New Nora Roberts - Yikes!

[Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake']

Evanovich is lendable?  I hadn't looked at that.
deb

I checked one of the Plum books that I own and it says I can lend it.

[drenee]

Thank you.  I will post in the lending thread if I decide to borrow it.
deb

[VictoriaP]

I'm the minority opinion here; while I certainly prefer a lower price, I honestly have no problem with it.  Will I buy it?  Nope--but that's because I haven't gotten into NR (yet).  But I can say with authority that if this were the J.D. Robb that comes out next week, the $14.99 price wouldn't stop me from buying it.  I might grumble a little, but I sure as heck wouldn't hesitate.

To be fair, I have a very small number of authors that I feel that strongly about.  For the rest, well, I didn't buy hardcovers much before the Kindle, so I'm not likely to pay hardcover prices for most authors' work now. 

But I think the agency publishers are still experimenting to see what they can get away with, and NR is the perfect author to try stuff like that on--very very large following that's fairly loyal, and what, the third largest number of ebook sales?  From a marketing perspective, what a great test case for them.

[mishymac]

I'm the minority opinion here; while I certainly prefer a lower price, I honestly have no problem with it.  Will I buy it?  Nope--but that's because I haven't gotten into NR (yet).  But I can say with authority that if this were the J.D. Robb that comes out next week, the $14.99 price wouldn't stop me from buying it.  I might grumble a little, but I sure as heck wouldn't hesitate.

To be fair, I have a very small number of authors that I feel that strongly about.  For the rest, well, I didn't buy hardcovers much before the Kindle, so I'm not likely to pay hardcover prices for most authors' work now. 

But I think the agency publishers are still experimenting to see what they can get away with, and NR is the perfect author to try stuff like that on--very very large following that's fairly loyal, and what, the third largest number of ebook sales?  From a marketing perspective, what a great test case for them.

I agree....while I don't like to pay more than $9.99 for an ebook (as I can't really see why they are soooo expensive when I can find plenty free or under $5) I also will happily pay up to $14.99 for a NEW book by one of my fav authors. Especially considering I share an account with my 2 sisters and mum and a few other family members and we all read the same sort of books. Previously when I would buy my fav new authors in dtb format I would spend up to $20 per dtb, share it with all the people that are now on my kindle account and not have the cost shared at all. NOW we all share the cost for the same style of book, so fortunately for me instead of costing me $20 for a new dtb or $14.99 for an ebook it actually only costs me about $2-3 per book, and I still share it with the same people....now I just share the cost as well!

i will only pay this amount for a NEW book by one of my FAV authors tho....it's NOT a regular occurence!

[4Katie]

But I can say with authority that if this were the J.D. Robb that comes out next week, the $14.99 price wouldn't stop me from buying it.  I might grumble a little, but I sure as heck wouldn't hesitate.

Same here. I love the JD Robb books too much to wait. But I can't think of anything else I'd pay that much for. I'm waiting for prices to drop on five books by some of my favorite authors. I have plenty to read in the meantime.
 

[EllenR]

Here is the great MobiRead Wiki on Ebook Lending Libraries  - http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBook_Lending_Libraries which has many options for every state and lists how many ebooks each library has available.

Thank you for that! I was wondering where else I could look.

[EllenR]

Don't forget that kindle book lending group. It's getting huge. You can probably find Sixteen there. Isn't that the one featuring Lula? I'd like to read that myself.

I should have thought of that. Doh! I need a couple of hours to put my books up for lending too.

[mistyd107]

I'm the minority opinion here; while I certainly prefer a lower price, I honestly have no problem with it.  Will I buy it?  Nope--but that's because I haven't gotten into NR (yet).  But I can say with authority that if this were the J.D. Robb that comes out next week, the $14.99 price wouldn't stop me from buying it.  I might grumble a little, but I sure as heck wouldn't hesitate.

To be fair, I have a very small number of authors that I feel that strongly about.  For the rest, well, I didn't buy hardcovers much before the Kindle, so I'm not likely to pay hardcover prices for most authors' work now. 

But I think the agency publishers are still experimenting to see what they can get away with, and NR is the perfect author to try stuff like that on--very very large following that's fairly loyal, and what, the third largest number of ebook sales?  From a marketing perspective, what a great test case for them.

ITA with this except in my case NR IS one of the 3 Authors I would pay the higher price for if I had to especially because getting from the library is not an ideal option for me

[T.L. Haddix]

Most of the new releases I've gotten in the last five or six years at least have been from the library.  I hadn't actually looked at the prices on the hardcovers for a while, and I happened to glance down and see that the latest whatever I had picked up from  the library cost $27 in the real world.  That's ridiculous!  That's my water bill for two months!  I've said it before and I'll say it many times again, probably - publishers need to get their heads out of their butts and see what the real world is like. 

After the last Nora Roberts book I read (The Search - you know, the dog-training manual?), I am not in a huge rush to get to her latest releases.  I've not even bothered with the fourth Bridal Quartet book, and don't plan to.  The third one almost sent me into a sugar coma, the people were so perfect.  Perfect lives, perfect bodies, amazing sex, twenty-hour work days, still time to socialize, eating yogurt and actually existing on just that while exercising religiously, and did I mention the whole perfectness of the thing?  Gahhhh...  Before you blast me, I have sitting just a few feet away from me right this minute 95% of NR's books, excepting the J.D. Robb series.  I've read her faithfully for years, but until her writing comes back down to earth, I'll pass. 

[sibelhodge]

Whoa! That's incredible.

[Elise Logan]

With some of the big publishers now wanting to put lending limits on books so that libraries have to repurchase copies of e-books, lending is going to be somewhat curtailed. That, combined with the agency pricing higher price points is going to mean that I'm not going to be willing to try new authors nearly as often.

And the big pub houses are severely delusional if they think I'm paying that for e-books. With an e-book, I don't actually own my copy, they can limit or prohibit lending, and they're hosing me on the price, too? Yeah. I'm not paying more for less utility.

E

[Bob Mayer]

Soon, a big name romance writer is going to do what David Morrell did in thrillers: skip the traditional publisher.  The math is inescapable.  I've been in the business over 20 years and have to say it's changed drastically.
Nora is pretty cool-- I always like how people take up smoking at Nationals to stand outside with her.  I remember sitting with her in Reno when she read the script for the Ritas and refused to do it-- when she makes her mind up, she makes her mind up.

Publishers are trying to keep hardcovers alive.  I was shocked to look at pricing at one of my ebooks from St Martins and to see how much it cost--made me feel bad and I know it's artificially high to sustain a business model that's archaic.

[Jason G. Anderson]

I guess the big publishers are hurting, so they're trying to get as much money as they can. They know a good portion of her fans will buy her latest book no matter what the price, so $14.99 it is.

I have to confess before I got my iPad, I pretty much borrowed all the novels I read from the library. New book prices these days are crazy. And with so much out there now via indie authors and traditional authors publishing their backlists, I'm unlikely to ever pay more than $10 for an ebook.

[Casse]

I still haven't read Nora's The Search, which came out July 6. Waiting for the $12.99 price to drop. It didn't get very good reviews, so I can be patient.

IMO this book was excellent 

NR is my fave author - as long as the price is less than a DTB then I will purchase them. Mom and I share an account for apx 7.50 for both of us to read it - yep I'll have it on release day.

To each their own.... our local library is near worthless and my time is worth something so personally I can't wait 

[VictoriaP]

Part of it for me is also related to how much my time is worth.  At approximately 100 pages per hour, the average JD Robb gives me four hours of high octane reading pleasure--assuming I only read it once, and I typically do reread them at least once more.  A lower priced average read might give me the same reading time, but less enjoyment.  It's absolutely worth it to me to pay more when I break it down into those terms.

What a $14.99 price tag versus a $12.99 price tag might do is cause me not to pre order immediately, but wait an see if the price drops prior to release, because sometimes they do.  But it wouldn't stop me from buying on release day even if that didn't happen.  Frankly, the most recent JD Robb, which came out on Tuesday, was well worth even $14.99, had they charged it, and I would've had no regrets after reading it.

As I said before, the higher prices mean I don't do this with as many authors as I did prior to agency pricing.  But for the authors I treasure, $15 is still worth it.

[eBookworm]

That one is not going to be available in Australia!!   

[4Katie]

IMO this book was excellent 

NR is my fave author - as long as the price is less than a DTB then I will purchase them. Mom and I share an account for apx 7.50 for both of us to read it - yep I'll have it on release day.

To each their own.... our local library is near worthless and my time is worth something so personally I can't wait 

I had a coupon for a free audiobook, so I got that. Even bad (bad reviews, at least) Nora Roberts book is a good book for me!

[MLPMom]

I checked one of the Plum books that I own and it says I can lend it.

The first two aren't though. I could have sworn they were to start but now I don't see the lending button anymore.

[caseyf6]

I enjoyed The Search, did not really enjoy the Bridal books (but bought them to read and then shared with my MIL)-- I won't buy a $15 ebook, though.  That's nuts.

I am thinking about buying a nook or something just for library books....  What besides Nook does epub? 

[kindlegrl81]

Sony and Kobo or the main ones other than Nook, but there are a few other brands out there.  The Sony's are better ereaders IMO but they are spendy.  The Kobo isn't as good but they are selling for $99.

[Wisteria Clematis]

For devoted Nora Roberts fans---some of the earlier backlist titles are now starting to get kindled. On June 20 the entire MacKade Brothers series (four books) and the 'Star' series (three books) are going to be available in kindle format. So this might be a good time to 'click' on some of your favorite oldies to encourage the publisher to include more of these (like the Stanislavski sisters, etc.).

Wisteria

[anne_holly]

I can get old Nora Roberts in paperback for 50 cents at any Salvation Army. Seems to me, saving $14 is a good thing to do.

I understand that publishers are experimenting, but one of the major advantages for Kindle (aside from saving trees) is that they should be cheaper to produce (less on transporting, printing, etc), and, therefore, cheaper to buy. I'm certainly no expert on these matters, but if they do cost less to produce, I'd like to see those savings passed on to the consumer to make them more affordable for a range of incomes.

[Justin Alexander]

Okay, I don't want to start a huge fight here, and I agree that $14.99 is more than I'm willing to pay for an e-book, but the last part of this statement didn't make a whole lot of sense to me... Who else is the money supposed to go to?

The author.

Author's historically only got a 10-20% royalty on the cover price of each copy sold because the publisher generally only got about 50% of the cover price and the majority of that went towards paying for each individual copy to be printed.

On ebooks, authors are still only getting a 10-20% royalty, but the publisher is now getting 65-70% of the cover price and the majority of their costs (i.e. the cost of printing each individual copy of the book) have literally disappeared.

So there are three problems with the way publishers are handling the e-book revolution:

(1) They're gobbling up all of the new profits instead of equitably sharing them with the people actually responsible for creating the value that people are paying for (i.e., the written word).

(2) They're pricing the books high enough that they're actually reducing the number of copies sold (which means the author is getting screwed twice).

(3) They're gouging me as a customer. There's nothing about an ebook that justifies the publisher earning more profit; and there's certainly nothing which justifies them earning higher revenue (which is bizarrely becoming commonplace).

The reality of the e-book revolution is that it will allow readers to buy more books at lower prices while still generating more money for authors; which will, in turn, allow more authors to create their work as a full-time profession, with the result that more high quality books will get written for all of us to enjoy. It's a win-win-win scenario. Unless, of course, the publishers gouge their customers and screw the authors.

So for both personal (budgetary) reasons and for general reasons of principle, I strongly dislike what the mainstream publishers are currently trying to get away with.

[Julia444]

I could never afford Nora Roberts hardbacks, either, much as I love her books.  The Kindle version is cheaper than a hardback, but still more than I want to pay for one title.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, not that I loved Nora Roberts less, but that I loved a bargain more. 

Julia