It's been a nice summer off, and now that it's after Labor Day, I suppose I must get back to the grind. I didn't really take much time off from work (though I did go to a writer's retreat, which I will post about a little bit later), but I did take some time off from school, you know, since I graduated and all. But I'm taking one final (unrequired, but in my estimation, fully necessary) course this fall: Teaching Writing. We meet on Saturday mornings, which means no more sleeping in on Saturday mornings, and Friday nights filled with homework, rather than drunken revelry and sleeping until noon.
Back in the spring, I posted about the jacked-up price of J.K. Rowling's first adult novel. In case you didn't know, the price of the ebook version is seriously jacked up as well ($18!!!), and for some very interesting reasons. And I especially feel bad for the people that paid $18 for a faulty ebook. Oh, well -- if you don't want to pay that much, the price will drop in a few months, or you might be able to find yourself a pirated copy.
Nice move taking advantage of the circumstance of timing, Hachette (could you have selected the release date any better?), but it also strikes me as a desperate move. Would Hachette really have done this if the publishing industry wasn't foundering? Because it feels to me like Hachette and Rowling are price gouging here - I wonder if Hachette is counting on sales of Rowling's book to keep them afloat? I don't know anything about Hachette's finances, but their other behavior (like price-gouging libraries on backlisted books and attempting "to dictate terms to its rivals on the use of anti-customer technology") seems to indicate that they're not doing to hot, or at least they're worried. Maybe their new CEO will do a better job.
