Has finally been presented LektuThe new ebook sales platform without DRM. From the beginning I liked the initiative, I think a project like this was needed and I hope it will be a success. I have loved seeing editorial boards of which I am a client and many others that I follow closely.
In general terms and taking into account that they have just started and that they have a long way to go, the impressions are good. They deliver what they promised, ebooks without DRM, affordable prices and a very easy-to-use platform for users. Nothing to be deciphering how to buy, processes and simple and clear interface. At the moment almost all publishers are focused on Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror as expected, but surely over time it will diversify.
Platform
The book tabs are also very nice, easy to read and focused on offering relevant information to the user.
I miss the possibility of vote the books, even of leave comments and also a filter by price and that they give us the possibility to find the ebooks that you have for free in a simple way. But it is nothing crucial.
If you look to the right, the tabs are complemented with previews of the book, with the cover in high quality, and with a series of external links in which I have found a bit of everything from official pages, to blog reviews, or the tab on Goodreads. I have even seen links to other platforms and this I do not think will benefit them much.
One of the surprises that I have taken is the possibility of automatically send our purchases (if it is in mobi format) directly to our Kindle. For this, we only have to associate our device in 2 steps.
Let's go to My account> My devices and we add our associated email from the Kindle on Amazon. Then we go to Amazon> Manage My Kindle> Personal Document Settings we add @ lektu.com in List of email addresses authorized to send personal documents
A very interesting option that publishers should take note of 😉
The project
At a general level, 2 things concern me:
The first that has very little catalog. It was born with only 200 books, I see little of it for an initiative of these characteristics but with time it will surely be solved.
The second, the lack of news. Will editorial news or only catalog collections be published in Lektu? Valdemar, I suppose he will join shortly because they have confirmed it on twitter, it seems that he has no idea to upload his news. Check out the tweet from Emilio Bueso
Loud and clear: @ed_valdemar it will not release news in digital. TO @lektu the books of the publishing fund will go, not the news.
- Emilio Bueso (@e_bueso) April 8, 2014
A shame for his followers. If in Lektu we do not see news, only a catalog fund, even though it is an interesting project, can be quite decaffeinated, it will lack the spark to be a total success.
My little disappointment has been Gigamesh's "little involvement". The volumes of Game of Thrones are great (which by the way at € 6 is only the first, not all ¬ ¬) but they do not have any more books. I guess it's a matter of time, but I expected a lot more from you at launch.
He was convinced that Gigamesh was going to be a major player in the project, creating both catalog and traffic volume and serving as a hook and pull for smaller publishers.
We will follow Lektu very closely. I look forward to many improvements and news.
Hello, although for now we only have for sale in Lektu the 5 e-books of / A Song of Ice and Fire /, our intention is to upload shortly / Born of a man and a woman, and other creepy stories /, by Richard Matheson, / The first book of Lankhmar, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser /, of Leiber and Exegesis, of Alejo Cuervo. Like the Lektu platform, we still have a lot to do (and many surprises). Greetings.
- FROM
Great, I'll wait for you impatiently 🙂
Thank you very much for the information
I liked the article. I share the same impressions, although I had not seen Valdemar's twit. That bad! With what the publisher is cool.
Well, we will have to wait. I believe that the catalog issue will be solved. The rest is very good and having the publishers that I follow together is cool. Too bad about Valdemar 🙁
The ebook (at the price at which it is in demand and when it is not an international best-seller) barely leaves margins for publishers to guarantee that the outlay involved in contracting the works is covered, either due to the costs of the translation. , for those of the royalty advance, for which it has the distribution and promotion positioning ...
This panorama is causing the file to be seen as a low cost format by almost all levels of the industry. Right now there are many labels that find it only profitable for balances and liquidations.
So it is not to be expected that there are many novelties present in the digital market. The reality today is that almost all the large publishers that bet on the e-book in the first instance, and not in the term, are the ones that are bound by the legal commitments they acquire with the main electronic commerce operators.
And it is that almost nobody is willing to pay much more than € 5 for a file. Many readers have been sold, yes, but that is not causing the number of people who buy files to skyrocket, in many segments the trend seems to go just the other way around.
And you will tell me how you can pay, either after three months or in advance, the costs of a title that has a market of 5000 potential readers ... if the margin left by a certain format does not cover the costs of the launch. It's that easy.
Hi Emilio,
it is clear that to do everything that we ask readers, the accounts have to go out. If there is no business, no one is going to make a move.
It seems to me that the first immersion of the ebook in Spain started on the wrong foot, with books with very low quality, DRM and the same price as a physical book and it seems to me that this created a lot of reluctance in the readers and has ended in the current situation .
DRM is unbearable and worthless, it only punishes the buyer, because whoever wants to hack removes it in a minute. So they don't really fix anything.
And what is the price that an ebook should have? Or better what is the cost of an ebook from which you can set the price? A difficult question. But it is clear that there are many book creation processes that are going to be shared in the physical format and in the ebook.
In small publishers I see it easier to get performance. In the big ones I hope they review processes and can find a way to earn money and offer us more quality and lower prices.
It seems that the resistance limit is at € 5 but an approximation of € 10 would be good to start with, what I do not see clear are ebooks at € 15 and € 20.
All the best