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Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (again)

In the breaks in his writing schedule, David has promised to stop by and chat for a while!
Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (again)
Post by ollave   » Wed Sep 14, 2011 11:29 pm

ollave
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David,

I know how and where your publishers distribute your work is not under your control.

I also appreciate that you must make your choices about publishers and contracts with an eye to the best interests of yourself and your family, and that sometimes your interests and your readers' will conflict.

In order that you understand (if you don't already, of course) and so perhaps might at least influence your existing publishers a little, and possibly weigh up the choices publishers are making for the English speaking market outside the USA when you are contracting with them, I will note that as usual Tor have made "How Firm a Foundation" available only in hardback outside North America, despite North American customers being able to purchase an ebook (at hardback prices, but at least purchase it).

Personally, I have a preference for ebooks: one is they don't take space to store. I have full bookshelves and boxes of books and thus ebooks are practical. Secondly, I don't need to use reading glasses to read them; on a computer I can change the font size to suit the lighting conditions, my tiredness, etc. Finally they're also easier to transport when traveling, although I don't travel much currently.

I am looking forward to reading "How Firm a Foundation". I may weaken and purchase it in hardback (but even then, it will not be economic to purchase it locally; shipping cost from the USA to Australia is more than offset (much more than offset) by the lower prices available e.g. at Amazon.

Some specific prices (with the Australian dollar currently worth slightly more than the USA dollar):

http://www.booktopia.com.au/search.ep?productType=917504&keywords=how+firm+a+foundation

AUD$55.99 discounted to AUD$31.50, plus shipping.

http://www.collinsbooks.com.au/featuredbook1.asp?StoreUrl=collinsbooks&bookid=9780765321541&db=au

Online price AUD$39.95, plus shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/Firm-Foundation-Safehold-David-Weber/dp/0765321548/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1316056586&sr=8-1

USD$27.99 discounted to USD$15.98, plus shipping.

Thus the full USA price plus shipping might be marginally more expensive than the cheapest local discounted price plus shipping, but there's not much in it. If/when those discounts change (or I try to buy something without discount) ... I'm not going to buy it. :(

In summary, Tor (or their Australian agents) are making two errors that must be reducing your sales:

1. they're charging a very high margin over USA costs, well above what shipping and warehousing in this much smaller market would deserve

2. they're choosing only "traditional" (hardback) format when a book is released.

Baen, of course, is the current poster child for publishing in the 21st century. I've even purchased one ARC, at the premium price.

(The only thing I consider that Baen do poorly is copy editing, but every publisher is under pressure to reduce costs there, and they're no worse than any other publisher I can think of offhand, so I'll give them a pass but would like them to improve.)

Respectfully,

Giles Lean
<giles.lean@pobox.com>
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by Icecold   » Fri Sep 23, 2011 10:05 am

Icecold
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Hi,
I'm living in europe and i could buy the ebook on kobobooks.com .
Hope that helps.
Here is the link
http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/How-Firm ... page1.html
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by tively_split   » Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:38 pm

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I'm European, and had no problem buying a Kindle version of the latest Safehold book a couple of days after it was released. Note: you can download Kindle software for a PC and/or most of the more well-known tablets which is totally free. There are a number of Kindle books that haven't been made available outside of America (to my great undelight) but the latest Safehold book was not one of those, thank goodness.
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by gadgetgeek   » Sun Oct 02, 2011 2:51 pm

gadgetgeek
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I live in the UK and How Firm a Foundation is not available on Kindle or from Kobo.
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by tively_split   » Tue Oct 04, 2011 6:55 pm

tively_split
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gadgetgeek wrote:I live in the UK and How Firm a Foundation is not available on Kindle or from Kobo.

Um... That's odd. It worked for me. You did look at Amazon.com (*not* amazon.co.uk) ? I see that the Kindle edition of HFaF is no longer listed at Amazon.com as an alternative version of the hard-cover if you just search for it the easy-peasy default way... Weird, very weird. Wonder if they messed something up at Amazon.com during the first week of HFaF's availability?
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by tively_split   » Tue Oct 04, 2011 7:15 pm

tively_split
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Hmmm... the Kindle version of HFaF is no longer listed, even though maybe half-an-hour ago or so it was, as long as you searched for author first, then chose to "filter in" only the Kindle books... It *may* still be possible to order that ebook directly from the publisher's site, but I've never done that for any ebook not available from webscriptions, so I can't recommend that...
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by Icecold   » Wed Oct 05, 2011 1:06 pm

Icecold
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Oh well,
seems that other people responsible for the copyright read this forum too....... -.-
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by ncwolf   » Thu Oct 06, 2011 11:09 pm

ncwolf
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Posts: 154
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Whoa! I hadn't looked at the Tor ebooks.

I'm from (& in ) the US, and when I go to http://www.webscription.net, the only Tor ebook by David Weber that shows up is "Off Armageddon Reef" for $18.00. The Tor bits must not be very compatible with the Baen-websubscription bits (maybe the Tor books start gobbling space like the old HFS formatted Macintosh files and that was one reason the for going to HFS+) and they have to use special conversion processes to make them compatible.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. 'Cause the Baen books are $6.00 as an ebook after the regular book comes out. (Patience is a virtue.)
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by kbus888   » Mon Mar 12, 2012 3:07 pm

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Location: Eastern Canada

I just hope <DW> is getting a REALLY REALLY GOOD DEAL by using Tor as a publisher.

Baen is so much better from a book buyer's point of view !!!

Dear Mr Weber:

I realize you may be locked in to using Tor and so may not be able to do anything for us.

I will still buy your books.

I hope for your sake you do not lose too many of your fans over this.

R
..//* *\\
(/(..^..)\)
.._/'*'\_
.(,,,)^(,,,)

Love is a condition in which
the happiness of another
is essential to your own. - R Heinlein
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Re: Tor, Safehold, and availability outside Noth America (ag
Post by tmon   » Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:24 pm

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Unfortunately when Mr Weber started the Safehold series he was in need of a large advance and Tor outbid their competitors. Baen is restricted to the amount of advance they can give due to their agreement with Simon & Schuster(they print Baen's books) who didn't want Baen to outbid them on books like the Star Wars novels.
Also at the start of the contract ebooks was still an unknown territory.

kbus888 wrote:I just hope <DW> is getting a REALLY REALLY GOOD DEAL by using Tor as a publisher.

Baen is so much better from a book buyer's point of view !!!

Dear Mr Weber:

I realize you may be locked in to using Tor and so may not be able to do anything for us.

I will still buy your books.

I hope for your sake you do not lose too many of your fans over this.

R
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