- Posts tagged eBooks
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Crowdfunding Produces a Book
The microfinancial model known as Crowdfunding has generated a new book entitled The Crowdfunding Bible, which you can get for free at the publisher's Web site, You can also get it on iBooks, Nook and Sony Reader. On Amazon, the download version is $2.99 (a print copy is $13.99 on the website and at retailers).
This 80-page book appears on a quick read to be pretty comprehensive and will undoubtedly make a good read for those of us who want to follow this intriguing investment approach or make use of it. The foreword is by none other than Eric Migicovsky, the genius behind the Pebble, an ePaper based wristwatch, whose company has raised just over $10 million on Kickstarter.com in under a month after starting out looking for $100,000. One look at their offering page (all expired now for all practical purposes) reveals one secret to success: lots of different packages and options for backers to buy into.
If you're not up to speed with crowdfunding, you really should get this book and read it. It may inspire ideas or re-ignite old ones you thought you'd never get investment for.
The Mystery of Pricing Kindle Books
OK, let's see.
Don't you think?
This new book I wanted to read on my Kindle apps costs $30 at retail (except of course nobody pays that, even in person at a store). Amazon.com offers it for $16.66 and, for most buyers, shipping and handling that would presumably bring it back up around $20. I assume that at that price, Amazon makes a profit.
So why does an electronically downloadable version -- with no printing, shipping or handling costs -- cost $14.99, only $1.67 less? Does this feel like price gouging to you? It does to me. It's good, old-fashioned American greed. (The book I was trying to buy was Age of Greed by Jeffrey Madrick, BTW). That's charging what the market will bear rather than charging to earn a reasonable profit.
So I didn't order the book. I'll wait for my local library to get a copy and check it out. For free. It won't be as timely or convenient, but it's a tiny protest. The price of an electronically delivered book should reflect the savings made by the publisher and the reseller so that the profit or mark-up on these books are not significantly higher than those on printed copies.
Don't you think?
Apple Proves it Cares More About Profit Than Users...Again
Well, Amazon.com and BarnesAndNoble.com both caved in today to Apple's outrageous and ludicrous -- and quite probably illegal -- rules preventing sellers of iOS apps from offering their users the convenience of in-app purchase of books and magazine subscriptions. The high-handed budding monopolists in Cupertino demonstrated once again that their primary passion -- which was once user experience and convenience -- is now squeezing every drop of profit it can out of those whose content drive its platform's successes.
So now i as a heavy user of Amazon.com will no longer be able to search for and buy new books within the Kindle app from which the "Kindle Store" button has been removed in the update announced today. For now, at least, I'm simply declining the upgrade. It's inconvenient for me because now I can't do an "Upgrade All" when it and other apps have updates available, but for now it's my little way of protesting Apple's despotic behavior.
Someone is going to have to convince me this isn't monopolistic behavior. Apple seems to me to clearly be attempting to leverage its dominance of the smartphone/tablet software channel to force developers and vendors to cut it in on revenue they gain from products sold outside the apps they market through Apple. Classic bundling as far as I can tell.
I hope Amazon, like its Canadian counterpart Kobo, decides to write an HTML5-based app and circumvent the Apple App Store altogether. If they do that, I'll download the new app and delete the App Store version in a New York nanosecond. This heavy-handedness will provide app developers even greater incentive to escape the AppStore altogether, particularly when new avenues of distribution like Facebook and its new game platform are appearing with astonishing rapidity.
Heads up, Apple! Your short-sighted greed will cost you dearly if you don't wake up and smell the Web apps.
