Counter-disagree. I see price and value as factors in many product reviews, I don’t see why e-books should be any different than other digital works such as games, software, etc. It’s the publisher that is being unfair to the author by setting a price point that drives potential readers away, and as an author I would appreciate knowing that kind of feedback.
Counter-counter disagree. The customer-submitted reviews are for the benefit of other (potential) readers, not the author or the publisher. And I, as a customer, am not benefitted when someone clutters up the review page with “This book was too expensive, so I didn’t read it.” It’s the equivalent of posting to a thread here on the SDMB just to say “TL;DR.”
Plus, if the price were lowered, the bad reviews would still remain.
This is like compact discs all over again. The retailers and distributors of CDs ended up settling a price fixing lawsuit.
I am certain there are antitrust violations happening in the E-book market. Too bad the government won’t do anything about it.
Actually, the price-fixing/antitrust issue would be much stronger if Amazon had succeeded in forcing the publishers to accept an across-the-board $10 per book rate.
I’d say it would be even stronger if the publishers colluded to keep the E-book price at the same level as the physical books or higher.
That’s what happened with CDs. Competition and economies of scale had increased, yet prices kept climbing.
And how exactly might that happen? Each book is a unique product over which the publisher has a legal monopoly and publishers price different books differently according to their perceived desirability. It would be difficult to *engage *in price collusion under such circumstances, not to mention prove it.
And as Exapno has explained, the cost of physical production of a book is a small fraction of its price. The bulk of the cost is the compensation of people – authors, editors, illustrators, etc. – and those kinds of costs increase over time, not decrease.
It’s usually tacit. The publishers perceive that it’s in their best interests not to engage in a price war. They’ll all just sorta pretend publicly that it makes perfect sense to charge more for the electronic versions of books than for the physical versions.
The demand for books, like music, isn’t perfectly elastic. If Stieg Larrson’s book costs too much, I’m not necessarily going to buy Jonathan Franzen instead. But I might. And the publishers just might be nicking a bit extra from me.
From the If You Don’t Like It Here, Move files:
Today In Ridiculous French Regulations: eBook Price Controls!
Just in case the sillier people wonder, yes, I agree that this is ridiculous. I also agree with this line of the author’s:
Feel free to have any opinions you like on the subject, but until the questions I asked in post #38 get answers, don’t expect the world to change on your behalf or that anyone will take your rants seriously.
Hey, I can’t even explain the picture used with the article!
This is inherently stupid. My not buying something tells the publisher nothing. Billions of people do that. My telling them why I’m not buying so they can fix the problem tells them something. You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know what it is.
I don’t know whether you should do it on Amazon, but I know I don’t really have a problem with it. I already rate the seller on everything anyways. I’m rating the transaction. I’m not just telling you whether it’s worth buying the book itself, but whether it’s worth buying it from this particular seller.
You want a plain book review, there are other sites for that. Amazon is a store, not a review site.
To me, ebooks are worth both more and less than paper. I have an original Nook, which is black and white. Even if I had a color Nook, though, I would prefer to buy any book that has illustrations in it in paper. And if it’s illustrated, I probably want the hardcover or trade paperback, even though I mostly don’t like those formats. If it’s a book by an author new to me, I want it in used paperback, so I don’t invest any more money than absolutely necessary.
I DO need to buy all of Terry Pratchett’s books in ebook form. I reread those books frequently, and enjoy them, and I’ve had to buy several of the books multiple times. I’d still want his books available in paperback, so that I can shove them into my friends’ hands and shout that they MUST read these books immediately. And there are other authors who I reread, and having their books in ebook form would be useful. But I’m still not going to want to pay much more than about $10 per book, unless it’s some book that is two or three volumes long. For instance, I regard The Lord of the Rings as one book, not three…and I’d consider about $25 to be a fair price.
I will make judgements as to what a book’s value is to me, and if a book doesn’t need to be printed or transported, I think that the price should be less than a paperback.
Of course publishers see things from the reader’s point of view – they’re their market. But they also have to make money on the books.
The idea that reader-directed book publishing will ever take off is ludicrous on the face of it. That been the vanity press model for decades: if I publish my book, people will read it! But people read books because of the efforts of publishers to promote that book. Everyone can self-publish on the Internet right now, and I assure you, you don’t want to have to slog through everything out there to find the handful of gems.
What these “predictions” mean is that now everyone can read slush! And no one pays publishers to read slush.
At this point, you know that a book by a publisher has been vetted. Even if you don’t like it, know it’s better than 95% of all books written (that’s about the percentage of books to slush, a figure that has been constant for decades).
As for the value of a book, that’s a decision of the individual reader. But the idea that cutting the price will increase sales just doesn’t work in book publishing. If you hate Twilight, you won’t buy it at any price. If you love it, you’ll buy it at any price you can afford. The publisher has to sell the book to the people who buy it; you aren’t doing yourself any favors by cutting the price in hopes that people who hate the entire concept will read the book because it costs less.
Ultimately:
- The “fair” sales price of ebooks has not been determined.
- It has to be high enough to pay the publisher.
- It should be high enough to pay for the time and effort the author puts into the book, with the hope that it will let him be able to write more.
- Someone has to wade through the slush. The publishers are the best qualified to do this.
- Someone needs to market the book. Again, publishers are best qualified.
- eBooks are bad for new authors because their books get lost in the shuffle. New authors don’t show up on the front page of the online bookstores unless their publishers pay to do it. If you’re a self-published author and want people to find your books on Amazon as easily as those by publishers, you need to be able to have the same contacts (and sometimes display allowances) the publishers have.
- New authors are discovered by people seeing their books on the shelves and giving them a try. eBookstores make this sort of serendipity difficult.
- If you want new books for a price that doesn’t pay the author or cover costs, you’re going to get crappy books.
RealityChuck, a lot of what you say makes sense. But I think there are some things you’re missing.
I don’t think the comparison to vanity presses is relevant, because with printed books, it requires a substantial investment to get the books printed and distributed to the people who might want to read them. E-books have made this a lot easier.
That is a legitimate point. But, with the internet, social media, etc. people are connected in ways that they weren’t in previous generations, which means, I think, that it’s easier for word of mouth to spread about a really good book to the people who’d be most likely to enjoy it.
False dichotomy. What about the people who haven’t read something yet so don’t know whether they’d love or hate it? What about the people who are sort of “meh” on it but want to see what all the fuss is about? What about the people for whom that book is just one of many on their “I’d be interested in reading that someday” list?
Full agreement here.
Here’s the one I wonder about! If I had just written a book (manuscript) that I was pretty sure was a good one, which would be better odds: the odds of it being accepted and published and marketed by a majopr publisher, or the odds it finding enough readers to be successful if it’s self-published? And will those odds change in the near future? The point is, how easy is it for new authors to get published and promoted in the first place? You have to figure that in.
Here’s where you’re dead wrong, in my own case. I’ve discovered new authors from seeing their books on the “shelves” at Amazon.com, from browsing or reading recommendations or following up “people who liked this also bought…” type links. If I pay money for a new author or book I discover on the shelves at a physical bookstore, it’ll probably be on the Bargain or Clearance shelves, where it’s cheap enough that I don’t have much to lose if the book disappoints me.
I wholeheartedly agree that authors, and other people involved, deserve to get paid for their work. I’m still confused about both the logistics and the ethics of how to make this happen.
My own instinct as a book buyer is, when there’s a book I’m interested in, to pay as little as possible for it (which often means ordering a used copy online), but never to pay significantly more than I think the book’s value to me will be (in entertainment, education, and/or enlightenment). So that means there are books I haven’t bought yet, but might very well buy if they were available more cheaply.
Lately I’ve been wondering what, if anything, I ethically ought to be doing to reimburse the author if I turn out to get significantly more value than what I paid, especially if none of what I paid went directly to the author.
There are a LOT of books, though, that I neither love nor hate. And even the books I love, I won’t buy if I think that they are overpriced. Now, I have a couple of autographed copies of books that also have a personal inscription to me. And even though I’m aware that the inscription makes them worth LESS in monetary terms, to me they are worth more. And a hardback that has the classic leather binding with gold leaf on it has obviously cost more to produce than a paperback which has the pages falling out of it before anyone has read it. But if that paperback is a book that I’m dying to read, and that I can’t get anywhere else, I might pay full cover price, whereas I wouldn’t pay even a dollar for that fancy hardback if it’s something like Twilight.
I buy a LOT of books. And the thing is, my reading is across a lot of subjects and genres. So I weigh each book as to the value I’ll get from it. And if I think the price is too high, I’ll pass the book up. I can always find something that will give me more value for my money. Yes, I understand that publishers and authors want to make money. I support the authors that I really, really like. But publishers need to realize that I don’t see much added value to an ebook as opposed to a dead tree book, and I’m really not very willing to pay a premium to read a book on an ereader.
I like my Kindle, but I’m fond of paper books, too. As long as the Amazon price for a new release Kindle book is very close to the price of the hardback, I’m going to buy the hardback.
Right now I’m using my Kindle for free and cheap books. My plan was to start buying Kindle versions of books that I would usually buy in paperback.
This is the core issue. There is no such thing as a “book.”
What kind of book have you written? An examination of the political dichotomies between libertarianism and capitalism? A biography of Prince Harry? A lighthearted look at Guido culture? A cookbook? A serious literary novel? A historical set set in the times of the Black Death? A genre book (science fiction; fantasy; spy; cosy; chick lit; paranormal; western; action; erotica)? Young adult? Chapter children’s? Picture book?
Each has its own market, its own expectations and conventions, its own level of pricing; its own level of expected sales; its own level of sequels and series; its own level of expected production per year.
And today, each has its own type of online community, ranging from rabid to almost negligible.
There are no answers to what an author should do because it is too early to know.
It remains true, however, that the number and percent of people who become successful either way is almost zero compared to the whole. It also remains true that standard publishing can treat each type of book - and I only skimmed the surface - equally, while the support mechanisms online are wildly different for the different types.
Moreover the skills needed to succeed through online publicity are totally distinct from the skills that make a good writer. They overlap in only a minority. And the work involved is costly, especially in the amount of time needed.
Amanda Hocking, the poster child for being the six sigma out the end of the curve for instant sales of self-published books, just signed with a print publisher for her next series. Handing her non-writing work was up to 40 hours a week. That’s all time that a publisher could handle and handle better. And the publisher would get her books into book stores, which she could never do on her own.
I don’t know what the answer is for any individual. I have self-published books and put them on Kindle because that was the best way to handle those particular books. But I’m hoping that my next book will go through a standard publisher because that’s the best course for that particular book.
Note that we’ve gotten a million miles from the question of what the best pricing is. How can we settle that question when the other questions are still so unanswerable?
And, not only that, a publisher has a right to seek different prices depending on different market segments’ willingness to pay. If you have to have a book in a specific format (whether hardback, paperback, or digital) right now, the publisher should have the right to charge a premium for early sales. If you can wait 6 months or 12 months or 60 months for cheaper editions to come out, the publisher is perfectly justified in adjusting the pricing of the various formats so that it can get what each segment is willing to pay at any particular time. So, at the beginning, the publisher might issue an (expensive) hardback with some discounts available through certain outlets, but also issue an even more expensive digital edition for those who are willing to pay. Later, after those market segments are played out, the digital edition price may drop below the price of the hardback or even the paperback. It’s perfectly rational, and perfectly fair.
That’s all true and I agree overall. The only thing I’d add is that the situation is even more complicated than that.
Traditionally, books were published in hardcover and then went through a process of cheaper books over time. In the 30s, reprint publishers like Triangle Books would do dollar hardback editions of books that were priced standard at $2-3. In the 40s these became superseded by paperbacks for a quarter.
Paperbacks were originally virtually all reprints but over time publishers started printing paperback originals, especially for the genre markets. You see some in the 40s, but it didn’t really take off until the 50s.
By the end of the 50s, paperbacks started increasing regularly in price and the drugstore/newsstand markets for paperbacks started disappearing. The trade paperback - printed off the original plates and therefore the same physical size as a hardcover - was invented as a way to get cheaper editions into regular bookstores. After a while, trade paperback originals crept into the market. And the old paperbacks, now called mass-market editions, started to disappear for almost all books except bestsellers and genre.
The shifts were gradual enough that regular readers knew what to expect. Usually. There’s been a growing trend to print the trade paperback edition simultaneously with the hardback, instead of several months later. But mostly, a hardcover would come first and grab the immediate gratification crowd. A paperback edition of some sort would appear later and appeal to those who valued cost.
Understandably, some people want it all: immediate gratification and cheap price. There is no economic model today that allows for that and provides sufficient compensation for the authors, even if publishers and B&M bookstores are destroyed in the process, something a lot of people don’t want in the first place. The average sale for a self-published book is 100 copies. Making it cheaper won’t magically result in selling 100,000 copies. Publishers had effectively subsidized low-selling authors with enormous-selling individuals. You can certainly argue whether they should do this or not. You can’t argue that if traditional publishing goes away anybody but the bestsellers and those doing it as a hobby will remain. And authors certainly have the right to be irritated when they hear about how wonderful the new world is going to be.
The nice thing about the hardcover-first custom, as a practical example of price discrimination, is that the hardcover edition is perceived as more valuable. So customers are directed away from their normal adverse reaction to paying more for convenience and immediate gratification. It doesn’t matter what the costs to the publisher are – as long as some people view the electronic edition as less valuable, they’ll bridle at paying more for it. No idea how it’ll all shake out.
But it seems to me just as misguided to find fault with customers who don’t wish to pay, as with publishers who charge what they feel is most profitable. Both are actors in the market, behaving self-interestedly. I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing – but I’ve seen this sort of thing on a few blogs.
Is this the best way to put it? The terminology “subsidized” makes it sound as if publishing low-selling authors were a charitable service. Presumably publishers make money (or believe they will make money) even from low-selling authors. Am I wrong about that? I don’t necessarily find fault with your prognostication – that a world without publishing companies will imply a few big names and a sea of hobbyists – but I don’t think it’s an utter necessity.
Take, for example, web companies. There isn’t some “publishing company” equivalent choosing who can and cannot start a web firm, and yet we see a multitude of small but profitable firms in addition to the big names and hobbyists.
This does not address the point that more than a few kindle e-books now cost more than the hardcover and recently some even cost more than the paperback. I for one will not pay more than the cost of the lowest available new print book for an e-book. It seriously pisses me off. What is the reasoning behind the e-book price being higher than any version of the printed book?
Are publishers actually trying to piss off e-book readers?
Presumably, they don’t. A low-selling book still requires an advance, and some sort of setup and marketing costs. A sufficiently low-selling book will simply not recoup those costs, and will lose the publishers money.
Publishers don’t publish low-selling books out of charity; they do it because there’s no way to tell for sure which books will be low-selling.
I can see a future where eBooks and writers are produced and monetized more like internet startups. First you prove that there’s a market for your books via a blog, or via your own efforts to monetize. If you get traction, you bring in an investor to provide marketing or editorial expertise and to help you expand your readership. Those investors will still take on some of the risk of failure, and they’re probably in many ways analogous to current publishers. Except of course that they won’t actually be involved in the publishing part so much, since that’s what Amazon is.