E-Reads™ is
...a trail-blazing reprinter of out-of-print genre and general fiction and nonfiction by leading authors. Our books are available in all e-book formats and paperback. Read the latest publishing news and provocative blogs by top commentators in the traditional and digital publishing fields.
Empress of Light
James C. Glass
In this sequel to SHANJI, Kati has used the light of creation to win a war bringing her to the throne as Empress of her planet, and she has forged new alliances with former enemies. Her daughter Yesui is born w...
Hôtel Transylvania
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Since 1978, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has produced about two dozen novels and numerous short stories detailing the life of a character first introduced to the reading world as Le Comte de Saint-Germain. We first mee...
Mother's Choice
Elizabeth Mansfield
It's a Mother's Duty To Protect Her Daughter
Cassandra Beringer would never allow her daughter Cicely to repeat her mistake and marry a man twenty years her senior--even if he is the handsome Viscount Inge...
Pock's World
Dave Duncan
In this thrilling story of adventure and suspense by master storyteller Dave Duncan, five flawed individuals must decide the fate of an entire world.
On the outskirts of the Ayne Sector sits Pock’s Worl...
Time Slave
John Norman
Dr. Brenda Hamilton--a Ph.D. mathematician from Cal Tech--is beautiful, though she does not know her true beauty. She is a woman, though she does not know her true womanhood. Deep within herself she is sensu...
Sunday in Hell: Pearl Harbor Minute by Minute
Bill McWilliams
Using long established historical records and contemporary journals as well as recently-released war-time documents, Bill McWilliams has created a brand-new minute-by-minute narrative of the Day that Will ...
Lord of the Fire Lands
Dave Duncan
Raider and Wasp have spent five years at Ironhall studying to become Blades, expert swordsmen whose talents stand unmatched. Magic both enhances the Blades' fighting skills and binds them in lifelong duty....
Miscalculations
Elizabeth Mansfield
His Woman Of Affairs
Jane Douglas had a sharp wit, a brilliant mind, and an extraordinary knack for numbers. As financial advisor to Lady Martha Kettering, she was able to provide for herself, her sister ...
The Girl With the Persian Shawl
Elizabeth Mansfield
An Arrogant Spinster, a Dashing Rake, and an Unsigned Painting
The Girl With Persian Shawl was a strangely bewitching masterpiece that had hung in the Rendell household for generations. Kate Rendell graci...
A Thousand Deaths
George Alec Effinger
While George Alec Effinger’s Budayeen novel WHEN GRAVITY FAILS is perhaps his most famous work, his lesser known novel THE WOLVES OF MEMORY remained his favorite. In it, he introduced readers to Sandor Couran...
FEATURED TITLES
Guardian Angel
Linda Winstead Jones
Defying her father's wishes that she find a suitor and marry, Melanie Barnett is well equipped to sharp shoot anyone who gets in her way in Paradise, Texas. She isn't out to play the love game, but when a mask...
Smoked Out
Warren Murphy
Digger is an insurance investigator who drinks, chases women, asks smartass questions and gets help from his part-time hooker girlfriend. A humorous crime adventure series by the author of The Destroyer.
...
Royal Seduction
Jennifer Blake
Angeline’s virtue was intact before she met the prince of Ruthenia...before he mistook her for her cousin, his brother’s mistress and the only witness to his murder...before he exacted his punishment for k...
Aspen Gold
Janet Dailey
Kit Masters, born and brought up on an Aspen ranch, left to pursue an acting career in Hollywood but she is a woman with a strong sense of family, loyalty, and integrity and had deep ties to the land where ...
Tales of the Village Rabbi
Rabbi Harvey M. Tattelbaum
In the late fifties and sixties, Greenwich Village was the quirkiest, most charming, jazzy, eccentric and urban of environments, the center of all that was both quaint and "cool": brownstones and beatniks, co...
Damiano
R.A. MacAvoy
Set against the turbulent backdrop of the Italian Renaissance this alternate history takes place in a world where real faith-based magic exists. Our hero is Damiano Dalstrego. He is a wizard's son, an alchem...
Dangerous Games
Michael Prescott
Maverick FBI special agent Tess McCallum (nicknamed "Super Fed" by an adoring media) (the central investigator in previous novel, Next Victim) is back and she’s got a new partner, one she doesn’t wa...
The Beauty of the Beasts
Ralph Helfer
They're major stars who don't speak a word on-screen, yet are world-famous for their compelling performances. Who are they? The animal stars of the big screen, of course! In THE BEAUTY OF THE BEASTS, Ralph Hel...
The Harder They Fall
Jill Shalvis
The good doctor Hunter Adams’ steady life is suddenly wracked by a whirlwind. Trisha Malloy, vixen, lingerie saleswoman and magnet for disaster, has entered Hunter’s life and begun to destroy everything. H...
Red Limit Freeway
John DeChancie
Jake McGraw is a man on the run from half the universe. After stumbling upon what seems to be the fabled roadmap to the stars, Jake must outrun the most detestable vermin and roadbugs in the galaxy and the...
Talking Back to Prozac
Peter R. Breggin, M.D.
Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You about today’s Most Controversial Drug With an Information Packed New Introduction
Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Bestselling Author of Medication Ma...
The Chieftain
John Norman
A science fiction series filled with interplanetary adventure, rebellion and mortal combat by the author the The Gorean Saga. First in the series, The Chieftain. This is the age of the Telnarians. Their vas...
The Hoax
Clifford Irving
The ultimate caper story, novelist Clifford Irving's no-holds-barred account of the literary hoax that stunned the publishing world, is the story of his faked “autobiography” of Howard Hughes. HOAX was fir...
King Gillette lives! The spirit of the mogul, who transformed product marketing by giving away the razor and selling the blades, hovered over Amazon’s press conference unveiling the big-screen Kindle DX. There, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. pledged to subsidize the full price of the jumbo reading device for subscribers committing to long-term subscriptions. The retail price of the DX is $489.00.
We did a little research and learned that a daily subscription to the Times in our area of Manhattan will cost $5.30 per week at current rates. At that rate, we would have to enlist for one year and forty weeks.*
It’s not a bad deal for subscribers – you end up with a Kindle that you can use for many other things besides reading the newspaper. But is it a good one for the Times? Gawker, the snarky media website, doesn’t think so. In fact, Gawker doesn’t think so at all. The site’s Owen Thomas thinks Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos “has managed to scare the press lords into shelling out their precious remaining cash into funding the distribution of his pricey e-reader…” and “…he’s cajoled the gullible likes of Sulzberger into handing him a pile of cash.”
“If he’s such a big believer in supporting journalism,” asks Thomas, “why didn’t Bezos announce he was personally giving away 160,000 Kindles to people who agreed to sign up for a newspaper subscription?”
Well, maybe Bezos never heard of King Gillette.
Read A Bigger Kindle Makes Jeff Bezos Richer and Newspapers Poorer.
RC
*(Of course, the Times would get a discount for buying Kindles in volume; on the other hand, subscribers who commit to long-term subscriptions also get discounts, so the two discounts wash each other out.)
King Gillette lives! The spirit of the mogul, who transformed product marketing by giving away the razor and selling the blades, hovered over Amazon’s press conference unveiling the big-screen Kindle DX. There, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. pledged to subsidize the full price of the jumbo reading device for subscribers committing to long-term subscriptions. The retail price of the DX is $489.00.
I don't think anybody involved in this deal is doing anything but smart thinking, and it's a shame Gawker isn't giving kudos to the NY Times for being this forward thinking with its initiative in the arena. This new subscription deal is better than anything iRex has done in the European market. Bezos certainly didn't have to pull the wool over anyone, let alone Sulzberger or readers. We all know newspapers are going digital, period. It's good news for everyone except paper manufacturers.
First of all, the cost of printing the paper and distributing was already being subsidized by the Times for subscribers. Digital distribution gives newspapers like the Times a better ratio for using subscription income to pay for content once they have an infrastructure like the Kindle DX in place. As advertising revenue eventually shifts to digital, this seems like the safest route to build a future revenue base, especially outside of NYC. I'll bet that the offset cost of the Kindle DX will be more profitable to the NY Times in the long run because of increasing print costs and diminishing print ad revenue.
Earnest subscribed readers who are willing to commit to digital distribution on the Kindle DX over their old paper editions are gaining a Kindle and potentially losing hundred of pounds of printed paper that just goes out with the recycling at the end of the week. And while committing for a long term subscription might seem intimidating at first, it's no different than committing to AT&T for 2 years while you use your iPhone. Or "locking in" to a discounted rate with your cable provider and using their DV-R box. This is something we've all seen before with digital services. It's nothing new and it’s a trade-off that’s acceptable.
And finally, readers pay for one subscription, but the Kindle DX remains open to any additional content they want to use it for. Reusing the Kindle DX for other reading is a bit more satisfying than saving your old newspapers for litter boxes.
Because I've never been a subscriber to the NY Times (I read it online), the Kindle DX has been the most compelling argument for me to get a subscription that I've been seen.
Now if only the DX screen would refresh faster…