in production cost for the publishers resulting in more profit. I doubt if the author's even see any of it.
I guarantee an author would get more from your digital purchase than from the used physical book, if that's a genuine part of your decision making process.
You can use the Kindle like a generic reader and do lots of management outside of Amazon. I've got ebooks from many sources (Project Gutenberg being a big one) loaded on my Kindle, no problem. And even Amazon sells some books without DRM. Probably not from any of the big publishers, but it's an option when you self-publish - I've done it myself with my books. I almost never do a direct purchase to Kindle from Amazon, though sometimes I'll push a sample or free ebook from there.
Well, it's possible with certain books from certain vendors, but that's far from being true about all ebooks/readers in all occasions.
You can get ebooks without DRM. You can get ebooks from lots of sources, and manage the files yourself without any outsider having any way to access/control them. You can often modify/strip DRM from books that have it, putting them in your control.
There was one incident, with Amazon and the book 1984 (I think?) years ago. The grandparent is acting like it happens all the time. The idea that books regularly disappear, and that there's no recourse, is, as a general philosophy, pretty ridiculous, bordering on paranoid.
and then you're thrown out into another galaxy to start from scratch. This is arguably the biggest Fuck You sent a player's way I've ever seen in a game.
If done right, NewGame+ is a fine concept. Starting over in a new galaxy wouldn't be a problem at all, if you got some variety out of it. What it sounds like here though is the implementation is so bad, the plus is entirely missing and it's just NewGame.
To be fair, the landscapes can often be quite beautiful. The procedural generation algorithm can have its limitations, but it also shows promise. It was just released too soon. It's actually IMHO the best part of the game.
One of the reasons I've thought about buying the game was to just show the kids alien planets and tickle their imagination. But that's when it hits a $5 bargain bin price; definitely not worth it at $60.
As a habit, no. But considering most of the interviews in my life I've been borderline desperate and/or anxious, I think maybe I could find a couple of hours one time, if I thought I could 1) enjoy it, 2) have a fantastic story to tell, and 3) make a point at the same time. It's like good karma, community service, and a practical joke all rolled into one. I've got to think someone on this site is both skilled enough, bored enough, and has just the right sick sense of humor to do it, once fed the suggestion.
Also, 4) it's easy to make a joke about what someone else should do.
Bah. Everybody's an idiot. Bikes, cars, pedestrians, doesn't matter. If I see someone take such an obviously lopsided stance, I know where they spend their time, but it's not conducive to good discussion. Anybody who hasn't seen terrible behavior from all sides is being willfully blind.
But you should respond. Go in for an interview, ask them about how much work they demand, and then laugh in their faces and waltz out. How else will they learn they're being ridiculous?
Language drifting doesn't bother me much in general. However, I would prefer to take a stand in cases where the drift would cause the language to lose functionality. In this case, "begs the question" is a short an easy way to convey a particular concept that doesn't have other analogues, whereas there's lots of other ways to say "it poses the question" or "it brings up the question". Given the choice between losing a useful phrase or telling people to learn their language right, I pick user instruction.
For self-published Kindle books, you can opt out of DRM in the Amazon store. If DRM is the main concern, that really shouldn't be an issue.
The other issue with Amazon is, some of the perks, like KDP Select, require exclusivity. For self-published authors in particular, who might not have a lot of marketing resources, the ability to let readers get the books for "free" (like Prime or Kindle Unlimited readers, who don't have to pay to read your book, but you still get paid out of a general fund for pages read) might be valuable. I've looked at trying to sell ebooks other places, but eventually decided it looked like I'd be better off staying exclusive to Amazon for the ebook. Admittedly, some of this is also laziness, because setting up with lots of vendors also seemed like too much additional work.
Without DRM, I knew my readers would be able to convert easily enough, though I'm not sure Amazon really makes it particularly clear when it's a DRM-free book.
Yeah. Promise made in 2014? Two years is basically how long it takes for a business to decide "forever" is up and the statement/contract/promise no longer applies. I learned that twenty years ago when many of my "fixed rate for life" service deals expired around 48 months, and the companies would just say "we have no record of such a program" and refuse to honor it.
That's a unique one. The closest to that I get is a user who, when I asked her to right-click, said, "Oh, I call that opposite click."
I told her that was inventive, but nobody else used that term, and started to move on. "So when you right-click ..."
"When I OPPOSITE click!" she jumped in, and persisted on continuing to call it that.
I've been meaning to mention that, too. The related articles seem to have been frozen/broken ages ago. I think it's based on some function of high post count (those are all around 1000 comments). Might be vaguely related to topic, too. On a lot of articles the "Kentucky man shoots down drone" article shows up as top recommendation.
Regardless, that feature badly needs some attention.
I know many will disagree with me but I liked the least common denominator aspect of consoles. It meant that you could go to the store bring the game home and just play it. It worked and played the way it did in the store or on the TV commercial. ... Where you have to buy the thing to find out it runs all choppy on your hardware or many of the cool visual effects are disabled etc.
I'm with you on this, because that's exactly the principle that got me into buying consoles rather than constantly fiddling with my computers. However, I've honestly had some issues with earlier Playstations. I can think of one PS3 game I've got that I've never finished, because there's a scene halfway through with some sort of memory error due to too many things on the screen. There are supposedly fixes, but I've never gotten them to work, and unlike a computer where I might add more RAM, on the PS3 I'm out of luck. I can think of another game that has PS3/PS4 versions, and while the PS4 version is nice, the PS3 version is slow and clunky and/or dumbed down. One of the most egregious cases I've seen is an instance where the PS2 version of a game is completely unrelated to the PS3 version of the same game, and also terrible.
I'm probably rambling, but I think my point is sometimes developers try to squeeze too much into a game on a system that can't handle it, or they run into trouble trying to straddle the generations, and one or the other versions of the product comes out massively inferior. I think the game that kept crashing and I couldn't do anything about it was actually the last one I bought for a console. I realized I was stuck and my money was essentially wasted on that game. Since then I went back to the computer for gaming.