I recently ordered the new Steven Brust Vlad Taltos novel “Iorich” from Amazon.co.jp. I’ve been waiting since January 2010 for it to come out in paperback. Always annoying that long delay before a paperback, especially when they suddenly start producing hardbacks of a once a year series. I don’t like having different types in a series, particularly a long one like this and since i’ve got the rest in standard sized paperback, I’m going to continue in that vein. So, Amazon in Japan finally indicated it was due in January 2011 and I ordered it. Then they kept pushing back when it would be sent and finally they pushed it back to January 2012! WTF? Checking on Amazon.com, it turns out that Tor have now produced a trade sized paperback (8.2inches tall) which unlike my Harry Dresden books is too big even to fit on the shelf that the others are on. So, we now have the hardback appearing in January 2010, the stupid size paperback in January 2011 and the mass market sized paperback not until January 2012. A wait of two years until the ordinary paperback comes out. The book publishing industry seems to be hell bent on following the music publishing industry into screwing itself up by pissing off its regular customers. They’re insisting on DRM for ebooks, they’re not making all the older even very popular material available in ebooks (Pratchett’s Discworld isn’t all available for example) and even when they do they’ve screwed up the permissions so there isn’t a worldwide appearence (sometimes if you want it in ebook form it’s out but the only way to get it is illegitimate), and their core product is being over-squeezed in its traditional market in a way that annoys regular purchasers. Way to  destroy your own industry, guys. I don’t have an ebook reader, but if I did I’d be tempted to download one of the versions available on bittorrent. Especially since the legitimate version seems to be Nook only (that’s right, restrict your market – great way to keep your customers).