I'm excited to announce that SeaWatch is dipping our toe into e-books! While we pride ourselves on beautiful, high quality, printed books, we must acknowledge that the digital format for books is here to stay. There are several benefits to e-books:
- You can zoom into pictures to get more detail
- You can easily travel with them
- There is no shipping costs to receive them (this should be of particular interest to our international readers!)
- They don't go out of print
Our first e-book is Rob Napier's new book Caring for Ship Models: A Narrative of Thought and Application. (Thank you Rob for being open to this!) It is our intent to expand this based on author interest and I hope to next add some of our currently out-of-print books until we can get those reprinted.
One thing I'm considering is that if you order an out-of-print book as an e-book, when the book is printed we can ship that to you and turn off the digital version (feel free to let us know what you think of this).
A word on pricing: we do not plan on discounting e-books relative to their physical counterparts. The reason is that we believe the books - regardless of their media - have inherent value. It's their content not their physical properties. And, while there are no printing costs with digital books, there are costs in creating them, hosting them, and updating them. That said, for those that want to own both, we plan to offer a bundle at a 10% discount.
Note that since our books are very visual, we are not making them available for Kindles or similar e-readers. We have have partnered with a firm called Kotobee to create our own online library and digital e-readers (currently available for Windows and Mac with iOS to follow soon). When you order an e-book, you will be sent a link to register for the reading platform. On subsequent purchases, you will see the book appear in your library automatically.
As we go down this road, we are of course open to any feedback so please let us know your thoughts. Are you interested in e-books? Are there any titles you'd like to see first?
1 comment
Mike, this is something that I will buy. It could be very useful when I am in the Constitution Museum.
It was good to see you last Saturday. You are constantly trying to up date Seawatch
Kudos to you!
Would have liked to have seen at Monday’s Judging at the Guild show.
I will email you the results with pictures later today. Stay safe.
Tim