What You’ve Been Missing On Twitter

There isn’t a Twitter account specifically for this blog. The mikecane account is my all-Mike Cane channel. Which means interspersed with eBook items you’ll encounter tweets about the current corrupt monetary system, the general insanity of bestial humankind, and the rare TV show I’ve watched. I tried having one distinct Twitter account for a blog before and keeping track of what got posted where was driving me mad(der).

Also, I have Twitter Guidelines.

I highlighted one tweet up there. You do the rest of the math on that one for now.

The final tweet inspired(?) an excellent post by Alan Pritt that all of you should go read right now: STFU and Do It

The Coming Collapse Of eBook Prices

I doubt he read my post — Would A US$50 eBook Reader Be A Disaster? — which preceded his by over a week, but he comes to the same conclusion I did.

The price is right?

As I hovered over the buy now button [for the new Nick Cave digital book of The Death of Bunny Munro], I realised that what was stopping me was the price. $29.99 (in Australia). Now, I just dropped $38 in Borders for a paperback for my mum last weekend, so that price is in line with what Aussies pay for printed books. But I had also just bough Gangstar, a Grand Theft Auto clone for my iphone a few days previously. That game has already given me hours of (frustrating!) gameplay for the princely sum of $8.99. Not long ago I would have happily paid $50 for a Nintendo DS game, but my value expectation has been totally re-calibrated by the app store.

And then there’s this. Apple’s itunes LP format, introduced last week seems to open up a different approach to multimedia publishing. Whilst not an iphone app, Tyrese Gibson has released a itunes LP comic book which combines a graphic novel, multimedia elements and music. All for $1.99.

So it’s pretty clear that the there is a different pricing model at work in the itunes space – in fact most online spaces. In that realm, $30 for almost anything seems way out of sync – even if it’s a relative bargain in the printed book world.

Bold emphasis added by me.

What distresses me here is that Nick Cave’s work is not an eBook — it’s a digital book. It’s nine-hundred megabytes of material. And it includes an RSS component that will keep Cave fans in touch with news about him.

If he is unwilling to pay for all that — what does he think the comparable price of a lightly tarted-up text file (aka ePub) should be?

And what about everyone else now too?

Previously here:

Writer Nick Cave At NYC Barnes & Noble
How The Axis Of E Is Killing Publishing
The Continuing Horror Of ePub
Would A US$50 eBook Reader Be A Disaster?
The Devaluation Of The eBook
ePub: The Death Of The Index?
The eBook Cover Scandal
He Understands Something Is Missing
Where I Stand Now
The Axis Of E Book Holocaust
English-Subtitled Editis Smart Digital Book Video
The Issue Of eBook Pricing
Why eInk, ePub, And eBooks Will Fail
Dumb eBooks Must Die, Smart eBooks Must Live
ALL eInk Devices: BAD For eBooks!