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

Hannah's Half-Breed
Heidi Betts
Between Heaven and Hell lies Purgatory, Texas--a town with too few saints ... and too many sinners.
IN NEED OF A MIRACLE
The road to Hell might be paved with good intentions, but David Walker k...

Gather, Darkness!
Fritz Leiber
GATHER, DARKNESS! is a science-fiction classic. It tells the story of Armon Jarles, a man on the edge, living amidst the disputes of two rival powers at large in the world. 360 years after a nuclear holoca...


Our Lady of Darkness
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber (1910-1992) may be best known as a fantasy writer, but he published widely and successfully in the horror and science fiction fields. His fiction won the Hugo, Nebula, Derleth, Gandalf, Lovecr...

In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis
Isaac Asimov
In the Beginning: Science Faces God in the Book of Genesis Creation. The beginning of time. The origin of life. In our Western civilization, there are two influential accounts of beginnings. One is the Bibli...


Tea with the Black Dragon
R.A. MacAvoy
Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter Elizabeth is in trouble, she just doesn't know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact she has had with Eli...

Shards of Empire
Susan Shwartz
In the tenth century, the center of the world is not Rome, but Byzantium--a glorious empire, upon which the sun never sets. Constantinople, the center of this mighty dynasty, is starting to unravel. The great...


Dangerous Visions
Harlan Ellison
Included in this memorable collection of 33 original stories are 7 winners and 13 nominees for the prestigious Hugo and Nebula Awards. Lester Del Rey / Robert Silverberg / Frederik Pohl / Philip Jose Far...

The Soong Sisters
Emily Hahn
In the early twentieth century, few women in China were to prove so important to the rise of Chinese nationalism and liberation from tradition as the three extraordinary Soong Sisters: Eling, Chingling and May...


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...

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...


Dead Roots
Nancy J. Cohen
A haunted hotel, a family curse, mysterious Cossacks, hidden treasure, murdered guests--what looked to be a routine family reunion is turning into a serious Bad Hair Day indeed. One that's trouble all the wa...

Body Wave
Nancy J. Cohen
Salon owner Marla Shore is pretty hard to shock, but she's truly stunned to learn that her hateful ex-husband, Stanley Kaufman, has been arrested for the murder of his third wife, Kimberly--and wants Mar...


Find This Woman
Richard S. Prather
Shell Scott. He's a guy with a pistol in his pocket and murder 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 saunters ...

Suspicion of Innocence
Barbara Parker
Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana make a combustible mix on many levels. Passionately attracted to each other on a personal level, they are equally passionate defenders of their clients even when their int...


Star Rigger's Way
Jeffrey A. Carver
Gev Carlyle does not trust his companion! The other members of his crew are dead and he is left with only a suspicious alien for company. Together they must find a way to navigate through the Flux, an inte...

Eon
Greg Bear
Perhaps it wasn't from our time, perhaps it wasn't even from our universe, but the arrival of the 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity's desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Insid...
We’ve been so spoiled by triple and quadruple jumps in e-book sales that when there’s a dip we wring our hands and wonder if the long-dreaded Topping Out has arrived.
A few of us felt a chill wind the other day when the monthly statistics furnished by the American Association of Publishers and he International Digital Publishing Forum reported that sales in the second quarter of 2010 showed a light decline to $88.7 million from the $91 million reported by the industry in the previous quarter. See E-Sales Soften – if You Call Double “Soft”
Given the fact that Q2-10 sales were twice those of the prior year, most analysts felt it was nothing to get hung about. But we were curious and asked a few knowledgeable professionals if they could shed light on this small reversal.
One said he thought that the kicking-in of the agency model, which broke e-book prices out of the $9.99 list price ceiling that Amazon had tried to establish, had something to do with it. (See Apple Promoting a New (and Radical!) Model for Selling E-Books?). Consumers just rebelled against paying $12 to $14 or more for e-books. This view was supported by this comment posted on our website: “Second quarter is when I started feeling the sting of agency pricing for e-books, and I cut way back on my e-book buying. I imagine a few other folks did, too.” (Thanks Stacy!)
The so-called Big Five publishers that switched to the agency model not only took a hit in sales but took in less revenue per e-book sold. Plus many independent e-book retailers did not and in some cases still do not have signed agreements to sell some of the most popular titles.
Another observer reminded us that a huge number of people bought e-book reading devices or received them as gifts for the Christmas holiday in 2009, and that led to their purchasing tons of e-books in January 2010, still the biggest month in e-book history. In subsequent months there was no place to go but soft.
Okay, so a cloud darkened the sky momentarily. But one glance at the charts reassures us that the prediction for years to come is sunny with a chance of a sprinkles here and there.
Richard Curtis
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 e 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 mumble 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.
Personally, I chalk it up to the Agency Model. There are a number of books I have on my Want To Read List, but the price (more than $12.00), so I’m waiting for the price to come down. In the mean time, there are plenty of authors who are releasing their out-of-print books for less than $5.00, so those are the ones getting my hard-earned dollars, not the corporates who are only out for themselves and don’t seem to care about the authors.
While my ebook purchases from the Agency 5 have stopped almost entirely, lately I am finding more and more authors from indie publishers that I like a lot and am able to buy more ebooks from them at the $4-7 range. I wish that sales report reflected small publishers, because I bet their sales are increasing dramatically, and will continue to. So I share your overall optimism for ebooks, Richard, but think the outlook is flat (or worse) for anyone who continues with unreasonably high prices.
I think the Agency model had its impact in a different way – there are many e-book retailers that had to remove Agency titles because they were incompatible with their member loyalty discount programs. Fictionwise, eReader, Diesel, BooksonBoard all lost access to the Agency titles. Some permanently, others for at least a month.
So anyone who had frequented these long-standing e-tailers had no access to the majority of new releases. That HAD to have impacted sales figures for at least April and May, maybe even into June and beyond.
Personally, I went from 7 years of shopping for $40-50 of e-books a month to almost nothing. I waited about 6 weeks for my usual e-tailers to get books again, and then had to acknowledge that it wasn’t going to happen. In the meantime, I discovered my local library had signed up with OverDrive and has a healthy catalog of 2009 and 2010 releases.
Since April, I’ve spent $22, vs the $200-250 I would have normally spent. I estimate I’ve read $460 worth of titles from the e-library in those 4 months alone. Based on the climbing rate of patrons waiting for titles, I’m not the only one who has made the the move from paid e-books to library e-books.