Look for the paperback version of the title to be released a week or two ahead of the ebook release, as I will publish that version once I hear back from my beta readers. I'm always eager I to get my hands on the paper copies of my book so that I can send off to my beta readers. Hey, if I didn't buy them, no one would.
Speaking of Amazon's audiobooks - they have introduced a Beta program where they are offering to convert ebooks to audiobooks, I assume for free, since no price is quoted. However, to qualify, the ebook must have a table of contents, which I've not included in my ebooks. I see no useful purpose of a table of contents in an ebook of fiction as they always open where you left off, and searching back is a pain table of contents or not. I am, however, looking to add a table of contents, and this title will likely be the test bed for that. If it works, look for my audiobooks on Audible in the near future.
In the past Amazon has price match most of my free books in the US store, but starting this year, only two of my books are free on Amazon. Last year, with the release of The Girl on the Kerb, I launched it at $3.99 on Amazon and Amazon, all on its own, dropped its price to free a week after release. Amazon is a mystery box, so if you are an Amazon customer, you can wait to see what they do this time. As I have long said, I'm not publishing books to make money, but to entertain readers, so free is my preferred price.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI LIKE it if a book has a table of content. I take my time to read a book, looking up things I should know but which are not (more) clear for me, so I mark names, countries and towns, going back and forth, searching the action I remember having read, looking up places etc. in Google, afterwards searching which is the last page I have arrived to read or which chapter I would like to re-read after I have gathered additional information.
Furthermore, I sometimes read several books. My eyesight has become weak so I almost never do read printed books or user manuals, but I depend on the ebook reader (or my PC monitor, of course) for everything because I can chose a large font and because the text is not yellowed, but is bright and has a high contrast.
At this moment I am reading one SF novel with high concentration, and for a limited time each day continue reading "The Song of the Nibelungs", an epic poem in Middle High German, and to the verse-by-verse translation into Modern High German, if I do not fully understand the action. Some days ago I had detected some PDF's of A.E. van Vogt, one of my (many) favourite authors, and looked into them to check if Calibre did translate them correctly into .epubs. Sometimes I might look into the translation of a PDF user manual of some software like the "bluefish manual", too.
Furthermore, it is nice to be able to look into a table of content to find out what is the story and how long it would be. If I post a review (which has become seldom enough), I at least mention if there is a meaningful TOC or if it is only "chapter 1, chapter 2, ...".
I am convinced there are more readers who highly appreciate a meaningful TOC!
Kind regards,
Hannes from Germany :) .
Thanks for your thoughts, Hannes. A table of contents for non-fiction is necessary. But for reading a novel, I'm not convinced that it would help find something much more easily in an ebook, since you can reduce the page to a smaller one and scroll back through it to find the right place easily enough. And I really don't like spoilers, so to the extent that chapters with titles give away the story, I'm not for them. We'll see if anyone else has an opinion on way or another on this subject.
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