Bookish Ramblings part 20: Why I can never part with my Kindle

For those of you who have recently joined me you won't know that I had a bit of a renaissance with print books last year.  I had spent pretty much most of 2 years reading solidly indie titles on my kindle.  Since then I have pretty much left my kindle to gather dust in favour of print.

Recently though I have started to miss my old Kindle, not so much because of the reading experience it gives me as a device, (as I don't think I can move away from print entirely again now) but because of the world of books available to me on it.   My love of Indie writing hasn't gone away and e-readers remain the number one device to read Indie on. 

Why is this?  Digital is a cheaper medium, new authors can put out their work for 99p or even for free which is attractive to readers.  Readers are more likely to take a chance on a new to them author if they don't have to part with a lot of cash - I could go on about this, but it's not the point of this post.   In all honesty, digital is the indie playground and traditional publishers can't touch it.  Indies control their costs and can amend their pricing to reflect what they want, indies can pitch their book at 2.99 and still be competitive against their traditional counterparts.  Indies are also the lifeblood of Kindle Unlimited, I subscribe from time to time and it's basically an indie all you can read buffet. If you're after a traditionally published ebook on there though, you're likely out of luck. I'm not sure why this is.  Traditional publishers also just can't get the pricing right.  For instance at the moment you can by Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone for £5.99 for ebook but at £4 for print - which would you choose?  On the flip side the first book in my favourite indie paranormal series is £1.49 on kindle, but £11.23 for print - see what I mean?

Sadly the print on demand business model for indie published print books just can't be competitive.  They don't benefit from huge print runs to bring the cost down so as a reader you are paying for every single printed page.  For most standard sized books there isn't too great an increase (maybe £1 or £2) on what you would pay at a rrp retailer such as Waterstones, but for your 600 pagers it's likely to end up costing you more that a traditionally published hardback.  It's this business model that needs to be reformed, I would love to purchase more indie published print books (the ones I have, I have managed to get at signings or have been lucky enough to win) but sometimes the print cost on bigger books makes it a hard sell.  I would love to petition amazon about this, after all if they are printed via their own createspace service they get a portion of the profit.  Surely it's in their interests to make indie print books a bit cheaper? Print has seen a huge upsurge especially when you factor in the huge bookstagram community.  But it's likely that they wouldn't even give me a response.

So as long as I love indie I will also love my kindle.  It is accessible and allows those who may not want to be traditionally published to have a voice.  I have discovered some amazing authors and made some great friends through the indie world and all because of one little device <3