I am an active follower of a lot of blogs, but very few discussion groups. For me, I often find that the discussion groups are too general with high volume (Dorothy-L), or too technical (some web-focused ones), or too narrowly focused (single app approaches, for example). I do however follow the “Murder Must Advertise” discussion group regularly as it seems the right mix of volume, topics, and valuable content. This past week, one of the hot topics has been Amazon allowing readers to return e-books for refund, and it got me looking at it a bit more broadly.
Not surprisingly, the people who are in favour of allowing returns are mainly readers, those against are mainly writers. Those in favour argue that of course returns should be allowed, since sometimes you buy the book with high hopes and confidence and it turns out that the thing is a steaming pile of armadillo dung. This happens despite reading previews, other reader’s reviews, etc. Those against allowing returns tend to follow one of four threads of thought:
- E-books don’t cost a lot of money, and for those less than $2.99 on Amazon, we’re talking extremely small profit margins. So authors aren’t getting rich here.