Diminishing Returns, Vanishing Returns, and Glorious Resurrections

Sometimes I wonder what major publishers (and sales channels) are thinking. Last night I got a bit of a shock and a profound disappointment, which led me to really feel sorry for a poor author whose work I like, and whom I would love to support by buying more of her books...

Let's have a look, shall we?

The author is Nancy Springer. I'm a big boy now, but I do read some books intended for youngsters. I first ran across Ms Springer's work when I found the first Enola Holmes book by accident in a used book store. Looked amusing. I'm a big Holmes fan. So I bought it and gobbled it up. Eventually I bought them all, new, in hard cover.

I've had my eye on her slightly older Rowan Hood series for a while. I like Robin Hood, and I like "girlie books", so the series is a natural for me to try out. Some, perhaps all, are formally "out of print", in paper form. Once in a while I've looked for them used, but haven't run across any in my usual stomping ground. They're either so popular nobody wants to part with their copies, or they're not popular enough to overflow much into the used market.

Recently I read that a lot of Ms Springer's back catalog has been re-issued in e-book form. That's great news... But apparently the Rowan Hood books aren't among them.

The publisher is Philomel, an imprint of Penguin. Only some of the RH books are available for Kindle, and at B-and-N for Nook. But the prices. Oh, dear! The last book, Rowan Hood Returns: The Final Chapter is available for $11.84 in the Kindle edition, apparently with DRM. (Sorry, I won't buy it to find out, but "lending disabled" usually means it's encumbered, and I've vowed never to buy any more DRM encumbered things.) Over at B-and-N, the same book is listed at $13.99, presumably also with DRM. All of the titles at B-and-N are uniformly about a dollar more expensive than the Kindle editions. What's that all about?

Most items in the Rowan Hood series are not available as e-books, and the ones that are available seem priced to gouge. WTF? I'll bet Ms Springer is getting almost nothing for each copy sold, and at those prices, who's going to buy them? Even if I can't get paperbacks at my local beloved indy bookseller, I can find the whole set on Abebooks.com in paperback for about $3.50 each, inclusive of shipping. But I know the author won't get any pesos, dollars, euros, or yen from a used sale, and I want to support a living author who's still writing books that I want to read... What to do? What would Santa Claus do? Hell's bells my hearties: what would Robin Hood do?

I guess if I were to vote with my wallet, I'd have to go for the used paperbacks. But maybe I'll then put on my Robin Hood hat and send the author a Starbuck's gift card to make up for her lost royalties. ;-) Yeah, that's the ticket. If I support Ms Springer's caffeinated beverage habit, maybe she'll write even more books I want to read...! Woo hoo!

Now... By contrast, the older Nancy Springer titles that have recently become available through Open Road Media are priced nicely at around 5 or 6 dollars (some a bit higher), apparently without DRM. And a bunch of her short stories are going for 99 cents.

The situation may be fairly similar to other traditionally published authors who are entering the e-realm, like I.J. Parker (whose latest book I'm now reading). She publishes the Akitada series by herself these days after the series was discontinued by 2-3 publishers over the years. And they go for about seven dollars. Some of the early books in the series which are available as e-books are going for $11.93 and similar prices on Amazon, but $13.50 at B-and-N; and the lower priced volumes are still more expensive at B-and-N. Makes one wonder.

And now for the weather...

If you still think an ISBN is necessary, take a look at this article, the January Author Earnings Report, which claims that book sales are being vastly under-reported in the mainstream press in part because "30% of all ebook sales are indie ebooks without ISBNs"... Of course, SROP is even more invisible and underground than the shadow described in that article because we don't sell into any of the major channels. Mwahaha... But the statistics are still kind of interesting, even to furtive rodents.

In other news...

The 2015 Grand Srop Fritter Away is fizzling as usual and only half of the available free books have been frittered away so far. I can feel the Valentine's Day torch approaching...