Saturday, March 20, 2010

Matador Novels as eBooks


Now and again, I get inquiries from fans who want to know how come Ace hasn't made the Matador novels available as eBooks. (They have, partially -- at least the most recent title, The Musashi Flex, is available for the Kindle from Amazon.)

As to the other titles, I dunno why, and I expect it's because they don't think they can make any money from them. (As it happens, I have several of those as PDF's, courtesy a book pirate, but I can't sell them, either.)

Um. Anyway, if you are somebody looking for electronic versions of these and wonder why they aren't available, ask them:



6 comments:

Dan Gambiera said...

That's something I just don't understand. If there's already a print version of the book the marginal cost of producing an ebook is just about zero. You don't have to have *shudder* mediocre selling books next to your blockbusters in the warehouse. You don't have to ship. You don't have to print. You don't have to pulp. You don't have to do extra advertising.

Of course, publishers do lots of insane things.

jks9199 said...

Publishers don't seem to be very good at recognizing and adapting to shifts in markets... And I don't think they really recognize e-books as a valid market yet.

I don't particularly blame them, either, because the e-readers are just reaching a reasonable design now.

Christopher Wayne said...

I just sent an email requesting your books be 'e-booked' and they are treating it as a "We have created an incident for you at our online Customer Service Support Site."

Gee, does that mean I am going to get a visit by a guy in grey jumpsuit and a spetsdod "The Penguin has heard what you say, be his friend..."

Jordan said...

For what it's worth, I got the same "ticket" request as Cristopher, but I did eventually get a slightly more specific answer.

They essentially said, "we're working on making all our stuff ebooks, no estimates on time, k thx bye".

Christopher Wayne said...

I got that too. I don't understand, once it is edited and put into PDF, it is a low overhead cost.

Chester said...

Actually, I was just recently (when I was re-reading them last month)thinking to my self how nice a collectors volume of all of the matador novels would be. I suppose getting E-book versions would work. Tho there is something nice about hard copy. It would be nice to see them reintroduced. Or made into a series. But who would play Sleel?