Oh glorious love of Christ my Lord Divine,
That made Him stoop to save a soul like mine;
Through all my days and then in Heaven above,
My song will silence never, I'll worship him forever,
And praise Him for His glorious love.
("Oh Glorious Love" by the Talley Trio)
I finished the 32nd book in the series, Treachery in Death, yesterday and decided to go back and re-read from the beginning (yes, even I have my guilty pleasures, LOL!). I've just gotten up to the third book, where Eve is introduced to Leonardo, who will design her wedding gown, for her first consult. He says that Eve is 5' 9" and weighs one hundred and twenty pounds!
Folks, I'm 5' 2", and one-twenty is at the lower end of my healthy weight range: There is no way that Eve Dallas can weigh 120 and be fit and tough enough to handle all the a**-busting she does in each novel!
Plus, Rourke, Eve's love-interest, is described as being 6' 1" (or 2") and weighing 173. My husband, God love him, is 5" 11" and got down to 170 just before I gave birth to our daughter 15 years ago. The last month of my pregnancy, I outweighed him - and he was toooooo slim! He'd been biking to and from work and had, frankly, become quite scrawny, IMHO. At 6'1 or 2", I certainly wouldn't see a man weighing only 173 as anything but a scarecrow, although it's marginally more believable than Eve's weight issue.
Anyway. That's my rant for the day - frivolous, I know, but these little details can drive me pretty batty with irritation...
This past week, life (at least as it relates to my reading and book buying habits) has been quite interesting. On Monday, my Beloved and Awesome Husband forwarded a link to this blog post. It is a conversation between Barry Eisler (here on Amazon) and Joe Konrath (here on Amazon), discussing self-publication and the attractions and benefits of not using the traditional publishing house route. The conversation was sparked, at least in part, by Mr. Eisler's decision to turn down a two-book-$500,000.00 advance in favor of striking out on his own. It's very long and there's a little bit of off-color remarks, but it's a fascinating read.
This article inspired me to take a look at some of the self-published authors on Amazon and see what was available in that $0.99-$4.99 sweet spot that Eisler and Konrath discussed - and there are a LOT! As a matter of fact, if you look at the Top 100 Kindle Bestsellers list, you will actually see TWO lists side by side: one for the top 100 PAID, and one for the top 100 FREE books on the Kindle. There is an embarrassment of riches available here, and I note that a very, very significant portion of the top 100 paid books are in that low priced sweet spot.
Which leads me to point out a couple of books that I really, really WANT on my Kindle, but that I will either borrow or wait on because the price is now, in my opinion, simply too high. I would love for publishers to "get" that I am far more likely - now, especially - to impulse buy a book I'm interested in when it's priced at $5 or lower (and especially if it's been out for more than 6 months!). Higher than that, and I have to think about it.
Now for the books:
I saw mention of Andrew Brietbart's book Righteous Indignation over at Pajamas Media, and thought "Ooooooo, DO WANT!" - but the current pre-order price is $14.99 for the Kindle edition, and $14.73 for the hard copy. Whose brilliant idea was that?! For this story (read Dr. Helen Smith's brief review linked above at PJM), I'd pay more than $5 - but not that much more!
I'd like to buy Randy Alcorn's book, the Grace and Truth Paradox, since my Adult Bible Study class will be finishing up a quick review of it tomorrow, but the Kindle edition is $9.99! The hard copy is only 96 pages long, and the book has been out since 2003. Sorry, I'll pass that up or maybe buy a used copy (from $0.87 plys $3.99 shipping).
This book, Introverts in the Church, published in 2009, interests me and is on my Amazon wish list, but I wasn't sure if I really wanted it. If it had only been $3 or $4, I would have grabbed it and taken the risk.
On the other hand, I've purchased several books by authors I'd never heard of, but who had well-reviewed books with intriguing plot synopses - all $0.99, and none of which I'd have purchased at $6 or more:
The Solomon Scandals, by David H. Rothman - this was suggested via Facebook by my darling blog-brother, GM Roper, and Mr. Rothman even responded to me in the comments there!
Invisible, by Lorena McCourtney. OK, I lied. This one wasn't $0.99 - it was offered FREE to entice you to buy some of her other books in the Kindle store, many-if-not-most of which are priced in that sweet spot.
Every. Single. One. of those books were less than $5. That's almost TWENTY books, purchased in the last week. None of those books went on my wishlist to languish into oblivion. None of those books' prices made me stop and think or decide to wait and see if the price would come down.
I want to buy books. I LOVE to buy books! And with my new Motorola XOOM with WiFi tentatively scheduled to arrive (from Amazon - yep, total Amazon fangirl, here!) on Wednesday (and the Kindle app is smokin' hot on it - I've tested it on my hubby's 3/4G XOOM), I'm going to be buying MORE ebooks.
But not at the prices you seem to want to sell them! Not anymore, anyway...
Publishers, you are in the business of selling books! Let me give you some advice: stop resisting the digital revolution, stop pushing paper sales at the expense of digital, lower your prices, and get those books moving off the shelves (virtual or otherwise)!!!!
Who needs an actual Kindle? ... Well, OK, it would be nice, but dealing with reading on my phone has proven to be quite convenient.
Anyway, this is awesome timing considering that I leave on my tour of Israel next Wednesday. I've also found several excellent theological works - John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, John Bunyan, Aquinas - available via the Kindle store that are very inexpensive-to-free. So assuming that my battery holds out in "airplane mode" for a decent time (and yes, I'll be able to charge it in Israel; I'm mainly worried about the flight to/from Tel Aviv), I'll have all the reading material I could possibly want!
One of the apps that I have on my AWESOME Verizon/Motorola Droid phone is the Aldiko ereader. It's fantastic! It has a lot of free books ready to download to my Android and read where ever I want. Plus, if I have a link to a downloadable epub file, Aldiko will get it for me!
[huge waves of warm, happy bookwormishness!]
My second shout-out has to go to Baen books and their webscription store. I've purchased several ebooks from them, and those books stay in my "purchased books" file online. I can go back to the store and re-download any book I've bought, and I can even download in a different format. So, all those John Ringo books I downloaded for the Sony eReader (which has now been stolen by the Munchkin) in the .lrf format? I can RE-download in the epub format with no problems, and Aldiko reads it beautifully!
[*happy sigh*]
Plus, Kindle is supposedly coming out with an app for Android phones soon, so then I'll be even happier!
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