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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
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?
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.
"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
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
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/
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
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.
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-
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?
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
That's funny. I prefer my Kindle for the exact same reason. There's just something I love about sitting on a recliner with my Kindle in my hands, turning the pages as I read, without having to worry about holding down the pages so that the pages don't close on me or damaging the spines of the books permanently by opening up the pages too much.
I'd rather very much focus on the book and its content, as I can with Kindle (or any ebook reader with reflective screen, really), not how I am struggling with its physical manifestation.
where's +1 'Used fungible in a sentence' when you need it?
... 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