I love my Kindle, without a doubt it is the best gadget I own, having a massive library crammed onto a handheld computer which I can access at any point is excellent. However the only problem I have with it is the prices of books for the Kindle.
When the Kindle first came out there was a lot of speculation on whether or not the prices of books would be cheaper if you downloaded them in digital form instead of purchasing a hard copy. So when it was released and there was a plethora of free or dirt cheap titles for the gadget those of us who purchased it rejoiced, for ours was the green choice and the cheaper choice to give us our literary fix. It wasn't long before it became obvious that this was something that was going to be short lived as publishing houses began panicking about their profits and so, soon, we ended up seeing books going for more in the Kindle store than they were brand new, in paperback, on the normal Amazon store. Now you are probably asking yourself 'Why is Xtofer talking about this? It has nothing to do with Theatre.' You would be correct, well- in a way you are, but one of my most regular columns in the earlier days of this blog was to review upcoming books and in wanting to revive that column I decided to have a look at upcoming Kindle titles too. What I saw shocked me for amongst the standard actor biography fayre I also found a couple of titles which irked me. One was a collection of Restoration comedies and the other was 'Grief Lessons: Four plays by Euripides.'
Knock Knock!
Who's there?
Euripides
Euripides who?
Euripides trousers you mend a these trousers....
Ha, ha, ha... no you're right its not funny and neither is charging £6.83 for a collection of plays you could probably get off the internet FOR FREE from a website such as this... click here for works by Euripides.
My problem with this is that the £6.83 is actually the discounted price, its Digital Print price is actually £9.54. What is this for? Euripides' work is in the public domain, even if the publishing company that is publishing this book purchased the rights from Euripides himself they must have made more in the past 2000 years than the paltry amount they would have paid him. I understand that there is VAT on the title, ok fine, but what am I paying for if I am going for the digital copy? The two extra essays in the book? Yet the paperback is available new for £3.14, so its cheaper to use a chunk of tree, shipping, storage and all the other costs involved with a physical product than to send a digital copy. It makes no sense at all.
I am sure that the poet Anne Carson is wonderful with her translation and use of verse to get Euripides' work across. I am positive that for people studying Euripides the paperback version with the two essays will be handy but for me the cost of the digital copy annoys me. My advice to anyone looking for classics on Kindle, do not buy them and always check this site here which has over 36000 titles available for free.
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