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My first (and likely last) e-book experience - "The Google Legacy"

Everyone remembers their first time (buying an e-book).  I surely will.  I was really jazzed about the release of Stephen E. Arnold's "The Google Legacy - How Google's Internet Search is Transforming Application Software", available exclusively as an e-book, a concept I've never been big on.  Until now...what the hell, right?  Rather apropos that I'd purchase a PDF'ed manuscript about an open-source company wanting to move everything from the desktop to the Internet.

I naively thought such would run me about $10 at most....I'd until I saw the site.  $180?!?!?  Someone tell me this is in error, or that I missed the placement of a decimal point. 

I've read the sample chapter profiling Google's technology, and it's brilliantly researched, beautifully written and thought-provoking, but not worth a price that's more expensive than a 4GB iPod Mini.  WebWord says the price is justified, but I disagree...no single-volume, 290-page book (seeing as how it's marketed as such, not to be confused as some government-level formal report or whitepaper) is worth that much.  I'd still really like to own this work, but not at that price.

In lieu of a more formal reason why, I don't hold author Arnold solely responsible - I look to Infonortics, who publishes the work.  Surely there can be a more cost-effective way of releasing the book.  Heck, Manning is leveraging being drowned by the e-book tidal wave by creating its Manning Early Access Program, releasing single chapters sequentially to members as a forthcoming title is being published.  I'm reading "Ajax in Action" this way, and it's very neat.  And effective: I'll surely still buy the hard copy.

What gives?

Posted: Sep 23 2005, 12:19 PM by guam-aspdev | with 4 comment(s)
Filed under: ,

Comments

bilbo said:

lol! I was thinking the same thing. I'll wait for the hard copy. Even the academic paper that Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page wrote defining Google is freely available and this guy wants $180?

http://www-db.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html
# September 23, 2005 11:45 AM

mike said:

Not exactly an apples-applies comparison, of course, but as you probably know, you can get 80 years' worth of New Yorkers -- a weekly magazine, so do the math -- for $100 on DVD. And heck, the OED, the most comprehensive dictionary ever published (150 years in the making!) is only $295.

But the market will determine the value of the book. If it's too pricey, people won't buy it ...
# September 23, 2005 7:13 PM

bart said:

I was thinking the same too...


At 50 bucks i would have buy it....but 180$ is fucking too expensive !!

I will wait for a torrent !
# September 25, 2005 11:45 PM

toby said:

The book is priced out of your league on purpose. If you had read the page:

"Written for business readers, especially senior executives of mid to large-sized, knowledge-based corporations..."

This means its an executive brief. Here's how these things go: an executive sees this, wants it, expenses it, has someone else read it and then report on what it said. The book is targeted at people who are either spending someone else's money or have so much that it doesn't matter.

Actually, this is a pretty good price for something like this. Publications of this nature are usually more expensive. You should be thankful that they are not better known or you would be totally priced out of even hearing about it (Gartner) ;-)
# September 27, 2005 5:26 PM
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