The End of Oulipo? The End of Oulipo? My book (co-authored with Lauren Elkin), published by Zero Books. Available everywhere. Order it from Amazon, or find it in bookstores nationwide. 
Lady Chatterley’s Brother Lady Chatterley's Brother. The first ebook in the new TQC Long Essays series,  called “an exciting new project” by Chad Post of Open Letter and Three Percent. Why can't Nicholson Baker write about sex? And why can Javier Marias? We investigate why porn is a dead end, and why seduction paves the way for the sex writing of the future. Read an excerpt.
Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and direct from this site:
Translate This Book! Ever wonder what English is missing? Called "a fascinating  read" by The New Yorker, Translate This Book! brings together over 40 of the top translators, publishers, and authors to tell us what books need to be published in English. Get it on Kindle.
|
Shop though these links = Support this site
|
Amazon Is Losing Money on Each $9.99 Ebook
 Publishers Weekly confirms something I've long suspected:
Currently, publishers make as much money on Kindle editions as print editions, since Amazon, the largest e-book retailer, pays the same discount for e-book editions as it does for print—off the same list price, whether bound book or e-book. (An Amazon spokesperson would not comment on the discount issue, but a number of publishers confirmed that Amazon pays the standard discount—which is, with some fluctuation among houses, about 50% off list price—for Kindle editions.)
Amazon, which sets the price for everything it sells, is, as many people interviewed point out, losing money on a majority of Kindle editions. Although the price point for Kindle editions varies, the dominant one for hardcover bestsellers is $9.99, a price one publisher called “a killer.” (The e-tailer is pricing some of its Kindle bestsellers even more aggressively, with titles like Stephenie Meyer's New Moon, currently #4 on the Kindle bestseller list, at $6.04.) At $9.99 Amazon is selling its Kindle editions at, generally, a 60% discount; Amazon sells its print bestsellers at, on average, a 45% discount. The reigning price point in the Sony e-book store, with variations, is $11.99. This is obviously a move to build up market share for the Kindle , something I suppose Amazon is in a position to do since it is one of the few book retailers to actually be in the black at this time. This also means that $9.99 ebooks are untenable over the long run, unless publishers choose to give Amazon a steeper discount in the future.
As Publishers Weekly notes, if this tactic works then eventually Amazon won't have to rely on publishers to give the discounts it wants–it will be in a dominant enough position to demand whatever pricing it prefers. So, in other words: hope that competitors manage to capture a sizable portion of the market.
For more info, readers should see my interview with Ted Striphas, where we touch on Amazon's already dominant market position and what that might mean.
Incidentally, I finally saw my first real-life Kindle on public transit earlier this week. I also saw five people with non-electronic books, myself included.
You Might Also Like:
More from Conversational Reading: - eBook Prices: Can They Fall Further? Continuing the ebook pricing conversation, Rich Mintz (from Obama’s online campaign) has this to say: As a heavy consumer of books (and a former independent...
- Amazon Can “Wipe Out” Publishers Binky Urban, the agent responsible for a few people you might have heard of (Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Bret Easton Ellis, etc) is profiled at...
- eBook Market Expanding The New York Times reports that Amazon’s Kindle is currently out of stock, letting some of the other players in the field move in. The...
- Amazon Boycott of Ebooks Over $10 As I've been reading Ted Striphas's The Late Age of Print, I've been seeing books and ebooks in very new ways. That is, I'm beginning...
- Publishers Making Dumb ebook Mistakes In this post, Chad mocks ebook distributor ScrollMotion and publishers Hachette and Random House for their mania about ebook piracy and their eagerness to price...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Leave a Reply
|
Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
|
Enrique Vila-Matas Interview
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
You saw 5 people carrying one book each, but the Kindle person was carrying a library. I have 22 title and 6 periodical. each of my newspaper subscriptions have about 16 issues to them.
So, you wanna to try to carry the paper version of that on the subway?
I’m still waiting for someone to explain why an average reader wants to carry a library around with them.
Several years ago, I was on the subway with a copy of a mostly-read New Yorker, rifling through the dregs with the intent of disposing of the publication en route, when the train got stuck, as sometimes happens. I sat for four hours, reading and rereading and pretending to further re-read some bullshit poem, doing whatever it took to avoid eye contact or invasive ads. Ever since, I’m known to carry around at least a full day’s worth of reading material whenever I go further than around the block. And I know, this translates to A Book and A Magazine (or Two), but these days I do keep a backup dozen books on my iphone, just in case.
Of course, when you inquire about “an average reader,” you probably intentionally left out “who also happens to be a crazy woman.” But maybe not?
eBooks wont probably change the quantity or the quality of “average reader” personal library. However, it is a huge step for the writers. They can now bypass publishers and get a decent return on their work. Scribd gives 80% return. And our ebook online shop (sunbookr.com) 90%.
Thousands of writers make their living on lulu.com. Things that could not be possible by the classical canal.