Colorado not Palm …
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Yeah. I buy the indie books because the “published” books are mostly too expensive and I like them. That being said, I buy hardbound books that are worth it (such as J.D. Robb) because I re-read favorites. I also re-listen, such as NL books. Just did that ’cause I had the flu and couldn’t see too well. Audio was great. All the way up to OS now. (Flu is gone thank God!) BTW, how come Ishmael was right on top of 1st mate Thomas–forcefully—in CS but hemmed and hawed with engineman whosamacallit in OS? Hmmm. Have to think about that one for awhile.
PS Glad you are back and had a good time.
I buy some Indie books, but many that I’ve sampled just weren’t that great. Some of the Indie’s that I do like don’t seem to get enough books out. Like I loved Michael Parry’s Spiral Tattoo and waited for ages for the next in the series. I could not live just on the Indie I’ve found so far. I’ve mainly found those through Nate. I don’t have another trusted source. Most of the people I follow on GoodReads are reading mainstream pubs.
I pay $125 per year for a library card at Orange County Florida. I’m not a resident in that county; so it costs. But, they have a lot of ebooks/audiobooks and that keeps me in business. Then I buy favorites that are in the $5 range and something that I want to use a lot, like The Science of Good Cooking, I’ll plunk down the big bucks. I like audiobooks for treadmill/elliptical stuff at the gym and keep the genre separate from whatever I’m reading in book form. Anyway, I sure do get my money’s worth on that library card at around 1 book a week, that’s a little over $2 a book.
Looking through my Calibre library, 181 of my 492 ebooks are self-published. 281 of the rest are Baen books and probably 100 of them came from their free library. So that means I only have 30 ebooks from main stream publishers.
Baen is a big publisher, but up until the beginning of this year their ebooks were only $5-6. They’ve since moved to a model based on the current paper edition ($6.99 if mass market, $8.99 if trade, and $9.99 if hardback). The new Bujold book is by Baen and is $9.99. Worth it if you are a fan and cheaper than if it were from a different publisher. Also interesting to note that it is focused on Ivan instead of Miles.
There are great self-pubbed books out there, but they can be hard to find. I check the new releases on Amazon daily and it can be a major chore, sometimes going a week or more at a time without finding anything interesting.
I’ve easily got 1000+ ebooks, maybe 300 from Baen’s free library, another couple hundred from Baen’s commercial site, the rest from either Amazon or iBooks. I initially used a Sony reader, switched to an iRex Iliad when it wore out, then my iPad when the Iliad died… So I’m probably atypical.
I do read indies – but as others have noted it’s difficult to find good ones. Most that I’ve enjoyed were from leads on your site… Including a few that are in genre I was surprised to enjoy. (Witches? Really?). Unfortunately, even with a hard “read the sample first” rule, I’ve still wound up with some real stinkers.
In general, I probably buy and read one or two books a week – and most are mainstream, usually authors I follow. (Just read Modesitt’s “Imager’s Battalion”… And have put a calendar entry in Outlook to remind me when the next releases in May.
I’ve definitely made the switch to ebooks, in that I’ve purchased maybe 30 or 40 dead tree editions in the last year – mostly for my nine year old son, with a few reference books tossed in. But I definitely plan on the full Share series in hard back if the author ever prints them…
Hmm. Quick follow on about audio books. They are also very nice to listen to during long-haul flights. I’ve probably listened to yours half a dozen times that way. Good tales… And your voice is relaxing. A good thing, as Asia is a long way away!
I’ll just toss out there that the most expensive ebook I’ve bought was also Modesitt’s latest Imager Portfolio and, while I love that series, paying $14.99 for an ebook made me hate myself and I’m not doing it again. I’ll swallow $9.99 for a handful of series a few times a year, but I have a hard time justifying anything higher. Although if you think of it in terms of cost compared to entertainment time books are a much better investment than something like a movie. *shrug*
I can’t say I’m happy with the $14.99 OR with $9.99… Except that I am happy to support the author. I am much happier to pay Nathan, knowing that most of it goes to him, with some to Amazon. I did NOT like paying the Ridan parasites who were not even pretending to perform as editors.
Of course, now that they are out of the equation… I’ll also buy the new versions of his work. The covers may not be as pretty, but if I can help keep him fed maybe he will write some more…
One of the frustrations of buying ebooks published by the major publishers is that that they still release their products into the old specific market licensing regions. Given that I don’t live in North America, Europe or Great Britain, this can mean that quite a few titles are just not able to be purchased in ebook format – like the first two books in Bujold’s Challion series. Similarly for some of the Gollancz re-releases of older SciFi like John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar. I’ve tried to contact Harper Collins in London who handle the actual publishing for their groups in AU/NZ about Challion, but they don’t reply 🙁
The Indie ebook releases are great in that they don’t divide the world into these obsolete (and stupid) groupings and also keep their prices far more affordable that the majors. Learning about most Indie authors can be, as others have noted, quite difficult, but frequently well worth the effort…