Animorphs come to the Kindle
I mentioned the Animorphs in the Amazon Kindle community more than two years ago.
K.A. Applegate’s young adult series, about a group of kids who can turn into animals, was very popular ten to fifteen years ago.
There were more than fifty books published, a TV series…and we have a boardgame in the garage. 
My kid was into them, so I read them all (and still have the paper copies in my library). I would probably only have read a couple if I didn’t enjoy them myself. They aren’t great literature, but well-written, exciting, and even a bit angsty popcorn books.
While primarily a science fiction adventure series, they also appealed to readers who wanted a little romance (but not to the soap opera level).
I had suggested that it could do really well on the Kindle. I saw it being offered in two ways: the individual novels for a few dollars, and the equivalent of a box set, an omnibus, with all the main series novels (54, I think) for maybe $100.
I was happy when C. Fenimore in the Amazon Kindle community gave the heads up the series was being released for the Kindle.
The first one is available for pre-order for May 1:
They’ve scheduled a couple more, and I’m sure that Scholastic will make a decision about converting the rest based on the sales of the first few.
If you are looking to get a middle-schooler (or so…younger could be okay) into reading, I think this could be a good way to do it.
The first book has 174 reviews on Amazon…149 of them are 5-stars (and another 17 are 4-stars). That’s remarkably good!
The release is interesting time-wise…if somebody read it as a ten-year old in 1995, that person would be about 26 now. It would be unlikely for a lot of people in that group to have kids old enough to enjoy them (although possible), so this will be largely either people buying them for their kids when the adults haven’t read them themselves, or adults wanting to re-read them.
At $5.59, it’s a bit higher than I would have priced them initially, but in-line with other young adult novels for the most part.
If you are looking for something for your kids or if you read young adult books yourself (perhaps to get away from some of the complications in your adult life), I recommend you try a sample.
Do you have Animorphs memories? Feel free to share them.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
April 28, 2011 at 2:13 pm |
Hmm, these ones have been available for free online for quite some time! I figured Applegate just didn’t really mind since they were out of print… You would have thought they would be more careful with their property if they were going to use it!
April 28, 2011 at 5:42 pm |
Thanks for writing, draegi!
Unfortunately, that type of criminal activity is hard to control, no matter how careful you are.
That generation of readers knows how to use scanners (and OCR…Optical Character Recognition), but many of the illegal copies you see on the web are just PDFs…that’s just scanning and posting. It’s also a group that has the reputation for not being particularly respectful of copyright…not all of them, certainly, but there seems to be a general attitude of not needing to get permission from copyright holders before distributing.
April 29, 2011 at 11:29 am |
I suppose I’m more used to film and music producers taking 30 second clips off youtube, so I presume it’s easy and worthwhile to do.
It’s a shame, because I really respect some digitilisers. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of the Lone Wolf book series – it was a set of three series of gamebooks (30 or so) which were popular 20 years ago. Project Aeon got special permission from the author (and publisher I think?) to create and distribute ebook versions of them, complete with maps and even ALL the special corrections which have been made to them over the years in annals and letters from the author (I said they were very popular!). Those are really good, and work amazingly on kindle! – It gives me something to do whilst I wait for the warlock of firetop mountain to be released to the kindle outside of america at least!
April 29, 2011 at 12:27 pm |
Thanks for writing, draegi!
YouTube is a very different situation than books (from, say, torrent sites).
With YouTube, it is relatively easy…you just have to assert your claim to that one site. The site is now owned by Google…which is not going to jeopardize its considerable economic presence by deliberately ignoring a legal request. Oh, not that they couldn’t pay millions in fines, but it would be a big PR hit if they were simply behaving in a criminal manner…and the consequences could be worse than that.
With “torrent” sites, there isn’t much you can do to them easily. They don’t have an economic presence to jeopardize..as you mentioned, the books are often distributed for free.
Here is one scenario for YouTube:
Someone records part of a TV show, probably doesn’t even realize it is illegal to post it, and puts it on YouTube.
The rightsholder contacts YouTube, which removes the clip. This, by the way, happens quite often with music used….like someone posting a clip of a montage with their cat, set to a copyrighted tune.
Here’s a book scenario:
One fan of a book scans it (using a scanner that costs under $100…might be a multi-purpose device they also use as their own printer). That fan makes it available for free from their own tiny website. That file is downloaded by other people…and some of them upload it to torrent file-sharing sites. Now, thousands of copies are downloaded from multiple sites, some of which aren’t even in the US. The publisher becomes aware of it. They send a threatening e-mail to the personal sites they find. The torrent site in Costa Rica? They have to go to the FBI, and it’s now potentially an international incident. Many of the personal sites remove it on request, but others simply ignore it. The publisher can engage a lawyer to go after them, or, go after the ISP (Internet Service Provider). It’s complicated and expensive, though, and while they do that, the illegal copies are proliferating and are on a thousand new sites.
There is an equivalent to the YouTube thing…Amazon.
If an illegal copy is posted on Amazon, they have a very good system for making a claim and getting the book removed. I did that with a book that took some of my material:
http://ilmk.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/infringement-plagiarism-and-amazon-to-the-rescue/
The same thing has happened with the Harry Potter books.
With YouTube and Amazon, you are dealing with professional companies who have a big stake in operating legally.
With torrent sites and personal websites, they will not choose to respect your rights, typically.
Yes, I know Lone Wolf.
I have five of the original Dever/Chalks on my bookshelf.
I don’t see those in the US or UK Kindle stores…did you get them directly from the publisher?
May 1, 2011 at 10:02 pm |
So in some ways those big monopolising websites like Youtube have their uses! ;>
I think Lone Wolf may even have been digitilised before the kindle 1 was released, certainly it was before self-publishing on the Kindle Store. Project Aeon have their own website: “www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home”, and they got special permission.
Visiting there now I can see the quote from the author they have on their front page:
“I would be especially pleased if my granting of the rights to distribute my books in this way was seen as my ‘millennium gift’ to all those devoted readers who have kept the Kai flag flying high, through all the good times, and the not-so-good. It would make me very proud indeed if this enterprise laid the foundations of a lasting legacy, securing the longevity of Lone Wolf by making my creation freely and readily accessible to current and future online generations. For them, for us, for Sommerlund and the Kai.…”
Joe Dever 1999
That is one of the most enlightened attitudes I’ve ever seen by an author, although I know it runs a little contrary to yours. :p
May 2, 2011 at 12:04 am |
Thank for writing, draegi!
Oh, it’s perfectly fine with me that an author chooses to give away the rights…what I don’t like is when people take the without permission.
Notice in this case that the author does grant the rights.