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How to get your favorite author on the Kindle

I'm a huge fan of Tad Williams and his huge books. However, none appear to be on Kindle yet. I'd love to have his collection on Kindle instead of taking up a complete shelf and being too bulky to take to the beach.

I'm wondering if anyone had had any success getting their favorite books on Kindle if they aren't already. If so, how did you do it? If you tried, but didn't do you know why not?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jona on July 23, 2008 at 4:36pm: The flow of books to the Kindle is a sole function of the publishers providing the material. Publishers have been ill prepared for the apparent success that the Kindle has finally brought to the E-Book market. In many cases they are having to renegotiate their contracts with other to include electronic distribution or to just simply provide the book in a format that can be kindled.
So if you have a book or author that you wish to see the best way is to send an email to the publisher of a particular set of titles, keeping in mind that some authors float from pub to pub.

Good Luck!! I am a Tad Williams fan myself,
Jona; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by jadavid on July 23, 2008 at 7:45pm: You may or may not know that TOR has a new website. I'd left a couple of comments there regarding the lack for Steven Brust books in Kindle formats. Other folks had left similiar messages about other authors as well. The folks at TOR quickly responded:

"Tor parent company Macmillan is actively converting all titles to which we have digital rights. It really is just a matter of time before the majority of our library is available in e-book form. "

So the publishers do seem to be interested. It's just a question of how much burocracy has to be dealt with, I suppose.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Schroedinger's Dog on July 25, 2008 at 9:23pm: Hi

There are two levels of problems here.

1) Is the book available electronically?

I agree with the other responses that the best course of action is to write the publisher and make it known that you want a Kindle version available.

2) If it is available, what format is it in?

This is a trickier problem. From the little research I've done, it seems that publishers choose a format or two and that's it. If the book you want is not available on the Kindle you should write the publisher and also Amazon. Amazon should be able to support more of these protocols.

If the book is in a PDF, you can convert it using Amazon's service or a program like Mobipocket Creator (Publisher's edition). That is assuming the author/publisher does not prohibit this.

That exhausts the ethical and/or legal options.

It is possible to convert other formats and even some DRM protected formats but that takes some work and is highly unethical/illegal. It shouldn't be, but it is.

Editorial Comment:

I think if the author/publisher receives payment for each copy of the book in circulation there shouldn't be any issues with us moving it to the reader of our choice. I'm not out to screw anyone out of their well earned money; I just want to read the book on my Kindle.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Randy Foster on September 3, 2008 at 3:50am: I own a ton of books (many filling up a storage unit as we speak). One of the reasons I'm excited about the Kindle is that I will (hopefully) be able to gradually replace my hard copies with electronic versions. It's sort of a complicated process, but so far I've been able to scan a few into pdf format, then extract the text from the pdf, and now I am converting the text files over to Kindle. Process still needs much work, but here is my question - if I own the hard copy of a book, do I have the right (legally) to change the format over and read it on my kindle? I'm probably going to do it anyway, but I would love to hear others' thoughts?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by KT421 on July 29, 2008 at 3:52am: The general process for books to add to your Kindle wishlist:

Email the author, if possible.
Email the publisher.
Email kindle-feedback@amazon.com.

The author may not know about the Kindle, or know that there is demand or his or her work for the device. The author has a lot of power (depending on their contract) and can put some pressure on the publisher.
The publisher probably has a long list of books that are awaiting conversion to Kindle format, and receiving an email may add a particular book to the list or bump a book already on the list up closer to the top.
Amazon keeps track of requests issued to them and passes them on to the publisher en masse. Telling the publisher "We had 500 different people request book X last week alone," is a pretty powerful statement.

I emailed some authors and publishers, and the best response I got was from the publisher of the Dune novels- they have all of the newer ones by Brian Herbert and Kevin J Anderson, but all of the original Dune novels are unavailable for Kindle. The publisher told me that they are working on getting the older Dune books available for Kindle, although they are experiencing difficulties and expect to have them available by next year.

You'll see some books from an author available and others unavailable- sometimes the author jumped publishers and has to go back to the old publisher and renegotiate for digital rights and distribution. As with any legal process, this can potentially take a lot of time.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dori on August 7, 2008 at 3:00am: I also love Tad Williams, and his "War of the Flowers" book is available on the Kindle. I'd love to re-read his "Memory, Thorn, and Sorrow" series, but since I only have it in hardback versions, these books are heavy to carry around. I would love this series for my Kindle and am very willing to buy the Kindle version when it comes around.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be as many fantasy books available for the Kindle as I would like, and what series there are do not include all the books in the series. What good is book two in a series if I can't read book one? I myself work in publishing and find it mind boggling that publishers are releasing series in this manner. There's absolutely no logic to it!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by KT421 on August 10, 2008 at 2:23pm: There is now a "I want this book for Kindle" button on any book Amazon has that doesn't already have a Kindle edition.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bill Back on August 13, 2008 at 4:57pm: I just noticed the new Kindle button. I'll have to go start pressing it on a number of books.

I just finished re-reading the "War of the Flowers". I'll have to go check that out. Hopefully it's sign that more will be kindlized. I happened to stumble across the fact that a great many of Stephen King's books are now on Kindle.; ▶ Reply to This