For anyone who had the same reaction I did, “I’ve been downloading tons of Catholic stuff for free” check this out from A&M’s site:Aqunias and More just announced their E-book store.
full disclosure: When Ian says we proofed all links, I was the “coder” and first proof of *all *links
I’m sure that you’ve seen these titles available for free on Borders or Google so why would we bother releasing our own versions for $3.99?
Typically, there are two versions of these titles available – a pdf and sometimes an epub file. The pdf files are scans of old books so you lose a bunch of features right off the bat:
- no hyperlinked table of contents
- no hyperlinked footnotes
- no text resizing
- no note taking within the text
- you are also completely at the mercy of the quality of the original type and the quality of the scan
You will spend a good deal of time sifting through books where “r’s” are now “n’s” and “i’s” are “l’s” and all kinds of other strange errors.
That is certainly worth four bucks. And no I don’t work for the company, I’ve just been reading un-cleaned up PDF scans.Aquinas and More Catholic Classics have been converted by hand and proofed so that you can actually enjoy reading the book. We have also been diligent about making sure that all chapters and footnotes are properly linked so you can enjoy these great works just as you would a NYT bestseller on which you spent twice or three times as much.
They’re coming down in price: Amazon is heavily incentivizing a $3-$10 price point, Aquinas and More so far $4 for this line, some others (David Armstrong) at a similar point.E-books are still very expensive. For example, why should “Catholicism and Fundamentalism” be $16.95? I can get the print copy cheaper. I mean without the actual printing costs and the ease of duplicating shouldn’t it be cheaper than the hard copy?
You might want to check again. Both Barnes & Noble and Amazon offer that book for $9.99.E-books are still very expensive. For example, why should “Catholicism and Fundamentalism” be $16.95? I can get the print copy cheaper. I mean without the actual printing costs and the ease of duplicating shouldn’t it be cheaper than the hard copy?
That’s an interesting point & one I’ve thought about. Most of my books were bought used & I owned a used bookstore years ago. With digital media we buy but don’t really own it – we can only lend at the seller’s whim and we can’t resell or give away what we’ve bought.Yes, but I could get the same book used on Amazon for 4 bucks
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0898701775/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1281282543&sr=8-1&condition=used
The problem with digital media is that it never reaches a “used” status which would allow the owner of the purchased copy to sell it. Digital media is always regular price.