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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
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.
"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
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/
Huh? Why do eBooks necessitate DRM in your mind? I've got plenty of eBooks that aren't restricted. And you suggest using PDFs instead. Why don't PDFs count as eBooks? Because they're in your preferred format? PDFs are absolutely useless to read unless you've got a device that will display the whole rendered with of the PDF legibly. Much more useful are formats that allow text re-flowing so you read them on mobile devices with smaller screen-widths.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The study shows that people who get most of their news from Fox News are about as poorly informed as people who get their news from blogs and you don't see that as devastating indictment of Fox New?
Blogs are almost by definition sources of opinion, not news. There is a big difference between the two. If they called it "Fox Televised Blogs" or "Fox Biased Opinions" then I would feel that they were being fair (in their title) but unbalanced. What is most irksome is that they are calling it news when it is actually opinions and propaganda.
I don't see how the context you provide makes it "not nearly as bad". The bottom of the pile is people who get no (non-local) news at all. The next rung up is people who get one-sided versions from blogs and Fox News and then above that is people who get their news from quasi-legitimate news sources.
At least Fox is rather blatant about being totally corporate controlled. The other so-called news sources, NYT, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc. are also corporate controlled but they are just a bit more subtle about it. I haven't looked at the study but I don't consider anyone who gets their news solely from American mainstream media to be well informed.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin