Slashdot Mirror
On the Economics of e-Books?
way0utwest asks: "I was searching on Amazon today for Lawrence Lessig's 'The Future of Ideas'. While browsing, I noticed that there was also an e-book version of the same title. What was amazing was that the hardcover copy of the book is $21 and the e-book, which is downloaded, is $24!
Now I may be just a simple computer programmer, but it seems to me that there is less overall 'cost' involved with the e-book and it should be cheaper. There's very little 'inventory' to store (how much disk space and electricity cost can there be?). There's no risk of having to 'return' the book to the publisher. There's no labor needed to 'ship' me the book. How can it cost more? Is Adobe charging that much for the licensing of the e-book?
Now I'm not sold on the idea of e-books, or electronic books in general (though I am looking forward to electronic paper), however it seems that either the industry is not interested in pushing e-books, or Amazon is not really paying attention (though the list price of the hardcover is $30) OR the publishers are trying to overcharge for the e-book to make up for potential piracy. Am I way off base? Is there anther explanation? Anyone?" It's frustrating to find digital media that is priced higher than the corresponding title in dead-tree form. way0utwest makes a good point in that one reason for the increased pricing is due to piracy, but one has to wonder how often e-Books get pirated? Are such prices justified or are eBooks doomed to failure because they have effectively priced themselves out of the market?
First, Amazon has a set list of discounts, which the hardcover version probably falls into, and the electronic version does not.
Second, Amazon's gross margin on a hardcover version may be higher, so they have more room to discount. For instance, if the suggested list price of the HC is $30, and the electronic is $24, and they both are "sold" to Amazon by the publisher for $20, Amazon has more room to come down on the HC version.
Third, Amazon may just not care all that much!
That said, there is someone out there who will say, "I'd much rather have it in electronic form, and I'm willing to shell out the extra bucks for it." They've already shown their willingness to shell out a whole lot of bucks for the reader, so what's a couple extra? Having already purchased a questionably useful device, they would feel stupid for not using it (especially after spending so much); they feel compelled to justify their purchase, and if that means having to pay a little more than a dead tree book, well, so be it.
Also, the first law of capitalism applies here. In a nutshell: people are stupid, and successful companies exploit stupid people.
Retailers dont want to be seen my the public as being stodgy and old-fashioned, so supporting things like eBooks has some PR and convenience value.
As people are mentioning though, There is the competition with the traditional paper format. Add to that, I think, no business enters a risky new business unless there is profit to be made. Atleast if some profit is made, even if the format dies, they havent wasted their entire investment, an investment they are pushed to make, because if they dont, and the format takes off, they will be overtaken by their competitors.
Like a lot of other commodity products, early adopters of new technology pay a premium. Wether it is worthwhile, all depends on how much the product is worth to you. (Or your business.)
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
Although I agree with a previous poster that there is probably some gross margin shenanigans going on with the pricing of this individual item, this does raise an interesting issue.
As far as I can tell a technical e-book's only appeal is that you could (in theory) dump a bunch on your laptop hard drive, on cdr's, or into your palmpilot, and carry them around as reference material. Much better than lugging around 80lbs of books to client sites. Of course with all of the digital rights junk floating around this may or may not be practical, and your ability to read the book 5 years from now under such a system is highly questionable.
Without such DRM type controls, the publishers fears that the books will get freely distributed over the Internet are well justified -- but it's happening anyway as people scan in books and OCR them, or simply crack the DRM schemes.
Reading a book on a laptop or palmpilot screen is a fundamentally different experience than curling up with a paper book. Although my preference is paper, it is nice to have my Palmpilot loaded up with a good Heinlein novel during boring meetings.
E-books seem to be stopgap measure driven by short-term profit potential. IMO the publishing industry faces fundamental changes over the next few years as their primary value-add transitions to making nice printed versions of works already freely (although perhaps illegally) available.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
however, before eBooks were this popular, similar methods unearthed 'digital' copies of the books - many titles are nowadays proofed, and transported between editors, in electronic form making 'leaks' from this media as easy and common as being able to get the latest MS windows finals before the official release dates.
When my Palm III died, I replaced it with a Sony Clié specifically because the screen is sweet for reading books. I wouldn't really want it for reference books, but I love reading novels and the like on it. I always have my Clié with me, so I always have an assortment of reading material with me as well -- for no extra cost in space or weight. Plus, I can read it under any lighting conditions.
But I must admit, I'm really disappointed with most ebook offerings. They're either way overpriced (More expensive than the hardback? Give me a break!), or in some dippy "digital rights management" format, or both. No, I'm not going to pay $24 for a book in a format that may not survive in two years.
The absolute best publisher I've seen for ebooks has got to be Baen. They have a great ebook collection which includes just about everything they currently publish. The ebooks hit the street the same time as the paperbacks, and they're priced about the same. To me, that's a fair price. Sure, they're making some extra dough on the ebook version (no printing or distribution fees), but on the other hand I'm getting the product in a format that I prefer. I'm willing to encourage that!
But Baen's best decision was to release the books in plain ol' HTML format. They also have a few other formats, but HTML works best for me. And, even if someday HTML is dead and forgotten, I'll still be able to open these things up in a plain text editor and read them.
Baen also has a library of freebie books. Granted, many of them are the first books of one series or another, just to get you hooked. But the freebies are a great way to check out an author you've heard about, or just to play with the ebook format a little before making a commitment to it.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
When the word "e-Book" is used, everyone automatically thinks of reading books on a computer or PDA screen, probably because that's all most people have seen. There are numerous disadvantages to both approaches, but they all really boil down to "Those devices weren't designed for that." I think many people's preference for paper is just because they haven't seen a really good e-Book.
There are some devices out there that were designed to be electronic book readers, and they are *far* superior to PCs, Laptops and PDAs for this function. IMO, they're far superior to paper books as well in many ways (though not every way).
I have a Rocket e-Book, for example. It's a device that is just slightly larger than a paperback book, with a screen that is almost exactly the size of a paperback page. The screen is a very high resolution LCD with a backlight that can be turned on and off. It has 16MB of flash memory for storage of books and the (tiny) operating system. It connects to a computer via either a cable or infrared to download books, which are written in a simplified version of HTML and then run through a tool that packages and compresses them for download. The e-Book reader also has a high-capacity battery that allows it to run for as much as 18 hours on a charge. The UI is well-designed, with thin progress bar down the side to give you an idea of where in the book you're at, support for different font sizes, different orientations, etc., easy-to-use menus (which you almost never touch, other than to switch books).
This is a superb way to read. What do I like about it, as compared to paper?
What I don't like:
As you can see, the upsides are more numerous and more compelling than the downsides. The biggest downsides really have more to do with the fact that publishers haven't decided how to approach this e-Book thing. Here's to hoping they get it. soon.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Ha ha!
Yes it is true, I suffer from this same malady.
What is even more amazing, I have found a secret government program that aids and abets this cursed addiction. Because so few people will be reading this (this is a discussion about reading, after all.), I will pass on to you the name of this institution in special Roman Swine code:
ethay ibrarylay
evanchik.net
I'm sorry to burst the collective slashdot bubble but the price of books is NOT entirely dependent on the cost of the medium. The actual physical putting of ink on paper and binding and all that jazz is about 17% of the net amount received from a particular publication. In a business you've got alot of costs before you get to the profit. There's the cost of goods which in the case of a book includes editorial and production costs (books need spell checking, formatting, proof reading, ect), design work needs to be done, and then finally the pesky cost of paying the author for their work. Then comes cost of sales which covers advertising and promotion which suprisingly can be fairly expensive for some books (think about all the cardboard displays you see when a novel comes out from a popular writer those aren't free). Then finally overhead which includes the actual cost of operating a business. Then FINALLY you get to profit but then it is still tricky. When you talk percentages you're talking the net of what you actually make off a product, not the list price. If a particular book sells a thousand copies little to no profit is made. Reducing the cost of goods price by making a book electronic saves you a couple bucks but not so much than you can wipe your ass with a hundred dollar bill. Getting the same content on a different medium doesn't make the cost of that content go down. Suprise suprise this is how most content producers do business whether they print books, CDs, or DVDs.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Yeh, luckily the idea of libraries and bookstores were fairly well established before currect copyright laws.. otherwise, we would have no idea of fair use today.