You’ll find it at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/13261/

I’d love to know if you use it, hate it, love it, whatever!

The upside-down-ternet

Waterstone’s recently started promoting thier own eReader product as well, and I was sorely tempted. But in the end I walked away.

So how could I possibly not want eBooks?

It’s quite simple really. As an example, Waterstone’s are selling the new release, hardcover printed copy of Lee Child’s latest thriller for £9.59. This is a thick, heavy book. Trees were cut down to make it. It had to be printed, glued, bound, primped & preened, have glossy colour covers made up, transported from the printer to the distributors to the wholesalers to the central-purchase stores and eventually to the retail outlets, who need to find bulk-space to store it and shelf-space to display it, and lights and water and toilets and staff and and and… the list is endless. All of these things cost money. Fair enough. Just under a tenner for a new-release hardcover isn’t bad value, all things considered.

Now, the electronic version of the same book is £12.99. Selling and distributing the eBook carries NONE of the costs described above. Sure, there are some costs, such as getting the damn thing written in the first place, proofing, editing, and so on. But those are already incurred for the paper version. There’s the trivial cost of hosting the eBook, granted. Pennies per month, if anything. Other than that, every single copy sold is basically free money. Whether they sell one copy or one million copies, the cost of supply and distribution is static.

Why charge £3.40 more for the version that’s obviously a lot cheaper, Waterstone’s?

For purely common-sense economic reasons as outlined above, eBooks should be significantly cheaper than printed copies.

For environmental reasons, they should be significantly cheaper – if we use less paper, we kill less trees.

For convenience reasons, they should be cheaper! eBooks are understandbly DRM-protected, meaning that once I’ve bought a book, it can only be read on my reader. My wife and I have similar tastes in reading material, and I’ll often pass my latest book on to her once I’m finished with it. eBooks make this difficult – I’d have to pass over my eReader as well. As I said, this is understandable. But it’s a pain in the arse. I could put up with that pain if the electronic version was a lot cheaper than the paper one.

Waterstone’s will doubtless claim it’s not their fault, they are at the mercy of thier supplies who dictate pricing policies. Sorry, guys, that’s not acceptable. You are HUGE in the UK literary market, big enough to dictate terms to THEM. If you want people to buy your eBooks (and eReaders), take a firm stand and correct this ridiculous policy right away.

And please note: I’m not specifically picking on Waterstone’s. I don’t hate them. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m sure other retailers have similarly stupid policies. Also: this is not a hand-picked example I went searching out to emphasise the problem, it’s a book I’m genuinely interested in.

References:
61 Hours – Hardcover
61 Hours – eBook

A regular user pointed out last night that the online password generator at http://pwd.pembi.net wasn’t working any more. Turns out my host’s SSL had been broken. Now repaired and back in business.

As always, absolutely free to use as you please.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This version includes functional Options at last – you can now switch the “Follow Me” feature off if you want to, and I’ve added a “Hide Password” toggle so that not only do you never need to type your passwords in, they’re not even shown on the screen any more.

Be aware that there is a bug with the way new “experimental” add-ons are handled on the add-ons site, and they show a “invalid file hash” error when installing unless you first log in to the add-ons site. This is NOT a fault with the add-on itself, regardless of what the message says.