To be honest, I really hate agency pricing. It smacks of price-fixing to me.
I dislike piracy on principle but I also recognize there will always be the little twerp who steals the gum. I'll be doing a post on DRM soon where I will cover my views on that but I tend to agree with Eric Flint in his introduction to Baen's Free Library
3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.I really like ebooks. I've been reading them since early 2000. I wanted to get a palm pilot when I was in high school specifically because my band director had one and had a copy of a book I couldn't find anywhere on it. To say I was an early adapter is to put it mildly. I saw the potential right away and jumped in with both feet, as far as my income would let me.
Sad to say, I couldn't afford to get an actual ereader until last year. I bought a Kobo and I loved it. I could side load the hundreds of ebooks I'd purchased over the years onto it. However, I couldn't put new books on it. That's irritating and has gotten me slowly moving to the thought that I may have to buy a Kindle. I don't want to buy a Kindle. Yes, I can buy new books but what about all of my old books? From all indications, unless I bought them through Amazon, I can't really load all of my old books onto the Kindle. Am I going to have to carry 2 ereaders with me? That seems a bit, I dunno, excessive.
This all brings me to price.
In order to afford a Kindle, all of the adults in the household are going to have to live on Ramen for a couple of months, and that's if we can swing it with my hubby being out of work. But, hey, I can download new books from Amazon!If I can afford them.
Like I said, I've read many of the arguments on both sides of the price 'debate' about ebooks. When an ebook a day was a choice between a latte and a new book, well, I learned to make coffee at home and would buy almost 30 books a month. But now, when the choice is between 2 new ebooks (priced at 14.99 each) and diapers? Well, I can't really justify that choice.
I'm finding a lot more books I would like to read at 3.99 and supporting indie authors. I'm also doing my best to make those purchases from the authors themselves, rather than any of the retailers.
I also love the "Humble Indie Bundle" concept of pay what you can/think it's worth.
So, I'm going to offer something similar here.
Hit the tip jar for any amount and I'll send you copies of both ebooks I have, in any format you'd like. If you want it from Amazon, I'll send it to you as a gift.
