Saturday, May 29, 2010

Penguin Publishing's hostility to e-book readers

Now that Amazon and Penguin have "settled," what is is they have settled for? Penguin is pricing some e-books way too high for most of us to buy them. For instance, the 3-year old Ken Follett book, World without End is $17.99. I am certainly glad that I bought the Kindle edition when it was $9.99. Two of Ayn Rand's books, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are $27.99 for the e-book, not that I want to read Ayn Rand anyway, but many do.

Tom Weldon, deputy chief executive of Penguin, said in the Financial Times: “The only way to fight piracy is to publish digital content across as many formats as possible, through as many channels, at a fair price. If we go for exclusive or proprietary formats, we’re completely screwed.”

So, Tom, what's up with that fair price in regard to the above books? Is this what we can expect in the future from Penguin? If so, it is pretty evident that Penguin does not want e-book readers, or plan to have fair e-book prices, but rather is trying to force us to buy their books in paper. I will buy no Penguin books in paper and only as e-books if the prices are reasonable. I do have an excellent public library from which I can borrow these books, if I need to. I've already put in a pre-reservation at the library for Fall of Giants, the first book in Ken Follett's new series, due out September 28th and unfortunately published by Penguin. I do want to read this as an e-book and hope that the price will be reasonable enough for me to do so, but in the meantime am hedging my bets.


Thursday, May 20, 2010

Penguin is worried about piracy. What?

From a Financial Times article published on May 20, 2010:

Tom Weldon, deputy chief executive of Penguin (part of Pearson, which owns the Financial Times), said: “The only way to fight piracy is to publish digital content across as many formats as possible, through as many channels, at a fair price. If we go for exclusive or proprietary formats, we’re completely screwed.”

So then what is the hang-up between Penguin and Amazon? Does it occur to Penguin that people might be pirating Penguin books which are currently not available on their Kindles, like John Sandford's Storm Prey?

Click here for the full article. You need to be registered with them to read it. Sorry about that.