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

A Land Called Deseret
Janet Dailey
Every novel in this collection is your passport to a romantic tour of the United States through time-honored favorites by America’s First Lady of romance fiction. Each of the fifty novels is set in a differ...

Rivals
Janet Dailey
Flame Morgan, the high-class v-p of a San Francisco ad agency, is instantly attracted to Chance Stuart, a wealthy, powerful land developer. Chance romances her lavishly but withholds a damaging secret duri...


This Business of Publishing
Richard Curtis
THIS BUSINESS OF PUBLISHING has been hailed by literary agent Michael Larsen as "must reading for writers, agents and anyone else who cares about the future of publishing." It reveals the unique perspective o...

Killer Knots
Nancy J. Cohen
Nancy J. Cohen's Bad Hair Day mysteries are a cut above the rest--rich, full, and stylish. Now her beautician-sleuth Marla Shore puts down her curling iron and picks up her skills at detection when she books ...


Loot
Aaron Elkins
In April 1945, The Nazis, reeling and near defeat, frantically work to hide the huge store of art treasures that Hitler has looted from Europe. Truck convoys loaded with the cultural wealth of the Western ...

Always Leave 'Em Dying
Richard S. Prather
Shell Scott. He's a guy with a pistol in his pocket and sex and violence on his mind. The crime world's public enemy number one, this Casanova is a sucker for a damsel in distress. When a pair of lovely legs...


Queen of Angels
Greg Bear
In a world of wonders, wealth, and “perfect” mental health, a famous poet commits gruesome murder . . .why? That crime, that question, leads a policewoman to a jungle of torture and forgotten gods; a wr...

To The Vanishing Point
Alan Dean Foster
The Sonderberg family doesn’t know it yet, but this isn’t going to be any ordinary road trip. After they pick up an unassuming hitchhiker, a quiet drive down Interstate 40 becomes a trip into an alterna...


Song of Kali
Dan Simmons
Blood will curdle in Calcutta! In the most crime-ridden city, nightmares become real and evil is defined by frightening occurrences. When an American family finds themselves encircled by the terrors of this ...

Tarnsman of Gor
John Norman
Tarl Cabot has always believed himself to be a citizen of Earth. He has no inkling that his destiny is far greater than the small planet he has inhabited for the first twenty-odd years of his life. One frost...


The Stone Mage & the Sea
Sean Williams
The Stone Mages rule the huge deserts of red sand. The vast coastlines are ruled by Sky Wardens. Magic is everywhere but not all have the power to control and direct it. Any child found to have magical abi...

Shatterday
Harlan Ellison
Mercurial, belligerent, passionately in love with language and wild ideas, Harlan Ellison has, for half a century, steadily gathered to himself and his thirty-seven books an undeniably fanatical readership....


Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse
Kaleb Nation
What if your mother was a criminal? What if her crime was magic? What if magic ran in the family?
Bran Hambric was found alone in a locked bank vault when he was six years old. He doesn't have a clue ho...

The Dream Compass
Jeff Bredenberg
Rulers of old nearly destroyed the planet. And the new "boss" may finish the job.Any day now, The Monitor will unleash his deadly secret upon a war-addled planet. What brutal dictator worth his salt would pa...
We feel that a cogent comment made by Anne Marie Gilbert in response to our posting Why E-Sales Dipped in Q2 comes so close to capturing the mood of consumers that we are taking the liberty of reproducing it here in its entirety. Thank you Ms. Gilbert!
RC
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I am still downloading a lot of books, but definitely buying fewer of the overpriced e books, instead of buying 3-5 books a week, I’m buying 6-7 books a month. My book budget has not diminished but I just won’t buy some books I want to read but feel are over priced. My entire family read Jim Butcher’s Changes in a library copy rather than buy it at $12.99 for our Kindles. (We share an account with two of our grown sons, that way they can read my books but I don’t have to raid their homes to get them back.) We have all his other books on Kindle and would still download it to reread but not until the price comes down.
I’m not a $9.99 purist but for most new fiction it feels right. For back list works I would expect the price to be less than the paper version or I won’t buy it. My price points for scholarly and general non fiction works are much more flexible and I will and have paid a great deal more for those works. BUT I still will not pay more for the e version and expect to pay at least 20 per cent less than the print version of any book I buy. When the prices are low enough I am happily replacing my print books with their e versions. Less dust, less book case space needed, and easier on elderly eyes.
I am particularly unhappy with the Penguin price points as I read a lot of their authors and simply will not pay, (not can not but will not) what they are asking. $18 for Black Lamb and Grey Falcon to replace a many year old copy I already own in paper is greedy for them to ask and would be insane for me to spend. If books are priced well I’ll buy, if the price points set by some of the major publisher’s remain inflated, I’m going to be giving some serious thought to self scanning books I might otherwise just re-buy for kindle and spending my reading money on the sensibly priced books that are still out there and worth reading, not to mention downloading the public domain books that I could spend the rest of my life profitably reading and rereading.
Except for Art History books, Museum catalogs, graphic novels and military history that has a lot of maps, I don’t expect to be buying anymore paper books in the foreseeable future and once there is good color e ink those purchases will be made for Kindle as well. I love books, but it’s the content I’m interested in, using them as a decorating statement has long since gotten old. Yes some books are works of art in format as well as content and those books if one is lucky enough to own them are to be treasured but they are the exception not the rule.
I never thought I would come to this point but I’m done buying hard copies of books just done with it and the authors who will be profiting from my spending are the ones whose publishers do not leave me with the feeling that they are the pirates and I’m the one being ripped off. For the works I want from those publishers I’ll just use the very fine library to which I’m lucky enough to have access and feel bad for the author who will be losing a sale.
Anne Marie Gilbert
Dead right in every respect, except that the lady is a bit generous in being willing to pay $9.99 for anything.
I totally agree. I was buying the Elmore Leonard back list until the agency model publisher raised the price for the e-version to above the mass market paperback. Am I wrong to think it cost less for the publisher to make an e-book than a mass market copy? If not, then why charge me more?
I have been very disappointed that more small press publishers have not been more active in the e-book. Here is their chance to compete on an even playing field with the Big 6 and even lure new readers with more reasonable prices.
I recently began to buy art books in color for my Kindle. I added the free Kindle for Mac and now see each page on a 27 inch screen and have a better view of each page than the original print version.
Ms. Gilbert–
I’m curious if you are a reader who would support a “name your own price” model from a publisher or writer who offered books for download either for free, with a discretionary “pay” link, or for a minimal price that you could alter as you thought fair, much as Radiohead gained a great deal of press coverage for doing.
Publishing (like music and film, and unlike television) is technically user-supported anyhow. I’m just wondering how that notion plays in a more direct model. Clearly you are an articulate and astute buyer, and I’m interested in your take on this.
Thanks for your post, and thank you, Richard, for highlighting it.
Reader power is here too along with writer power.
The reader should be able to acquire an ebook for a few dollars or even less.
The designs of the Penguins of this world would have us pay non-cost reflective prices for digital content and in doing so are holding back the digital book revolution – thankfully only temporarily!
For me it’s not just the prices themselves, it’s that ebooks are often now priced higher than the least expensive paper book. Publishers are not doing what they said they would and dropping ebook prices once the paperback comes out. (I just wrote a blog post at Dreamwidth about this, with linked examples.)