h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

> Sony are reported to be unhappy with the possibillity of people selling on 2nd hand games

We're moving from a market model where you buy books, or music, or suchlike, to a market model where you buy a license to them. Sony want to stop selling games, and start selling licenses to use games. Exclusive, non-transferable licenses. This is one reason why I've so far avoided eBooks (or iAnythings): I like to own the things I buy.

However,
> In my world, buying a kindle book that costs more than the 'hard copy' is nonsensical. At least from the point of view of value.

In your world, a Kindle book may be less valuable than a hardcopy book. In my world too. But not in everyone's world. Some people with certain disabilities find Kindle reading much easier than hardcopy reading. A Kindle is lighter and easier to carry than a large hardback book; if you lack manual dexterity, it is probably easier to turn the pages on a Kindle; the text size can be adjusted to suit your preference. There are good things about Kindles. But I like owning the things I buy, so so far, they're not for me.

TRiG.

Mr Dreadful, why did you pay anything at all for Kindle versions of works which are now out of copyright?

TRiG.

I think one of the problems Trig is that we're used to paying for somethings value rather than for its perceived value.

In other words, we know that a hardback book has the extra production costs, the extra shipping costs and the extra sales staff costs, and we expect to pay those. Whereas with an ebook, those costs are not associated with it. So it seems strange that the price of something with lower production costs is more.

"I like owning the things I buy"

All property is theft.

"Mr Dreadful, why did you pay anything at all for Kindle versions of works which are now out of copyright?"

Two reasons really, it's a lot cheaper than getting the hardcopy, and my personal experience of getting ebook friendly out of copyright stuff free has not been great (due to bad formatting making it difficult to read or it simply being a poor quality scan of an older manuscript).

have you been getting them from Project Gutenburg? My kindle books from there have been good. And I've got some classics from Amazon for free which have been good.

The problem for me is that it doesn't apply to every kindle book..There are some occasions when the kindle IS cheaper than the paperback version so it is somewhat puzzling.

Calibre, people.

Transforms any format text into .mobi or .azw for Kindle. Excellent piece of software.

"I want to pay.I do not want to cheat the author"

So buy the hardback, burn it for warmth, then bittorrent a copy of the electronic version and download it to your ebook reader. I cannot see any possibly moral objection to this course of action. A strict (i.e. stupid) legal objection, yes. But not a moral one. The author and publisher and every other person in the supply chain have your money, and you have the product. What possible objection can anyone have to that state of affairs?

I've often thought that it would be fairer if the publishers would give a key to purchasers of paper copies of books for a free eVersion. So that you can buy the dead tree version, but then also copy it to your electronic devices in the same way you can do with CDs.

Well, it makes sense to me anyway.

That is indeed happening in some areas: I believe Marvel comics are providing access to an online version to anyone who buys the paper copy of some (possibly all, I'm not up on the details) of their releases.

A lot of RPG publishers give free PDF downloads when you purchase the physical book.

So buy the hardback, burn it for warmth, then bittorrent a copy of the electronic version and download it to your ebook reader. I cannot see any possibly moral objection to this course of action. A strict (i.e. stupid) legal objection, yes. But not a moral one. The author and publisher and every other person in the supply chain have your money, and you have the product. What possible objection can anyone have to that state of affairs?

What a completely nutty idea!

I don't want to Bittorrent any product as I regard it as an immoral act.

I also refuse to burn books..That's an immoral act.

Frankly I find you a completely unhelpful contributor to this conversation.It's as if you think I'm stupid because I wish to query the pricing of kindle books and why there is no consistency in the pricing of kindle books.
It maybe your way but it's not mine and if you have nothing more helpful to suggest then don't bother.

The real, correct answer to why the prices are this way is because this is what people will pay. The fact is that people are irrational, and the perceived value of something is not necessarily related at all to the cost of producing it.
That's a rather more abstract, metaphysical conversation to be having though.

It's also because it's New. Give it a few years and the novelty will have worn off and you'll be able to get Kindle 5D With Smellovision or some such and the price of vanilla Kindle books will drop like a stone.

"I don't want to Bittorrent any product as I regard it as an immoral act.

I also refuse to burn books..That's an immoral act"

Sorry, I thought I was dealing with someone rational. My mistake, shalln't repeat it.

Also, in response to the original post and aimed at those rational enough to process facts about technology invented since the 1970s without applying blanket-labels like "immoral" (how can data-interchange format be "immoral"? Discuss; but try to keep the discussion to the observation "It can't, dumbass - duh." and then move on to something less blindingly obvious...):

E-book generation is not free, nor automatic. Sure, a large part of it can be automated, but I can tell you as both a customer and a (very small scale) published author, that automation is not perfect and it absolutely has still to be checked by a human, as meticulously as any hardcopy book, if not more so, as the public tolerance for inaccuracies in ebooks is if anything lower than for ones in hardcopies. I've read quite a few ebooks where the transition from print copy to ebook was handled badly, and all I can say is I'm glad I hadn't paid money for those things.

Seems I'm talking to someone who is smug,patronising and condescending but I shan't repeat that either.

Like Hoo, I am at a loss to see how one method of data interchange can be more or less moral than any other. (If anything, BitTorrent is *more* moral: as a much more efficient method than most for large files, it wastes fewer of the Earth's resources in powering servers.) I've downloaded a few things from ClearBits (this is perfectly legal), and I always choose the BitTorrent method, as it is faster and more efficient.

TRiG.

Sigh! The usual stuff I hear all the time.

I was actually talking about the suggestion I use the method to download copyrighted material..and I'm pretty sure everyone fully understood what I meant.

Germany. Something Strasse.

On some sort of aerospace campus.

Found a major road - head for the autobhan.

North eastern Germany. Prague signposted.

Stuck on Tschirnhausstraße, Dresden. The Googlecar won't let me onto the Autobhan.

PP