thinkstoomuch wrote:Ain't that the truth. Takes me longer to read a book than to convert it to an ebook much longer. Of course I don't sell it or even give it away. But that isn't the point.
Sad when authors/publishers turn their fans into criminals.
Enjoy,
T2MMcGuiness wrote:I'll simply say that she doesn't have a CLUE about e-books, and how quickly a pirated version will be made available by someone scanning their dead tree version if the e-book isn't available for purchase.
I daresay she probably lost TOR tens of thousands of e-book sales to impatient readers.
It's not like she needed the money, but Brandon Sandersen deserved better. Somebody from TOR should have sat her down and explained the facts of modern life. Making e-book buyers wait four months longer than hardback buyers for a book isn't simply discrimination, it's incredibly shortsighted and stupid. It also ticked off a lot of Jordan fans.
I would simply point out that I have met his wife (although I would never describe myself as a personal friend of Harriet or James), and that whatever else she may be, she is neither stupid nor greedy. She has been an editor for 30-plus years now and is one very smart lady. Whether this was the best decision from a marketing viewpoint or not is, of course, a matter of opinion, and it wasn’t the one I would have made. Nonetheless, she didn’t make it in a vacuum, and if you think that it was a foolish decision or a wrong decision, I would say that it also demonstrates the way that the attitudes of people who have spent decades of their professional life in this business see things differently — on the basis of that experience — from the way that e-book readers see things. I believe I’ve already mentioned that part of this is what you might call a “generational” difference of opinion. And I’d also say that I doubt very much that pirated copies of the book are costing Tor or Sanderson “tens of thousands” of sales. It undoubtedly has cost them quite a few sales, but I doubt it’s been in that range. I speak from the perspective of someone who’s had more than a few of his own books pirated.