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.

Thin Air
George E. Simpson
It's a mystery that dates back to World War II--what happened to the USS Sturman and its crew. For Naval Investigator Nicholas Hammond, the search will challenge him…and the answers will, like bodies floa...


Shadow of Ashland
Terence M. Green
“THE BOOK YOU HAVE TO READ”–Entertainment Weekly
"Things have to be settled, or they never go away."
Only weeks before she dies in March, 1984, Leo Nolan’s mother shows her son a rose she says w...

The Longest Way Home
Robert Silverberg
"What wonders and adventures he has to tell us," is how Ursula K. LeGuin characterized the world of Robert Silverberg, and in The Longest Way Home, he takes readers on another dazzling odyssey.
Joseph, ju...


Marriage Is a Bad Habit
Ruth Dickson
When Ruth Dickson released her 1967 book MARRIED MEN MAKE THE BEST LOVERS, it went off like a bombshell. Defenders of the “sanctity” of marriage rose up to dismiss her frank, innovative, thoroughly resear...

Orion's Dagger
Paula Downing King
With ORION’S DAGGER, Paula E. Downing presents the thrilling final installment of THE CLOUDSHIPS OF ORION trilogy, which Starlog magazine called “special...a thoroughly engrossing story.” The trio wa...


Fair Warning
George E. Simpson
America is set to finally end World War II with a devastating act--dropping the atomic bomb over Japan. But what if a secret mission was set in place to alter the course of history? In this fast-paced, and i...

Rogues of the Black Fury
Travis Heermann
When a band of shadowy fanatics abducts Javin Wollstone’s little sister, Bella, from his care, his only hope to bring her home is turning to a hard-bitten band of special warriors, the Black Furies, led by C...


The Sudden Star
Pamela Sargent
The appearance of a white star bathing the world in a deadly glare turns Earth into a nightmare of fear and death. Rape and murder are as common as suicide. Medical help is allowed only for certain diseases, a...

Philosophy and the Challenge of the Future
John Lange
The sciences, as opposed to politics and religion, have their roots in philosophy. Philosophy has been spoken of as the mother of the sciences, although she is, in many cases, more of a grandmother or grea...


The Man in the Moon Must Die
Jeff Bredenberg
What do a cunning old man, a code-slopper gone rogue, a pair of lowlife tech-runners, a sexually frustrated AI, and a hermaphrodite underworld boss have in common? They're all out to get Benito Funcitti, ow...
FEATURED TITLES

After the Madness
Sol Wachtler
Driving down the Long Island Expressway in November of 1992, Sol Wachtler was New York's Chief Judge and heir apparent to the New York Governorship. Suddenly, three van loads of FBI agents swerved in front of ...

Silver-Tongued Devil
Jennifer Blake
The winding Mississippi weaves wicked tales while New Orleans has always been a place of good and evil, of humid nights, heavy passions, sinister greed and tricky affairs. Angelica Carew's romantic entanglemen...


A Promise of Roses
Heidi Betts
Megan Adams needs to save her stagecoach line, and she's ready to personally face the outlaws who constantly ambush it. But she wasn't prepared for the handsome outlaw that will try to make her his accomplice,...

Trace
Warren Murphy
TRACE aka Devlin Tracy. He operates out of Las Vegas as a very private investigator. The giant insurance company that employs him is willing to overlook his drinking, his gambling and his womanizing for...


Dawn of the Century
Robert Vaughan
In Volume One of The American Chronicles, Robert Vaughan panoramically evokes America at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, poised on the brink of greatness and fraught with the tumult of rapid change. ...

Crucifax
Ray Garton
Originally published in 1988, Ray Garton’s fourth novel, following not long after his award-nominated LIVE GIRLS, is regarded as a classic of the “splatterpunk” movement in horror fiction. Garton ha...


Natural Medicine for Weight Loss
Deborah Mitchell
DO YOU KNOW... The metabolic rate of two people of the same age, sex, and body type may vary as much as 20 percent; Most of the weight loss from popular high-protein diets is water? and not fat; An addiction t...

Daughter of the Reef
Clare Coleman
From Jean M. Auel's THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR to Linda Lay Shuler's SHE WHO REMEMBERS, novels set among pre-historic cultures have shown a very strong appeal to readers of all types from fans of genre fant...


Seas of Ernathe
Jeffrey A. Carver
Millennia after the skills of starship rigging have been lost, can Seth Perland find the key to rediscovery on the world of the mysterious sea people, the Nale'nid? Seas of Ernathe was Jeffrey A. Carver's fi...

Destined to Love
Suzanne Elizabeth
Dr. Josie Reed has been thrown back in time to 1881 to discover her soul mate, but it turns out he is a sexy outlaw from the Wild West. Although she desperately tries to keep her emotions in check while tend...


The Destiny of the Sword
Dave Duncan
Wally Smith, having died on Earth, finds himself reincarnated as a swordsman in another world and entrusted by the presiding goddess with a mission that has no appeal for him at all. Can he bring together...

The Forge of God
Greg Bear
On July 26th, Arthur Gordon learns that Europa, the sixth moon of Jupiter, has disappeared. Not hiding, not turned black, but gone.
On September 28th, Edward Shaw finds an error in the geological ...


The Coin-Giver
M. M. Buckner
In the 23rd century, the Earth's surface is devastated by global warming, and corporations exploit billions of poverty-stricken employees whose lifetime contracts they own? Richter Jedes, the rich powerful C...

Living with Aliens
John DeChancie
What more could a thirteen-year-old want than two best friends who can help him get his first girlfriend? Young Drew finds out when he befriends two aliens, Zorg and Flez, who help him take his new girlfr...


The Jaguar Princess
Clare Bell
Mixcati’s people are descended from the Olmec Jaguar Gods and she is fated for great things—both wonderful and dangerous. She can, unexpectedly and without warning, turn into a living, wild Jaguar, jus...

The Black Gondolier and Other Stories
Fritz Leiber
Announcing a new collection of stories by Fritz Leiber. Assembled here is a selection of Mr. Leiber's best horrific tales, many of which have been virtually unobtainable for decades. From the riveting "Spider ...
Since Cory Doctorow began writing a monthly column for Publishers Weekly (see What Can Publishers Learn from Cory Doctorow?) we’ve been monitoring it, because Doctorow never wants for fresh insights into publishing processes that jaded denizens of the industry take for granted.
In the latest Cory Doctorow column in Publishers Weekly he shines his beam on the mysteries of book and e-book pricing, a swamp into which many have waded recently but few returned with any insights.
His particular focus is what he calls price discrimination, “the idea that you make more money by segmenting your customers based on how much they’re willing to spend…In publishing, price discrimination is accomplished through ‘windowing.’” To put it simply, windowing is the practice of starting with an expensive hardcover edition for the well-heeled and the impatient; then, in time, releasing cheap editions such as mass market paperbacks or e-books.
Price discrimination, says Doctorow, is balanced by what he calls “demand elasticity.” Instead of starting with a high priced edition and stepping down to cheaper ones (and making many customers wait), you start out with a low price to begin with in order to attract the largest audience in a concentrated period of time.
The crossroads of these two concepts also happens to be the crossroads of traditional publishing and digital publishing. The exigencies of the traditional require a stepped rollout of editions from higher priced to lower. But the economies generated by digital enable a publisher to slash list prices. The latter means a lower profit margin per unit sold but that’s made up by – more units sold! And that happens to be the retail model practiced by Amazon with the Kindle.
That works great for customers and it sure as hell works great for Amazon, says Doctorow. But, as the recent shooting war between Amazon and Macmillan demonstrated (see Publishing’s Weekend War: 48 Hours That Changed an Industry), that model represents a grave threat to traditional publishing.
“That’s because the Kindle is a ‘roach motel’ device,” says Doctorow. Its terms of sale “ensure that books can check in, but they can’t check out. Readers are contractually prohibited from moving their books to competing devices…It means that e-book customers can’t break with Amazon without jettisoning their digital libraries.”
As is so often the case, Doctorow’s views are colored by personal experience. “Amazon refused to allow any changes to its terms for my last book, both in the Audible edition and the Kindle edition, refusing to allow me to offer the book with some introductory text affirming readers’ rights to move the books to devices that Amazon hasn’t approved.”
For this reason, Doctorow is not buying into the Amazon business model, no matter how many other benefits the company offers.”Amazon has done an incredible job of figuring out how to cross-sell, upsell, and just plain sell books. They have revolutionized bookselling over the course of a decade. As a reader and a writer, and as a publisher and a bookseller, I am constantly amazed at how good they are at this. But I don’t believe in benevolent dictators. I wouldn’t endorse a lock-in program run by a cartel of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and Mohandas Gandhi. As good as Amazon is at what it does, it doesn’t deserve to lock in the reading public. No one does.”
And by “no one,” Doctorow includes Apple. “Don’t hope for a better shake from Apple, either,” he says. “Apple’s longstanding love-affair with proprietary formats and lock-ins will very likely make the iPad every inch the roach motel that the Kindle is.”
You can hear Doctorow on the topic on BlogTalk Radio.
Richard Curtis
Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by Publishers Weekly.