Slashdot Mirror
Murdoch Says E-Book Prices Will Kill Paper Books
hrimhari writes "The settlement between Amazon and Macmillian got the attention of a known dinosaur. Consistent to his views, Mr. Murdoch wants to defend his book editors by killing the cheaper solution. '"We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99," Murdoch said. "They pay us the wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge," he said. "But I think it really devalues books, and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books.'"
another old wrinkly dinosaur doesn't like change! news at 11.
Well hell, there's reason enough for me to oppose whatever else is in the paragraph below, never mind TFA.
However, upon reading TFA I learned that he owns HarperCollins. So there's another publisher I don't need to feel bad about ignoring.
John
If a new product comes along that is cheaper and more desired by consumers the old product becomes a dead market? What fascinating insight! How can I pay money to see more news from this "Murdoch" guy?
He thinks everything exists for the sole purpose of carrying a price tag.
First they have to be cheaper then paper books.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
You don't own the book, you can't sell it, you can't loan it and you can't donate it to a library. The paperback edition will eventually cost less than the 9.99 to 14.99 that Macmillan wants to charge. They need to enter the real world where you can go to a used bookstore a couple of months after a book is published and get it for less than their ebook prices.
Yes, eBooks DO devalue books - as they should. Books are just a very (very!) old medium.
What eBooks don't devalue is content, or at least they shouldn't. Up until now, the content has been tied to the medium in the publishing world. We've seen what happened when the two became decoupled with music and movies (and even video games, to some extent - at least for PC gaming), and it's about damn time that the same thing happens with the written word.
As for companies that sell hardcovers... well, sucks to be them. That's what happens when your business model is tied to a single medium.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
"But I think it really devalues books, and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books.'"
No kidding. Competition is funny that way.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
I buy most books that I own, used, discounted or remaindered. I was thinking about kindle, but you have to be a better overall solution than the one that I am used to.
If they're getting paid $14 and the retailer is selling it at a loss, well, he already got $14 for it!
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
What about the power part? real books don't need them!
Paper books will always live. One the one hand, there are still a billion people in the world without access to regular electricity. On the other, we might have limited resources in the future to make new electronic devices, due to peak oil and climate change. Yet, we can always make paper on a small, local scale if necessary. But electronic devices require a large industrial infrastructure.
After all, we have thousands of years of written human history, but only a tiny moment of digital history. It would be presumptuous of us to assume the latter will last longer than the former.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/10/ebooks-versus-paper.html
Information has artificially inflated in value. The prices coming down are a natural result of people realizing this.
We have been paying too much for books, films, and music for years. Party's over. They still get to make profit, just not obscene profit.
When the iPad was announced, I thought to myself - there isn't really a use for that.
Later, it occurred to me - if you subscribe to magazines and newspapers, and read them at home a lot - it is actually quite attractive, in an expensive apple solution way... maybe not for me, but for some people, who enjoy those types of publications at home - sure. Could actually be the saviour of magazine and news bulletin styles of things, now I think about it, if enough cool people start subscribing, rather than just reading the articles (that are made available online). Interactive and updated content, plus web usage to help it along... sure, could be good for that.
Of course, Mr Murdoch has the opposite view - it's a destroyer, not an enabler. Oh well... it surely won't be too long before he has to hand over control of News Ltd to someone with at least a tiny bit of forward thinking inside the skull.
I love books. I much prefer to read a dead-tree book than an e-book. There's just something I love about sitting on a couch with a book in my hands turning the pages as I read. It doesn't matter if it's a technical book, fiction, nonfiction, or a textbook of some sort. I prefer the actual thing. Looking at a screen trying to read an e-book just sucks in my opinion(admittedly I have yet to use the Nook or other such devices).
That said. I can't afford the dead-tree versions of alot of the books I want. So I have to resort to e-books. The people like Murdoch need to catch up with the times. Amazon makes it to where I can afford to read the books I love. As far as I'm concerned, they get my business because they tend to do things for the customers from what I've seen, not their wallets.
I sided with Macmillan in this little argument, because I think the way Amazon acted was really shitty and totally lacking in class. But when Rupert fucking Murdoch starts speaking out against Amazon, it almost makes me want to side with Amazon. Almost. I guess I can always just hate them both.
... and then they built the supercollider.
What about the power part? real books don't need them!
Convenience and portability beat out smaller options like that when things like a ebook reader with eInk can stay charged for days. Goes with the idea of a smart phone, needs to be charged daily which is a major downfall from the older landline phones but the convenience of having it always with you and what it can do beats out (this goes more so with an office cell phone when your at a desk all day anyways with a phone on your desk). 10 books = full bag, 10 ebooks = the reader's base size. 10000 ebooks = still the readers base size.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Hardcovers are for collectors and college textbook extortionists.
Softcovers are for the readers.
E-books are, I'm only guessing, for the new kids.
Who the fuck reads books anyways these days?!
You are still paying for the book...minus the cost of all that paper.
this is what happens when you let a handful of individuals own huge economic resources. they become like feudal lords, asserting their own will to majority of the people. here, behold, technology has improved, there is a possibility of cheaper goods being available to public. but, the feudal corporate structure doesnt want to let it happen. so much for 'free market', so much for 'invisible hand'. this is just in line with another observation i posted in a similar thread before :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1530508&cid=31026562
Read radical news here
It really depends though. Some information has a large cost associated with its creation.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
e-readers have their place. I'd say it would be for viewing more dynamic docs or quick reference over a networked feed for tech docs. Paper books, for me, are not replaceable. You don't have to worry so much about a paperback. I can smack my son (allegedly) with it when he acts like a kook. I can throw it off a twenty story building and it still works. I can treat my book like the $6.00 price it cost.
I know this is an old argument. I am an old dude, (allegedly), but I see what my son reads. And how he reads, and he decidedly did not want an e-reader for his reading needs.
I just wish I could buy books printed on hemp like God intended.!
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
They wont take off. 10 years have passed and for some odd reason consumers are ditching DRM invested files for the real thing they can resell or lend to a friend and wont need a $300 device with a crummy screen.
I like technology. I really do, but the whole ebooks thing is bad. Just use pdfs that are not drmed.
http://saveie6.com/
He forgets the golden rule of capitalism! I don't give a shit about the retailers. I want competitively priced goods. If I can get them from Amazon for cheap and in a format I'm happy with, well, bu-bye Murdock-with-your-head-up-your-ass. Good riddance. You are not entitled to a living, change.
Shh.
"Bla bla bla. Bla bla bla bla, bla bla bla bla bla."
Honestly, even the mainstream media knows, from articles I've seen in newspapers, that this guy's acting out in something approaching infirmity.
I've got all kinds of sympathy for dying businesses, until they start bringing out absurd, unreasonable arguments to defend why their business should still be profitable in a changing market.
Capitalism, free market and socialist policies are all aided by the concept of survival of the fittest: Adapt or die, Murdoch.
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
At the moment E-Books are not cheaper then paper backs and some times hard covers are cheaper then E-Books.
And the cost to make an E-Book and sending it to the consumer is cheaper then printing, shipping and storing a book, and then shipping it to the consumer.
So E-Books should be cheaper.
For a work environment - holding temporal information, datasheets, etc. - OK. For my library - my personal references and technical books - absolutely not. Amazon demonstrated all too clearly what can (and will) happen. Their deletion of "1984" and "Animal Farm" (how ironic) shows both a capability and willingness to prevent my ownership and ability to read books. Refund be damned.
What does one do when formats shift and/or become obsolete (DRM preventing migration to a newer device)? Or what if the eBook dies (much more likely than a paper library becoming unusable), taking my library with it. Do I get to replace all those "soft" books for free?
I consider eBooks flawed fatally. I won't be participating. Ministry of Truth indeed.
This is a preemptive reply to the ten million people who are about to post variations on the following theme
"e-books should only cost a few dollars because they don't have the cost of printing/shipping/storing a book"
This is wrong.
This is wrong because actually printing a book is the smallest cost involved in making one. When you look at the price of, say, a $35 hardcover book perhaps $4 is physical costs. Almost all of the cost of a book is the cost of paying the author/editor/proofreader plus the retail markup. These costs remain the same regardless of format.
And you will note that I have not mentioned publisher's profit. That's because there basically isn't one. Publishing is notorious for having no profit margin. Always has been. It was famous for not making money a century ago, famous for it fifty years ago and still a great way to get well known while losing money today. Publishing is not the music industry and it is not the movie industry. Almost all the profit is spent in up-front costs before the product even hits the streets.
Because of this, publishing has always had a very sane pricing policy. First they publish the hardcover for a high price point. Everyone who can't wait to read it buys it. Then if it is popular enough to pay off the costs six months or a year later they produce a softcover for $10 to pick up everyone who didn't want it enough to pay the hardcover costs.
Now, this doesn't mesh very well with the electronic music or video markets which is why Amazon tries to run with a fixed price point. But that's a nuts way of doing things when you are talking about books. Doesn't work because it doesn't pay off the fixed costs involved in paying the people who produce the books.
So, really, a fair e-book price is about $5 less than whatever it is selling for on the shelf. When a book first comes out that means $30-$40. A year or so later $6 is pretty likely. If you can't stand waiting don't bitch about the higher price.
For a real understanding, check out this post from John Scalzi (author) that is really fantastic
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/01/30/a-quick-note-on-ebook-pricing/
I download eBooks for free from various sites, then print and bind them using my employer's resources.
The people who produce paper, toner and comb binding equipment can't lose. Not to mention that my employer pays someone good money for the bandwidth I consume.
Sounds like much ado about nothing.
I wouldn't have an issue with them making a bigger profit on items, if they actually took the time to look for new authors. Instead we have authors who talk about how hard it was to get someone to even read their work, who then go on to be best sellers multiple times over. Jim Butcher comes to mind, he has two series that I know of "Dresden Files" and "Codex of Alera", I enjoyed both series of books. But his story is that he had to go to multiple conventions, meeting personally with agents over many years to get noticed. And after all that, the only reason they considered him was because he had three books ready to go.
They are in the business of publishing books, and yes I understand that they need to filter out stuff. But when someone can be overlooked for years and then go on to be a best seller multiple times over......and they still complain about profits. Well that tells me they don't WANT to find new material to publish for profit, they WANT to sell what they already have access to and cut out the part where they have to actually find new material, edit, revise, advertise, and publish.
Im sure those existing authors they continue to draw on are realizing that they are worth a whole lot more to their publishers when the publishers never look for new material/authors, and probably cutting into their profits with shiny new contracts. I doubt it even made them consider changing their ways.
Even though ebooks are definitely the future I think people will always buy hardback and paperback books because there's nothing like actually having it in your hands, unless of course we cut down all the trees.
I hate dead tree books.. they are heavy, awkward to hold, no backlite, no search
I hate ebooks. expensive, you don't own them, needs power
I hate books. too long, full of pointless drivel. every chapter repeating the last.
text is too low a bitrate for me... I get bored easly.
also, I have an hypothesis. People with Myopia usually like to read , because upclose they see better, with less effort. I have hypermetropia, and for me to focus on near objects requires a lot of effort giving me huge asthenopia (even with the correct glasses). And because of that I hate to read long books.
audio-books are even worse... I can't concentrate on a guy reading a dumb text in a monotone voice. and when they have actors, they usually suck
I like reading wikipedia entries for books.. it sums it up pretty nice for me. really compressed bitrate (thou lossy)
How is this NOT price fixing? They use licensing semantics to do an end run around the idea, but in the end it's price fixing. Last I heard, anti competitive practices like that are illegal in the United States.
Burn Hollywood Burn
According to sources, horse drawn carriage makers are complaining. "'"We don't like the Ford Model T selling at $850.00," they said. "But we think it really devalues transportation, and it hurts all the retailers of the horses and carriages.'" '"We don't like the Edison model of selling electric lights," Captain Ahab said. "I think it really devalues home lighting, and it hurts all the hunters of whales."
Hey guess what, it is cheaper to produce and distribute an electronic file than it is to cut down trees, chip trees up into pulp, soak pulp in chemicals, dry pulp into thin sheets, run thin sheets through monster machine that presses ink onto sheets, pile sheets in specific order on top of each other, cut sheets to uniform size, bind sheets together with glue with a thicker cover sheet/cardboard/particle board, put bound copy in contain with other bound copies, ship around world to store...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The Fox News claim is commonly repeated and is misleading in a broader context. The same study showed that by its measure people who get their news from blogs are statistically indistinguishable from Fox News viewers at how informed they are. Indeed, both Fox viewers and blog readers are very close to the average level for people in the US. If you look at the data what is actually really bringing the average down seems to be the people who either have no regular news source or who are getting their news primarily from local TV news. There are other details about that study that make the claim about Fox News not nearly as bad when you look at in context. And now the plug:For a more detailed analysis see my blog entry on this subject: http://religionsetspolitics.blogspot.com/2009/06/bloggers-fox-news-and-informed-audience.html. Fox News is wretched and is damaging America in many ways. But it is very hard to see this study as evidence for that fact.
Make me want to detonate a global EMP.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
What about the power part? real books don't need them!
You have to ask yourself how much energy it takes to produce a book. Certainly they contain quite a bit of energy...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some information has a large cost associated with its creation.
Not much though. e.g. Most film production is horrendously inefficient. ~$100M to put a single story on screen? Really?
It's about time they had the chill winds of some real competition. The only reason they're able to get away with it is that with mass marketing they can spread the huge cost over a huge number of people.
The people creating the book are likely getting the same royalties they would regardless as to the medium. Since they're the ones actually producing the creative content, they shouldn't really care how it gets sold, as long as it sells.
If you're talking about movies, then you really need to examine how many people actually create them get screwed over by production companies and get left with little to no monetary gain for their time and effort. In fact, what artist or technical person involved in creating a movie isn't subject, at some point in their career, to bend over for the people producing it, because they didn't understand the idea of "gross" vs "net", or because the movie had one scene that was "too racy" for the company?
The production houses have been abusing the people who work for them, distorting their visions and screwing them out of money for decades. There's no reason to give them the money, when we can buy it in a medium where the money given to the people actually doing the work and creating the product, and absolutely not giving it to the companies that have mostly been screwing them over for such a long time.
STOP CALLING THEM DEAD TREE BOOKS, if you used hemp fiber you wouldn't be killing a tree, and no one seems to cry when a pot plant gets smoked....wake up.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Except the reality is that only a very few actually make an "obscene profit". The vast majority of books, films and music wither and die with very little revenue. For every Dan Brown or J.K. Rowling there are a thousand other writers who will never make even a part-time wage for their works.
Book publishing is an expensive business and e-books level the playing field considerably. The three biggest costs in book production are (not necessarily in this order):
1. Printing
2. Marketing
3. Distribution
A publisher needs to have confidence that a book will sell X copies at Y price in order to know that they will at least break even on publishing it. And I guarantee you that every publisher has a warehouse full of books they guessed wrong on and nobody bought. But those costs are sunk. They pay get pennies on the dollar at the paper recycler but otherwise they've blown a lot of cash printing books they never sold.
As on-demand, and now e-book, publishing has become more and more viable the break-even point has come WAY down and books that would never have seen the light of day are getting their chance.
And publishers should LOVE eBooks - it takes printing and distribution largely out of the equation and means far greater profits off a much lower price. I wouldn't mind if my publisher did Kindle versions of my books, that's just one more medium and a much higher net profit from the books.
-B-
Some information has a large cost associated with its creation.
Just because something cost a lot to make doesn't mean it has a high value. The Phantom Menace was made on a budget about ten times higher than that of the original Star Wars.
They just might get marginalized a bit. Lots of people still prefer paper, paper books still look better on the bookshelf or coffee table, lots of people would rather read a paper book at the beach or poolside. There will always be a market for paper books - it just may shrink a bit as cost-conscious consumers sometimes choose the eBook option.
Frankly some of my friends who buy eBooks will ALSO buy the print edition of books they really like. And some will get the free sample chapter on their Kindle then go out and buy the paper version if they like it. Even better for publishers.
-B-
Murdoch's comments read like quotations from "Atlas Shrugged". He's like James Taggart whining about how it is unfair for others to compete with he and his friends.
I will just continue going to my public library free of charge....
eBook: $10.00
# times you can loan: 0
# years you can own: probably 10
Resale value: $0.00
Paperback: $7.00
# times you can loan: personal best, oh, about 10
# years you can own: personal best, 34
Resale value: personal best, $27.00
Yeh, I can see how eBooks are undercutting paperbacks.
Hardcovers? Who buys hardcovers?
... or does Murdoch think books are just thicker newspapers?
This is exactly what he's been saying about (his) papers. However, I don't think it holds for books. People do actually like books and collecting them on bookshelves. They're unlike newspapers in many important ways.
I actually laughed out loud reading the headline. He thinks he's selling entertainment, but the joke's on him. He's the entertainment.
My webcomic
"I'm afraid this automobile thing will devalue the horse, so we should outlaw it"
This must have been what it was like when the library was created. All the publishers were upset no one would go and buy their books. In fact I imagine that the very concept if it didn't already exist, of the library would cause an unimaginable shit storm now.
I bring this up because the library in direct competition with publishers desires to sell more books. However, people still buy books. People still have bookshelves - and people still want to put books on those shelves.
eBooks are a new medium - they compete in a way with paper books. However nothing will replace the paper book and the book shelves at home, at least not for my generation.
I don't really understand how the publishing companies can't increase their profit margins on eBooks - there is a whole physical plant that can be done away with if they would just embrace the eBook. If amazon and apple are taking too much profit for doing very little - then the publishing companies should kick em' where it hurts.
Just not in my house. I might download a PDF, but if I'm paying I want a tangible book. I want something that I can read without the publisher having the ability to revoke it or remotely deactivate it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
After which he went on to berate Smithers before tapping his fingers together and saying "eeexcellent"
Isnt that the whole idea?! To save the trees ?
Hi,
First of all i have to mention that i am addicted to reading.
This was already a problem as a kid: Once i was ill my aunt gave me five books as a gift. The next morning i called her and asked for more. In a hindsight, this was really embarrassing.
But once i started earning good money, this problem has multiplied. I am running out of shelf space. With my marriage i gave away about 1.000 books to friends just to have a little space for my wifes books.
So started with ebooks as a measure of self defence. I started with the Iliad Irex about 3-4 years ago. Since then i purchased several hundred ebooks. The good thing is: i drive on vacation without any fear of running out of input.
Therefor i am very interested in everything that concerns costs of books.
I totally hate any kind of DRM. Since i started i went through several different reader. Any restriction to move a book with me feels like theft. This one reason my favorite publisher is Baen. They have the most honest approach towards the reader. I think Eric Flints Introducing the Baen Free Library gives the best summary on that topic ever written.
I also worked as author, editor and publisher for books (on a very small scale). Therefor i know how much money is in the production (very little) and distribution (a lot) process and how little ends up with the authors. So i think that ebooks will greatly improve the percentage an author will get from the book sales (but not the overall revenue).
Current contracts give authors a certain percentage of all revenue. So it is in the interest of publishers and authors to get the prices as high as possible. But while the publishers still get the same share, they do a lot less for the sale of an ebook than for one of a paperback.
So at this point customers are on the side of Amazon, that an ebook should cost significantly less than a paper based book.
Currently the frontlines run between Amazon and the customers on one side and publishers and authors on the other. But the authors are not on that side due to their own interest but due to the current publishing system. I don't think that this situation will remain static. The publishers are bound to loose the authors as allies and then the fight next.
A typical question is: It's the same book, why shpould the reader pay less for an eboook?
It is the same book but it is not the same service. With a paper based book, they have to print it, ship it through the world, provide shelf space in the bookstore, pay the cashier guy,...
The transport of an ebook is by a factor 1.000 cheaper than a paper book, the cashier is fully automated, it does not take shelf space,....
If the producer has less costs, the product should become cheaper.
Where i agree: The author provides the same service, so he/she should get the same amount as before.
Who works less is the publisher and the bookstore. They should get less for an ebook.
The problem is the typical contract between author and publisher. Usually there is a certain fix percentage of the revenue (no matter wether ebook or paper book) designated for the author. While the percantage of an author at a book is around 10-15%, it should be higher (e.g. 30%) for ebooks. Of course the publishers are not in favor....
Publishers dislike ebooks not just due to the prices. If ebooks become too popular, the need for publishers is decreasing. An author could go just directly to Amazon without the help of publisher. Currently an ebook will not sell very well if there is no paper book to create demand. But this will change. The publishers (like the RIAA before them) wants to fight it. But they will have as much success as fighting entropy....
Personally i am totally in favor of the development. The service i am interested in is someone like Pat writing fascinating novels. I am also willing to pay for the editor and the distribution. But i am not interested in trees getting chopped down and trucks blowing carbon dioxide into the air while carrying harcovers.
CU, Martin
I'm sure someone has mentioned this before- but I'm too lazy to read all 150 comments. But to keep in line with Murdochs thinking here, then maybe we should go back to Horse and Buggy since the Motor Vehicle put them out of service. In fact lets go back mail order catalogs and banish the internets e-commerce, since those have been put out of business.
If anyone actually READ TFA....
He's a private party negotiating with another private party.
He objects to his customers cannibalizing his business through unfair competition.
At no point does TFA make any sort of reference to him trying to outlaw anything.
Amazon is putting downward pressure on book prices, and since Murdoch - like most slashdotters - expects old style book publishing to remain a viable business, it makes sense for him to want to resist long term devaluation of his product.
Value is based on the principal of scarcity. With print medium the publishers could control the scarcity, AND create the demand through marketing, thereby increasing the value i.e. the price. But when talking about profit margins, I will hazard a calculated guess and say that e-books are far more profitable even at the lower price point.
The real issue here is that Murdoch and other redundant publishers no longer get to control the scarcity in the market, plus with the lowered cost barriers to market entry, a LOT more fish are now feeding in the same pond.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
Price fixing is when multiple producers of a similar product collude to fix the price at which all of them will sell.
That's essentially what Amazon is trying to do.
It's not price fixing to sell to your wholesale customers in a contractual arrangement that includes a retail price floor.
This is called business.
Mr. Murdoch points out that those darn automobile companies devalue horse drawn buggies and threaten to put them out of business.
They should fire the proofreaders as a start as I frequently see a lot of errors including lots that a spellchecker could have caught if it had been used. Sell the eBook first and make it easy to submit errata found back to the publisher. Make it so the books can be easily updated as problems are fixed. When the book stabilizes then make a hardback version. The authors I've talked to have told me they make very little for a book. So if the author is making $1 for a $20 book and the publisher isn't making anything you're telling me the editor is making most the buck? Obviously MSRP is usually something like 50% - 100% markup over what the publisher sells the book for so you're saying that a book they sell for $10 and pay the author $1 that there is absolutely no profit in that other 9$? Even if they aren't paying for printing, distributing, etc? If that is so they must be horrible inefficient. I run eCommerce businesses for a living and typically we sell products for 3% - 14% over our price and still manage okay. I'd guess we sell a lot fewer units than any major publisher so I doubt they are seriously hurting. I doubt they are losing a large part of their sliver of income in credit card fees and such either. Which comes to the reason why retailers sell for low margins these days. With global competition you can't sell most products at 100% markup anymore. Lower your prices and you sell more units and make more money. Of course that is balanced by how many people are interested in buying your product at any price and as a retailer we balance for that by trying to choose hotter items, selling a wider range of items, building customer loyalty, and trying to build our customer base. I'm sure a successful publisher would behave in a similar way. Make books people want to read. Court authors that are popular. No surprise there. Make more books on more topics. Maybe sell something besides just books. Publishers should be looking into semi-interactive books I think. This is a concept that has finally come and they should be getting on board. I've bought lots of kids game/books for iPod this way but I don't think it has to be just for kids. Books that are in a series are an obvious idea for publishers. If a customer reads book #1 and it's good then probably they'll want to read books #2 - #9 too. Possibly the hardest thing for publishers is to encourage more people to read. Cheap eBooks would seem a really good way of doing that. Cheap + easy to get means it's more interesting to consumers. Pushing books on kids and funding reading programs is another good method. Making semi-interactive books may be a good way of growing interest too as it broadens the appeal. All you really need is an author and an editor and a PC each. Anything else can be cut if their profits are really that low. All in all it's nothing surprising but I call bullshit on publishers if they claim they can't sell eBooks cheaper and still do good business.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The people creating the book are likely getting the same royalties they would regardless as to the medium.
[ Citation Needed ]
"We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99[...]"
Well then... Tough Titties.
Eric Flint and Jim Baen have already refuted Mr. Murdoch's contention with hard sales figures for real books. When electronic versions are made available for free, in a non-DRM-protected format, sales of paper editions increased.
1) If you want to charge me $15 for an ebook, I would like to get the ebook immediately, followed by the real printed book in snail mail. Don't care how long it takes to arrive, as long as it does.
2) If you want to charge me $15 for a paperback, I would like to be able to register online somehow and also download the ebook.
ie: the ebook costs practically fuck all to duplicate and distribute. Leverage that advantage and turn it into a bonus.
I will not pay $15 for an ebook, ever. Especially if it's festooned with DRM. I will wait until the paperback is out (of course, I'm in Australia, where we get royally fucked because of bullshit book distribution laws, so it'll be more like $22 for the paperback, but still).
Yeah, some hardback books retail for $27.95, but many are less than that, and if the book sells enough copies to get to paperback, or starts out as trade or regular paperback, that's a lot _cheaper_ to Amazon than the ebook. On the other hand, the dead trees actually cost the publisher about 1/3 more on an amortized basis, because most hardback books don't sell out their print runs, except for the best sellers, and the publisher eats the cost of the returns.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...that's the only sense of ethics that this S.O.B. lives by.
It couldn't be further from the truth.
Rupert Murdoch has changed the face of media more than any other person in recent history.
He is the world's preeminent media magnate.
I find it disturbing that people keep spewing the same crap about him not being able to change.
Why is it that Macmillan publishers aren't seen as dinosaurs, yet Murdoch - following their lead - is?
Isn't he trying to "change" Amazon's model?
Just remember the current status quo is that online news is free of charge - he is trying to "change" that and he will probably succeed.
Too many people are jealous that he controls so much and when anything that makes the news with him contravening their views, they suggest that it will be his downfall.
I'm not saying I'm happy with it. I'm not saying it's good for anyone.
But just like the music industry, the book industry misses the larger market. With CDs costing 25 bucks a pop, I buy maybe half a dozen a year. If they cost only 10, I would buy them every week with the groceries. Same applies to books - they hit the shelves at 40/50, paperback at 20, and it's out of my "disposal unit price". Sell them at 10, and I'd buy tons of them, my impulse buy threshold has been reached. And the NET profit to the producers goes through the previous "roof".
The premium pricing model you describe aims to retain the "exclusivity" of the product, it's called skimming, and it's fucking stupid that old business insists on clinging to this outdated marketing model when the internet and other cheap comms and tech have clearly changed the way we live our lives. You offer no numbers about the cost of proofreading, and I'm a proofreader, so I know you're full of shit on that score. The retail costs of e-distribution are marginal at best, advertising dirt cheap. This leaves the author and editor, and neither of them really cost that much, except for sponsoring "hookers and blow" for the Murdoch's and prima donnas of yesteryear.
Nice lawn you had there, gran'pa - shame someone put a highway through it, eh?
where's +1 'Used fungible in a sentence' when you need it?
Clueless.
You still can't use you device for that first 20 minutes or so on a plane and you don't have to worry about running out of batteries halfway up Kilimanjaro.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
Sure ebooks hurt the retail merchants but so what? Industries are not protected nor should they be. Buggy builders were slaughtered by the automobile. The telegraph industry was murdered by the telephone and computer industry. Telephone operators were blown out of work by electronic switchboards. Lawn workers were smacked down by gasoline mowers. The list is endless. So just why are we to be concerned about the loss of retail book sellers? Take a peek at movie theaters. In 1930 theaters were absolutely enormous. Today there is no such thing as a theater that seats 20,000. Soon even the small theaters that still exist will probably vanish as the television industry has better and better technology.
I am a huge fan of e-books and audio books. In fact, I went from reading 50-100 printed books per year to reading 3 or less since e-books and audio books won my heart.
This raises the question of archival. To this day, we find scrolls buried in the dead sea. We find clay tablets from Mesopotamia. The death of paper is a real issue since a major world wide energy crisis would mean the permanent loss of information. Let's imagine for a moment that another world war did in fact occur (not too hard to imagine at times sadly). Among the first attacks would be energy sources. After all, no energy = no weapons production. Attacking oil resources is also likely.
Whoever wins such a war might find it in their best interest to keep their opponents in the dark long enough to make them easily controlled afterwards. Energy resources not dependent on the grids would eventually run out. Solar cells and wind mills might keep working, but their resources will not be directed to protecting information, but instead to running hospitals and other critical systems.
Books MUST be printed. It is critical. There needs to be redundant storage houses around the world where at least one copy of each book printed is stored. Even if it's in a cardboard box in an abandoned mine.
What steps are being taken so that once devices like Kindle, iPad and the likes start making "Published direct to e-Book" popular to keep books archived. Amazon, B&N, Borders and others should be required by law that for each book they publish "direct to e-book", they must use their "Print On Demand" systems to produce at least one copy to be stored at archival locations around the world in printed form.
I'm convinced that in countries like Norway (where I live) it is very likely the government would even sponser an archive here. We don't have a library on the scale of the Library of Congress, but we sure do have plenty of abandoned mines that can be used for archival.
I really hope that someone thinks about these problems before it's too late.
ebooks should be $1-3.
mp3s should be 10 cents per song.
flacs should be 20 cents per song.
movies should be $1-10.
games should be $1-10.
all with no drm.
Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
... it's that the basic point... eBooks are SUPPOSED to kill paper books. Or at least replace them, for those who use eBooks. Who will more every year, particularly once the proprietary formats fail and eBooks can be ready by every eBook reader.
As for Hardcover prices... well, there's a difference between the quality and longevity of a hardcover versus the paperback. That's the only true value of the hardcover book. The rest is marketing... the early release... like seeing a film in the theater now, or waiting for the DVD or Blu-Ray later... or the HBO presentation later still.
But that's not true of an eBook... there is virtually no cost of duplication, far cheaper to make than paperbacks. And more restricted, at least with DRM; you can't resell them, or lend them in any real way. You may not be able to annotate them, either. Thus, much less value than a paperback, in the same way that MP3 and AACs are of lower value -- the product itself, then a CD. Some value may be regained at the point-of-sale; they're sold in other ways: singles and impulse... I can buy a piece of a CD, and have it right now. That keeps the basic individual price relative high.. and yet, I've still managed to buy whole MP3 albums on Amazon for $2-$4 each. Which is about the right value, versus an $8-12 CD, or $15-$20 SACD or DVD-Audio Disc.
It's understandable that the publishers don't like this, in general. For one, they understand hardcovers and paperbacks, but can't quite get their heads wrapped around an eBook as being something different. They want it to be a hardcover, Amazon wants it to be a paperback, but delivered at about the same time as a hardcover. I think, in reality, this is a different form, and needs to be treated as such. For one, there are lots of publisher's expenses associated with a hardcover: printing fees, distribution, in-store kiosks, maybe shelving fees, etc. All of these, at the very least, should be subtracted from the retail price and the publisher's piece of the book sale. Otherwise, they're going to be using this as a trick to increase revenues, even though they're performing significantly less of a service.
And in fact, that's the real issue here. The book publishing industry has never been quite as abusive of "the talent" as the record industry, but they still want the bulk of profits if they can get it. If I buy a book, it still lists the author's copyright... most CDs will claim a copyright by the record company, despite their being just another kind of publisher. This has resulted in push-back by artists, some self-publishing, some going all digital or mostly digital. That works, particularly for established artists (Prince, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, etc). The rise of eBooks will enable this same route by writers. Maybe not for awhile.. the eBook reader is a relative new thing, but already at some level of acceptance due to the use of general purpose computers, just as the walkman and similar personal stereos laid the ground for an easy acceptance, then dominance, of the MP3 player/PMP.
-Dave Haynie
what we've been doing for years is: enforcing a fixed price for books. The price depends on the number of pages, and soft vs hard cover.Specialty books (art, school...) are exempt I think. As are second-hand books.
They idea is to keep French authors and editors thriving, and to keep quality up. I think it's kinda working:
- though books are rather expensive, there's a lot of public libraries for when you can't afford them.
- publishers and above all resellers don't care which book they sell, just how many, which gives them an incentive to be neutral and actually try and give good advice. Contrast that to what happens when you set foot in a computer shop, and have the sales-contest-of-the-week crap pushed at you.
- even obscure authors have a chance at making reasonable money off their sales (either for them or their publishers, but that another question).
I'm not a fan of regulation, but I do think books make a reasonable exception.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
No! Information is staying at the same price. The distribution costs, the publishing costs, the retail costs, the advertising costs are all going in the toilet. And good riddens, all that shit is (near) worthless anyways! Information is valuable.
The populace generally needs to know that the creators of works aren't losing anything through this digital revolution. In fact they are gaining big time! They can reach way way way bigger audiences first off. Next there is a much lower barrier to entry, so all the little guys can join in. This is also good for avoiding 'selling out' since you won't have an overlord. All wonderful things for us and the creators. Only people missing out are useless vampires sucking the life out of art. If everyone realized this support in crushing the publishers/ w/e dinosaurs would be enormous.
seriously, is there anything these old media fucks won't whine about in the internet age? honestly, i cannot wait for the all to die off.
How is killing less trees a bad thing and have you read an ebook there annoying as hell I would much rather have a paper book.
... the radio star. (Or not.)
sigfault (core dumped)
Jobs fits in because he is now selling eBooks to iPad users at a price agreed with the publishers. While this may smack of "cartel", Amazon's no better -- selling books at a knock-down price to encourage people to buy the expensive Kindle, with the single-minded goal of gaining a monopoly on the market. Looking at the case of MacMillan, Amazon were selling at 66% of the RRP for the eBook. As I understand it, if this became standard pricing, the publishers and authors would end up with less money than for a paper book sale. Technological improvements should reward creators with increased profit and reward consumers with reduced prices.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Paper books do not require an expensive electronic device that includes requiring batteries, and there is no fear of some draconian overlord shutting off your electronic book gadget or deleting books out of it...
no thanks murdick i think i will stick with old fashioned paper/pulp books
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Okay. . , I hate to do this, but I'm going to anyway. . .
Eric Flint is a total bullshit artist.
I read the first of his essays, (#6) and while it was full of smart points illustrating how providing free ebooks actually increases sales of the paper ones (ie, making ebooks and free information a GOOD thing for authors), 'amazingly' he completely failed to mention two of the most significant reasons why sales of his books increased.
1) He's an established author with a couple dozen books out who is an early adopter; while other authors are sitting on their kiesters, waiting to see what the market will do, he's out there. It's easy to get noticed and experience sales spikes when you're one of only a handful of names on the rack.
2. He built the rack! He's using awareness of the whole free-information controversy to propel his name into the spotlight. Heck, the essay itself talked primarily about his own books, mentioning two of his titles a total of 19 times throughout.
Now I have NO problem with self-promotion. It takes gumption and strength to survive as a creative force in this world, and he's going about it in a manner which doesn't involve sucking up to a corporate entity. So good for him! HOWEVER he's being more than a little manipulative and misleading in his approach, because while he may not be anything more than a competent author, (and I'm sorry, but he's not; no ruthless self-promoter is ever more than competent, and sometimes barely that), he IS a smart enough man to know that if a given market is flooded with titles, then normal market forces apply, so you'd better get there first and make a lot of noise because that's your window of opportunity before the flood buries everybody.
Just because Nine Inch Nails can clean up by adopting a semi-open source model doesn't mean that your talented musician friends are going to sell more than fifty CDs this year doing the same thing.
Which isn't to say that free models can't work. It's just that Eric Flint's argument isn't entirely clean.
-FL
I might be able to consider his point of view if I didn't feel as if I was getting ripped off with paper based books. On many occasions new books have come out that I wan't to read that are in those horrible big hardcover sizes but are made like paperbacks with hard cover prices. That I do not like. Often these books take far longer to come down to a manageable size than the hardcover to paperback transition that used to happen in a timely manner. Not requiring a massive bag to carry around something to read would be nice when I have some travelling to do but want to travel light.
Both models have their place, or in the words of Thomas Edison "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."
You are mis-interpreting Edison - this statement does not at all represent the Murdoch model. If it did Edison would have said "We will make electricity so cheap that the candlemakers will have us banned". All Edison is saying is that if they can make electricity cheap enough then, given its inherent advantage over candles, why would anyone want to use them? He is not suggesting that anything be forced upon people like Murdoch is i.e. he is not saying that he wants to kill candles, just that most people will probably not want to use them in most cases because electricity will be so much cheaper.
This is exactly what I think will happen with books: nobody wants to set out to deliberately kill paper books but in the future I would imagine that only very popular "classic" books will end up in physical, high quality bindings and that the cheap paperback novels of today will be replaced by electronic media simply because eBooks are cheaper to make and more convenient.
Murdoch would like nothing more than to kill paper (newspaper, books, etc.) and replace it with digital. Pulp and printing equipment are increasingly expensive, and it's no secret he despises the paperworker unions that control his labour costs. Plus he likes the idea of DRM.
I wish I could find the quote of his that sums this up nicely.
In reading the commentary for this post I see that there are a lot of common misconceptions about e-books, and particularly e-book durability, that continue to be perpetuated. I thought I would inject some real-world, long-term experience on the subject as well as on the progression and viability of the market.
I bought my first e-book in 1998, to read on my Palm 5000, from a little retailer/publisher called Peanut Press. This book was called "Sister, Sister".
Luddites would suggest that I would have long ago lost access to this book. After all, since that time I have switched to a Palm V, then a pair of Handsprings, then a Sony Cleo, then a Palm T|X, then an iPod touch, and today use an iPhone and a Kindle. I lost or destroyed the Palm V, one of the Handsprings, and a Kindle along the line. As it turns out I can still read that book on all of my current e-book capable devices today.
In short, the reading device is ephemeral; possession of the book is orthogonal to the possession of the device. Most e-book critics either do not know this, do not understand it, or deliberately ignore it but it is the case.
To elaborate: Back when I bought my first e-book the Palm could hold about four books in its memory, but my PC could hold a large personal library's worth -- thousands. I could burn a CD with a collection of perhaps 500 books at a shot. Today an extensive personal library will fit on a $5 thumb drive you can buy at the grocery store. As such, having back-ups of your books is both easy and very very cheap. Moreover, unlike the digital music industry, retailers allow you to re-download books you have purchased -- giving you offsite backups in the normal course of things, and protecting your library even from disasters such as floods or fire that would destroy a paper library utterly. Rather than being at a disadvantage e-books, in the best cases, are much more durable due to the ease of copying.
E-books do have a new kind of loss, that of loss of access to the content because the e-book's file format becomes unreadable in one way or another. This will usually happen because the format becomes obsolete or because the format is protected with DRM such that you don't have access to it if, say, you switch devices. This is a real risk, but it's worthwhile to see how this risk has played out over the long term. I've seen it play out several times over at this point.
Early on there were a whole bunch of different e-book formats, and some dedicated devices, and if you picked the wrong one you could be completely out of luck when the industry moved on to something else. I have lost one book entirely as a result of purchasing it in Adobe e-book format, the only format the publisher allowed it to be sold in. This was a horrific format in terms of how restrictive its DRM was, how poor Adobe's reader software was, and in terms of Adobe's ongoing support. Their reader was almost unusable and wrecked formatting, even to the point of breaking in the middle of words at the end of a "page", even though the book loading process required you to spend many minutes waiting for it to be "formatted for your device." After about a year Adobe modified the format in an incompatible way, and required conversion, and the conversion tools were extremely difficult to use. On top of all of that the DRM format was so restrictive that losing the one device that was authorized to read the content caused total loss of the content. Given the poor reading experience it was unsurprising that this format died quickly (and, frankly, Adobe should be ashamed of themselves to have done such a bad job of it).
That represents the worst experience for an e-book. But that is in no way the norm, not then and certainly not today.
Most of today's formats, even the Kindle format (which is, after all, just a minor modification of Mobipocket), allow both DRM restricted and open encoding. There are really only two surviving formats: ePub and Mobipocket, and both are supported on a huge range of devices
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
An e-book won't survive the beach
And we retain the right to resell our used copies...
Otherwise we just buy the paper books and force the publisher to waste money on printing, paper, ink, transportation, filing, over runs, etc.
The reality is the eBooks cost the publishers far, far less than paper books.
I know. I was a publisher and editor for decades.
Having creamed a vast fortune off us by re-selling other people's content (often at a considerable mark-up and with unfair practices), Murdoch is again whining that the world is changing and he can't see how to work the new one to his advantage.
Well guess what? That's one of the reasons it's changing.
I've just completed a SF book, playing some centuries in the future, where the electronic tablet-style reader/clipboard is ubiquitous. (Might I also add that this book comes from the Bean free library and is stored on a micro SD card, together with a good-sized bookshelf's worth of its ilk, and being read on my VGA-resolution PDA (sans phone).)
While I do think that that's a good way to store and read texts that you'll probably never read a second time, as opposed to the dead tree version, and while I think that size, robustness (reading in the bathtub - or shower), and battery life issues are probably going to be resolved by and by, I do not think that e-book readers are anything but a transitional phase which we will have outgrown in a century or so at the latest.
Why have a specialised device that can only do one thing? I find my PDA much more convenient, as it allows me to do word processing, spreadsheet calculations, browsing, address book and appointments, music, games, book reading, etc. etc. I've found that convergence is not a bad thing (AS LONG AS the functions are still performed adequately!).
The main game changer will be heads-up displays. I mean unobtrusive, mainstream, and of an adequate resolution. At that point you don't need to lug around a large display - optics handle the size - and computing becomes wearable. A processing unit as large as a modern mobile will provide sufficient power for most tasks and is easy enough to carry around.
So my bet is that digital functions will become closer and closer integrated with humans, and will probably be all but invisible in a century or so. Paper books? What a quaint idea. E-book reader? Your HUD in for repairs dude? Poor you. People vacantly staring into the distance on the subway, some twitching fingers at times? Quite possible.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
...but in the future I would imagine that only very popular "classic" books will end up in physical, high quality bindings and that the cheap paperback novels of today will be replaced by electronic media simply because eBooks are cheaper to make and more convenient.
Which is particularly funny because currently "the classic books" can be had for free in electronic format whereas "cheap paperback novels" cost $10.
Never let a mediocre career stand in the way of a good time
To create a good boook, you need: 1) A good writer 2) ok editor That's how it worked for centuries. And neither 1) nor 2) is expensive.
Just imagine a couple centuries ago some powerful guy saying: "let's not invest in this train stuff, or it will kill our horse drawn carriages market".
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love paper books but, damnit, Murdoch is a greedy bastard.
What about the power part? real books don't need them!
You have to ask yourself how much energy it takes to produce a book. Certainly they contain quite a bit of energy...
While the link you posted is interesting, the rest of your comment seems to be very misleading: you don't take out the energy that's been put in during manufacturing, you take out that nature has put in it during the growth of a tree. The energy during manufacturing is spent to move around material and align it an orderly fashion, not to increase the chemical energy contained in the ingredients.
What a f*cken moron that guy is, really ...whining about not having to spend so much money to print on paper and cause pollution world wide, he should be shot. Poor buddy can't afford another rolls, so let's complain instead of making proper decision making and cutting budget in places where
it would benefit his company (his large yearly bonus for example)
I read in the bathtub you insensitive clod!
an ebook could kill me!
Sorry, but I find this quite uninformed:
"It's understandable that the publishers don't like this, in general. For one, they understand hardcovers and paperbacks, but can't quite get their heads wrapped around an eBook as being something different. They want it to be a hardcover, Amazon wants it to be a paperback, but delivered at about the same time as a hardcover. I think, in reality, this is a different form, and needs to be treated as such. For one, there are lots of publisher's expenses associated with a hardcover: printing fees, distribution, in-store kiosks, maybe shelving fees, etc. All of these, at the very least, should be subtracted from the retail price and the publisher's piece of the book sale. Otherwise, they're going to be using this as a trick to increase revenues, even though they're performing significantly less of a service."
I've been in the publishing industry in some way, shape, or form since 1998, when I made my first article sale. My first book sale was in 2000 - and the reason I'm telling you this is because my first book sale was the Diablo e-book that launched the entire Blizzard fiction line. So, I have some inkling about what was going on behind the scenes - I was there.
The first thing you have to understand is that publishers are early adapters. There have been several revolutions behind the scenes, such as using email for manuscript submissions, electronic presses, and print-on-demand. So, when the e-book looked like it was going to make a massive impact on the way we read, and might even replace the print book, they decided to see what this thing could do. And believe me, they picked up on the whole "reduced production costs" right from the get-go. This was back around 1999-2000. Certain publishers launched e-book projects to push the format and see how far it would go, and the others watched very carefully.
My e-book, Demonsbane, was commissioned in large part to help in the attempt to blow open the market. It was carefully selected, both in content and length. To prevent possible reader fatigue, the word count was limited to 30,000 words. The franchise it was based on had just sold over a million copies of Diablo II, and had a large group of tech-savvy people on Battle.net who were likely to be early adapters. So, built in fan base - check. Tech-savvy potential customers - check. Distribution across several formats and from several online resellers - check. Behind the scenes, the editor, myself, and even my favorite author, had worked our collective hindquarters off to make sure it was a good read. The only thing that wasn't going for this book was that I wasn't Stephen King. If something was going to take off and be a success, it was this e-book. It even launched on Halloween, 2000, and was advertised for months on Battle.net.
It tanked.
All the noise about there being a massive e-book market was just noise. The factors I mentioned helped - and Demonsbane sold a couple of hundred copies per year while other e-books were selling two or three copies in the same time. Across the board, e-book attempts failed, and by 2003 publishers had identified e-books as a niche market, good for some inexpensive marketing more than anything else.
Now, others here have already dispelled the fallacy that the major cost is production and distribution - so I won't go into details there. But...
Ten years later, we can track the progress of the e-book. According to the latest figures from the Association of American Publishers, the e-book occupied 2.26% of the total book market in November 2009. That's it. The audio book did marginally better. The majority of the market prefers a printed book - and your customers dictate to you, not vice versa.
So, publishers DO understand the e-book and what it's capable of. They're not dinosaurs.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
The medium might be changing, but the concept of a book isn't going anywhere.
However, paper books will be around for another couple generations at least. And then they might go the way of vinyl.
The wonderful thing about paper books is that they're easy to read and don't require batteries.
Trade off? They take up physical space. Kill trees (a renewable resource anyway).
Personally I use a mix of both. I prefer technical manuals in e-book but damned if I'll read my fiction on a glowing box. Print doesn't strain my eyes as hard and won't run out of power during long reading sessions. :)
Then why do I pay the same per song as if I would by the whole CD? 99 cents ain't cheap. He has kept prices the same. Granted that is an achievement when the music industry wanted to RAISE it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No DRM and multiple formats - you can download the book later in a different format if you change devices. I got an ipod touch, set it up so it can access their store using the Stanza e-reader software and download any book I had purchased from my wireless network. Easy. Free library - usually offering the first book in a series (or back catalogue books) And authors have found their sales go UP when they offer the books this way for free. Great price point - most books are 6 bucks, 15 dollar webscription gives you 5-6 books which combines 2-3 new books with 2-3 older ones. Baen's webscriptions is the whole reason I got into ebooks - and I buy their monthly webscription every month and several package deals and individual books every year. I can get books immediately, carry a large amount around with me on a small device, and then read them whenever I get the chance. (30 mins reading when I'm on the subway, 10 minutes reading waiting for the dentist, etc) They've even in the past released hardcover books that came with a CD full of ebooks. Getting some of these books free hasn't stopped me from paying them - it's in some cases gotten me introduced to authors I wouldn't have tried if I had to buy a 19.99 book - and then I've gone and bought all of their books after reading the one free one.
He says that this hurts retailers of hardcover books, well good.
Hardcover books have been subverted into a restrictive market scam to allow them to charge double or more for a book in first the year of publication. I'll be glad to see an alternative to that.
If I have a paper book and I think a friend of mine will enjoy it, I can hand the book off to them when they are done. If they have a friend who will enjoy it, they can pass it along, etc. With a paper book, once I'm done with it I can take it to a used book store and they will give me a small amount toward the purchase of another book.
eBooks completely destroy the second hand book market. A paper book has some intrinsic value to others beyond the original purchaser. In my mind, that alone makes it worth ~$15+ (hard cover).
Anyone who is willing to pay a similar amount for an eBook as they would pay for a physical book isn't very smart.
It looks like eBooks are looking to make a big push into the classroom. Textbooks are already ridiculously expensive. Does anything think that electronic textbooks are going to be any less expensive? What will happen to the large number of students who are currently buying used text books? That entire market disappears.
# times people see the cover and start talking to you about: 2x per book.
# times you can scribble a comment in the margin: not infinite but a lot.
# times you find a rare first edition: 1.
# times you can get the author to sign your copy: 1.
# times you can crack the spine of your virgin book: 1.
# times you can buy a paper book for the price of kindle: 40.
# times you inherited a book from your great-grandmother you never met because of WW2: 1.
Oh and no point for an ebook list with the same because they would ALL be 0.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here's the business:
Amazon Buys books at $14 from the publisher. Then sells them for $10. Murdoch doesn't like this arrangement, so Murdoch will be responsible for the venture capital and will help to fund a business called LossLeaderWhacker (first name go round... sorry, I know it stinks as a name). LossLeaderWhacker's purpose is to buy up lossleaders on behalf of the wholesaler who sold them in the first place. In this case, LLW would buy up ebooks from Amazon. Then, LossLeaderWhacker could turn around and sell the books for $9. So Murdoch makes atleast $4 a book, but as much as $13. I say "as much as" b/c Amazon could always contract out LLW to strike back and buy those $9 books and sell them for $8. And so on until $0 (or until they pay us to take them!).
By only buying the loss leading products (that Murdoch doesn't want sold at a loss anyway) he can make his point WITHOUT having to quit selling the product to Amazon. Done at enough volume it could certainly make a point. And while this would not work nearly as well with tangible goods for various reasons (shipping, warehouseing, etc), it could certainly work some something that is simply transmitted down a wire.
Amazon can choose to (1) quit carrying the product or (2) raise the price to something they won't lose money on every time (3) keep doing the same thing and bleed to death $4 at a time.
My present is the activity I am currently engaged in with the purpose of turning the future into a better past.
lol yeah right lot's of ppl hate ebooks. Books have survived a long time, longer then tapes,cd,and mp3. Not likely print will go away.
To quote Confucius: To get old and not die: a parasite!
The paperback edition will eventually cost less than the 9.99 to 14.99 that Macmillan wants to charge.
While it is true that MacMillan claims that their model will have dynamic pricing that will drop the price from the $15 starting price eventually down to $6, I don't believe it. If you look at MacMillan ebooks, you'll find most of them are still priced at hardback prices even years after the mass market paperback has been released. For example, consider the backlist Kinsey Millhone mysteries by MacMillan author Sue Grafton (i.e., all but the most recent one that's not yet been released in MMPB). I compared the prices at MacMillan, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Fictionwise, and Books on Board. MacMillan is charging $7.99 for all of the MMPBs, and $14 for all of the ebooks. The other ebook stores are probably the top selling ebook stores after Amazon. There are probably 50 titles between these 4 stores, and about a dozen are at or below the MMPB price, about a dozen are selling for over $20, and the rest are selling for between $10 and $17. Randomly looking at other fiction at MacMillan's website, if they sell an ebook edition, unless it's only been published as a MMPB, the ebook is almost always priced higher than a MMPB.
Second, despite SF and Fantasy readers tending to be early adopters of tech devices like ebook readers, very few of MacMillan's SF/F imprint Tor/Forge are released as ebooks. About 3 years ago, Tor did some experiments with Webscriptions (primarily associated, but not exclusively, with Baen), but Tor's parent company shut it down. In addition, MacMillan's CEO refuses to sell ebooks to libraries http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/21/technology/in-lean-times-e-books-find-a-friend-libraries.html.
I don't doubt that ebook pricing is somewhat broken, and Amazon is part of the problem. Whether MacMillan likes it or not, the average ebook consumer does not value the ebook to be worth the same price as a hardback, and probably not even as much as a MMPB. You can't sell it, you can't get it signed by the author, you can't loan it, etc. When a best seller is getting heavily discounted by online and bricks and mortar retailers alike, it's unreasonable for MacMillan to expect that the ebook consumer should have to pay two to three times the hardback price, but that's exactly what they are trying to achieve by moving to the agency model where the retailer is unable to set its own price. And if MacMillan continues to overprice ebooks as they are presently doing, ebook consumers will stop buying.
The energy during manufacturing is spent to move around material and align it an orderly fashion, not to increase the chemical energy contained in the ingredients.
This is all true, but I actually posted the comment because I hoped someone else would have an answer, and because I already know that modern papermaking is a horribly energy-intensive operation, but not to what precise degree.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
finally! no more trees cut down for mostly junk literature...
if you are ready to pass some lengthy excerpt providing what may be an important piece of information and perspective just because someone lacks a 'shift key', then you really dont fucking need to read them at all. they wouldnt do you any good. i will leave you to your shift keys and capitalizations.
Read radical news here
He probably had to fire one of his 6 scullery maids. Either that or he's been forced to drive the Rolls instead of the Bentley. Seems his bottom line is shrinking. Poor thing. I feel so bad for him. What's a poor old newspaper boy to do?