Oolite Saga on Amazon?

[drew]

Folks,

Intending to 'officially' put the Oolite Saga onto Amazon for Kindles.

A couple of wrinkles:

1. Amazon doesn't allow you to put them on for free, cheapest is £0.99 (and clearly these are not-for-profit books)
2. Amazon *will* price match against other sites however, as long as readers submit links saying the books are available for free elsewhere, hence there are already a bunch of free kindle books out there on Amazon.

So, first off...

1. Any objections from anyone? The books are all over the place/internet anyway, so a little bit of a moot point, but I'd prefer to have community backing.
2. When they appear can you lot send in emails to amazon saying effectively - "It's free over here, guv, sort it." That way I don't invalidate the whole free for all, creative commons, GNU GPL, gratis, no money changed hands love fest we've all enjoyed to date.

Cheers,

Drew.

[Disembodied]

I can't see any massive objection to it ... if you feel the need for extra cover you could always make a statement in the blurb on Amazon along the lines of "Any money received will be donated to the Ashford Dyslexia Centre" or suchlike.

[CommonSenseOTB]

Yeah, I have an objection. No ties whatsoever to money for anything oolite. Period.

My main concern is that this project is shut down over selling stuff and don't think that couldn't happen even over something as trivial as its' fiction.

No sales, please. Not even the misinterpretation possibility when it is actually free. In effect, not available on sites that sell stuff.

[Cmdr James]

Firstly, I dont have a problem with you selling the books. In fact I dont have a problem with people selling copies of oolite either, as long as they respect the license. Free as in speech not as in beer and all that. If we dont want people making money from oolite, then we should change the license to make this impossible.

I dont feel strongly either way. I personally dont see the benefit, as anyone who is a likely reader is probably a member here and can easily find the books already, but on the other hand I dont see any good reason not to offer them.

If you feel bad about it, give the money to charity, make it clear on the amazon page that this is so, and if any trouble starts take them down and apologies.

[snork]

I do have a problem with anything that adds content -> value to amazon (one of the seven roots of digital evil!) - but as it is absolutely none of my business what other people do with their creations I have no opinion on this.

[maik]

No objection whatsoever.

[Wyvern Mommy]

certainly no objection, just a thought.

amazon is in it for the money. if they can't make money off it, either directly by sales, or indirectly by customers looking for it buying other titles, they'll drop it and look for ways to get reimbursed for lost profit.
if a wider audience is your goal, why not post it to sites like fanfiction.net ?

[drew]

Let me be clear, as I don't think my meaning came across. >>> I'm not intending to 'sell' them at all, not now, not ever.

The idea is to make them available for 'free' via another channel, that's all. Given fiction is a trivial contribution to Oolite...

Please read the above again.

The problem is that, by default, Amazon sets a price between £0.99 and whatever-you-fancy. I can't put them on at £0.00 as I would like.

However. If, once they are up, people email in and say "This is free over there" and provide a link to iTunes, Smashwords, fanfaction.net or any of the other places where the books are available, Amazon will then drop the price to £0.00.

Why Amazon? Two-fold.

1. Like it or not Amazon is 60%-90% of the market for ebooks. It's the frontrunning market place for books. As for the comments on how people are finding my Oolite stories. Here are some hard stats:

Only 4% come from Oolite.org
Only 2.5% come from this forum
25% Google searches for "ebook space opera" "sci fi series free ebook"
The remaining 68.5 percent come from internet searches, sci-fi websites, fanfiction sites, iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Sony etc etc. (where they are also free)
...but not Amazon, of course. Thus 60%-90% of my potential readership can't see my books.

2. Personally, it will be jolly handy for me to have books on Amazon with my name on it.
2a. Because it stops pirates from doing it on my behalf as happened earlier this year causing me no end of grief.
2b. It would be very handy to have my name on Amazon alongside the other books I'm creating over time.

Practical objections I will sustain, as I have no wish to endanger the game or the community in anyway. However, let's not get bogged down in the pros or cons of Amazon as a channel, it's there, and I'm already using it.

However, if the community is unhappy with this, I won't do it. Period, full stop, small round dot.

Cheers,

Drew.

[DaddyHoggy]

Fine by my Drew.

Write on Commander...

(Besides, if/when "Alien Items" comes out, that means I'll have my name on Amazon too!)

[Disembodied]

There have been Oolite-related items on sale for a long time now: T-shirts, coasters, mugs and stuff were on sale on Cafepress when I joined the forum, I think, and now we can buy ship models and other cool gear from Shapeways – it's already happened, and the ooniverse didn't end.

[Cody]

No objections at all from me!

[Thargoid]

Nor from me, for what little it's worth. Especially if any profit does end up with such a worthy charity as your well known one before things do end up free.

[drew]

Fine by my Drew.

You have your own 'Drew'? Can he work on a bit of Finis for me in the next month or so?

Cheers,

Drew.

[DaddyHoggy]

Fine by my Drew.

You have your own 'Drew'? Can he work on a bit of Finis for me in the next month or so?

Cheers,

Drew.

Darn, a Freudian slip of my successful Cloning experiment...

[Gimi]

Given fiction is a trivial contribution to Oolite...

Sir, you underestimate your contribution.

Go for it, I will gladly e-mail Amazon when your books are available there.