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Laurels Be Damned

There’s certain things that make you feel good, like being solicited for your opinion on the year in comics by Heidi Mac or having The Spurge say something nice about something you wrote. No resting on laurels, though — got to keep moving forward.

  • If I were interested in saving significant figures for some other purpose, I’d point out that 1.95 is practically 2.0, and therefore 1.95 million is almost exactly the same as 2.0 million. Which, if expressed in US dollars, is the amount raised by Child’s Play 2011 to date, making the US$2 million threshold pretty much a mathematical certainty. Heck, a full US$351,000 was raised on Monday night alone via the annual charity dinner/auction; there’s still some distance to go to continue the Child’s Play tradition of raising more every year, and since 2010 brought in US$2.29 million, I’m thinking that US$2.5 million makes for a nice, round number to shoot for. There’s still two weeks to go, so get to it.
  • Lot of talk about comics going day-and-date with electronic publishing, but from what I gather the big publishers aren’t doing much to get their enormous back catalogs (especially out-of-print material) into the Kindles and Nooks of the world, or at least not at a realistic price point. Enter Howard Tayler, who’s put the first four Schlock Mercenary books into e-form. Further, it seems he’s wrangled a deal where he doesn’t have to host the transfers, as they’re being sold through the Baen e-books storefront (cf: our discussion yesterday about deciding what it’s better to get somebody else to do, without giving up ownership).

    I’m sure you’ve seen the same analyses of digital pricing I have, how publishers are leaving money on the table by not providing a compelling economic reason to go digital, and it seems that Tayler read them too. The first two SM volumes cost US$25 each in print, and vols 3 & 4 US$15 each or US$20 for the pair. E-version costs:

    • Volume 1: US$16
    • Volume 2: US$16
    • Volume 3: US$9
    • Volume 4: US$9
    • Four book bundle: US$45

    That’s a discount of 36% to 40% for single books or the four book bundle (the already-discounted two-book deal “only” gets a 10% further discount in digital). That’s how you do it.

  • You guys remember when I teased you that there was something potentially very cool on the horizon that I’d been invited to participate in? Look, just pretend you remember, it was only two weeks ago. In any event, said PVCT is now definitely happening (barring unfortunate world-ending disasters or me walking in front of a bus). That’ll have to do on details until the middle of February or so.
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