Thoughts on Some News: Tor VS Libraries, and the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Relationship · 12:01am Aug 4th, 2018
Hey there, readers. I hope you’re having a good weekend! Mine is looking up. I’ve got some writing to do today (when do I not, right?), but before I dove into it, I really wanted to get a quick post up on some recent news items that have hit recently.
The first one is Tor’s (sorta stealthy) announcement that they will no longer be allowing Libraries to purchase ebook copies of their books following the first four months after release. You can read one of the first breaks about this happening here, but the gist of it is that Tor is no longer allowing libraries to purchase ebook copies of their lexicon for the first four month of a books release, their stated reasoning being that these library copies are cutting into Tor’s profits, and so they’re seeking to mitigate this. According to some, this it Tor ‘thinking about the authors’ and acting in their best interest.
Bull. This is Tor being, well, Tor. As some of you might know, I haven’t bought a Tor book in years. I actually boycotted them after the last book I purchased from them, an ebook titled Silentium, tried a different underhanded scheme, this one being cutting the last chapter of the book from the ebook copy and making it a “physical copy only bonus chapter.” If you wanted to read the end of the book, you had to either buy the hardcover or wait for the paperback!
This move? It’s that kind of thing again. Someone over at Tor seems to have a serious dislike of ebooks and those that read them, with this latest marketing tactic being their newest move to drive people away from them.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s going to happen the way they think it is.
But let’s step back for a moment. I mean, could Tor’s assertion have any real weight? Personally, I don’t really think so. It sounds more like an excuse to try and scrabble for cast than any sort of decision with real weight behind it.
For that second bit of news, I bet the (relative) lack of romantic subplots has something to do with it. (Since a lot of peoples' unrealistic and crazy expectations of what relationships will be like are based on bad romance stories. "If he really loved me, he'd already know what was wrong." ... because the characters in those books never need to be told what their partners want.)
Huh. I'd seen that story pop up in my news feed, but failed to check it out earlier.
My guess re. Tor is that they're thinking more of piracy. Ebooks lead to piracy; they'd like those first few months when trufans are rushing to get a book to be free of DRM-stripped ebooks on Pirate Bay.
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Yeah, but they're not blocking regular ebook sales. Just library ebook sales.
Unless they think libraries are piracy.
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I don't know why, then. I don't think it's evil, though.