* Posts by James Livingston

2 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Oct 2008

Sci-fi and fantasy authors wade into Amazon spat

James Livingston

Trust neither

> Commission/advance, Editing, Proof-reading and art

Those make up a sizable chunk of the costs of a paper book. From what I 've read on various author's comments, it's around 60-75% for most books (excluding the insanely popular ones on one end, and specialty stuff on the other).

For anyone who suggests that authors could do it themselves and go straight to Amazon, go read comments by professional writers. For the most part they don't want to do it themselves and want someone (whether you call them a publisher or not) to do that.

> most of which at the moment are still being covered by the print versions anyway

Why does everyone (on various sites) keep saying that? I don't think that pricing eBooks on the basis that they make up a negligable amount of sales is a great plan, if they're hoping to increase the amount of eBook sales.

Also, I would assume that some portion of the eBook sales is cannabalising the paper sales - I wouldn't buy both the eBook and paper version. eBooks should share their part of the production costs.

Daylight savings shift to cause phone havoc Down Under

James Livingston

Australia isn't small...

As well as the distance from Perth to Sydney being about 3000km (as Luke Speer pointed out), the eastern states cover a longitudinal distance of around 3500km (south Tasmania to the north point of Cape York in Queensland). This is why Queensland doesn't have DST and Tasmania has historically (but not at the moment) started DST earlier and finished it later.

The people closer to the equator would prefer it to be later in the physical day when they get home, so that it isn't so bloody hot. The people further away (Tassie) would prefer it to be light in the evening for their activities, rather than the sun to start coming up so early - the official sunrise in Hobart would be at 4:30am without DST, but in practice it gets light quite a while before the official sunrise due to the long twilight.