Some random thoughts

Why do most fiction authors fall into the first half of the alphabet? Or, to be precise, in A-M?

I've worked in books for eight years and as long as I can remember, three quarters of the fiction shelves in each workplace have been taken up by A-M, with N-Z squashed into the final quarter and dominated by Jodi Picoult and Wilbur Smith.

Is there some natural law which makes people with surnames beginning with A-M more talented? Do authors choose pseudonyms in the first half of the alphabet so that they will appear earlier in catalogues? Are there simply more surnames overall which begin with A-M? Or do book buyers scroll through lists of possible purchases starting at A and run out of money at N?

The biography section is evenly divided between A-L and M-Z. Every fiction section (general fiction, classics, speculative fiction) is skewed. I'd like to know why.


In other thoughts, now that I've decided to get myself a e-reader for study purposes I'm a bit frustrated to find that many of the text books I need are more expensive in e-book form than they are in paperback. It would be handy to carry all my text books around with me, but am I really willing to shell out an extra $20 per book?

I understand that the cost of producting e-books is nowhere near as low as most consumers estimate. Scott Westerfeld in his blog about Macmillan vs. Amazon explains:

"All discussions of this event will draw commenters who think they magically know how books should be priced, and who say there is no reason for electronic editions to be more than $9.99. A quick note to them: You don’t know what you’re talking about. Seriously, your back-of-the-envelope calculations are crap. The printing costs of a book are generally between 3% and 10% of list price. So in most cases, 10% should be your “first-printing” e-book discount, not 50%. That may seem weird to you, but that’s because all the cheap stuff on the internet is backlist (like Baen Books), subsidized/coerced (like Amazon), self-published (no editing or marketing costs), or promotional (like when I gave Uglies away for free). Yes, the “long tail” of backlist books may become very cheap, or free, but not the new stuff, which is what this discussion is all about."

But still. I don't want to pay more for an e-book. I'm a reluctant convert. I'm still getting used to the idea of having e-books.

Here's a bright idea: why don't publishers of text books offer hard-copy/e-book bundles? At, say, $10 more than the paperback price? Now that I'd be willing to pay for. I could highlight to my heart's content and carry around a light, easy reference tool.