Peter Hamilton is one of my go-to authors for Space Opera. He writes good stuff, although plenty of people argue that his deux ex machinas get a bit old.
He’s a brit and his latest book is published by MacMillan in the UK. It isn’t due to be released in the US until March, which I feel is a bit long to wait given that it was published in the UK in October. However, it turns out that MacMillan is also selling an ebook! I’m a big fan of ebooks, as my previous posts about Baen probably tell you.
I trundle my way over to their website and discover…usury. The price on the hardback is £18.99 and their price for the ebook is £18.58. A grand discount of not-a-whole-lot. What a crock!
I know there are arguments for not pricing down ebooks because there’s still all of the production that goes into the hardbacks, but I think it’s bullshit. If they’d had priced it a bit more reasonably, I’d probably have purchased the ebook and then bought the hardback, too. Now, they’ve lost a sale, and they won’t even get that money for my book purchase because that’s being handled by Del Rey in the US.
MacMillan, you lose, but you’ve successfully made me withstand an impulse purchase. Thank you.
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