A Word on new Valancourt Kindle Editions
Greetings, all!
Recently I bought Ryan a Kindle for his birthday, and to keep me from playing with his, he bought me one. We enjoy them, and, while I hope they’ll never replace real books, they definitely have their uses. If you need instant access for a particular text and don’t have a week to wait to have the book shipped to you, or if you’re stuck in a hotel or airport miles away from a decent bookstore and need something to read, or if you’re like us and have a tiny house and not nearly enough room for every book you might want to read….the list goes on and on.
So, while we’ll never stop printing real, honest-to-goodness, hold them in your hands, read them in the bathtub, display them on your shelf-type books, we’re going to start making most of our books available on Kindle. Almost all books will cost $9.99 each, a substantial discount, especially for some of the hardcover titles that retail normally at $50-$60 each. Thus, in addition to providing instant gratification for those who can’t wait to get their hands on one of our titles, this new project will help make these books even more accessible to everyone, including those whose budgets may not allow them to purchase some of our more expensive titles.
But, with the Kindle editions comes a trade-off. Publishing on the Kindle is an absolute nightmare, as each book has to be individually coded in HTML using special proprietary formatting required by Amazon, which is difficult and time-consuming. This is particularly true with regard to formatting of footnotes, endnotes, illustrations, and the like. Therefore, most of our Kindle books will feature only the unabridged first edition text of the novel, specially formatted to be optimally viewed on the Kindle; most will not include introductions, notes, or other materials. For those who are interested in the bonus goodies that come in most of our titles, they will still need to refer to the old-fashioned books.
Today we published Eleanor Sleath’s Pyrenean Banditti and Eaton Stannard Barrett’s The Heroine for Kindle. Check them out, and let us know what you think!
May 27, 2011 at 10:34 am
Please consider publishing your books as epubs. I know it’s a different format, but if you publish via Smashwords (smashwords.com). You can upload a Word document and they will do the formatting for you, and distribute to all the non-Amazon retailers who sell epubs.
I have purchased many of your books in hard copy but I really have grown to love ebooks for the convenience and the lack of having to dust/store them. However, I have a Nook Color, which I love, and no desire to purchase a Kindle. I would repurchase all the Northanger Horrid Novels as epubs if I could!