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The True Cost of Publishing On the Amazon Kindle
Barence writes "Ever wondered why Kindle newspapers and magazines don't have many photos? PC Pro has done an analysis of the costs of publishing on the Kindle and discovered that Amazon effectively taxes newspapers and magazines for including more images. Amazon applies 'delivery charges' to publishers at the cost of $0.15 per MB/10p per MB. At those prices, PC Pro claims it's cheaper to mail out a physical magazine than have it delivered electronically on the Kindle. What's more, publishers have no control over the price of their newspaper or magazine: Amazon sets the prices itself, leading to huge customer complaints for titles such as The Economist."
An now you know how they can make the 3G whispernet free. They get somebody else to pay for the connection.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Too many precedents have been set lately by allowing manufacturers/distributors to control content. And not just in publishing, either.
It's always confirmation bias!
Between EVIL Amazon and EVIL Apple, I'm running out of tears for the publishing industry.
</sarcasm>
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Why can't users just connect to their home network at download the content from the publishers' websites? This has the stink of bullshit all over it.
... is that images and photos look terrible on a Kindle. Amazon doesn't want you, as the reader, to dwell on that fact.
"At those prices, PC Pro claims it's cheaper to mail out a physical magazine than have it delivered electronically on the Kindle." But that doesn't include the costs of actually printing the physical magazine. Not to defend Amazon though. They're clearly trying to make a buck before commoditization of the industry drives prices down.
There are two things to consider here
1.) Amazon is handling the distribution. If their formula is unreasonable, that is something to kick around but they do need to cover those costs.
2.) The publishers probably cannot "pop it in the mail" for less. The article's author is forgetting about or intentionally ignoring the printing costs.
At the end of the day, the question has to be "Is the publisher getting a better or worse return?" This article (and most others on this subject) neglect that issue entirely. It's easy to bash at Apple's or Amazon's costing formula. It's much harder (and would display a lot of the publishers' proprietary data) to discuss the real fiscal impact on the publishing industry.
Oh, come on... money is not the only resource by which one survives. In fact, it was never meant to have any meaning beyond measuring the value of resources and labor, period. That considered, resources on this planet ARE finite, and I find much more value being able to inhale my entertainment in digits rather than in paper. I can have a single metal and plastic kindle (which, btw, can be powered off a freakin' hand crank (as I did last night when the apartment complex was without power due to a failed upgrade by maintenance.)) replace 10s of thousands of paper items over the course of its useful lifetime. Me, I like to breath oxygen and have the luxury of, you know... EATING FOOD... things that I cannot take for granted in a world that is well beyond sustainable cultivation practices in most every regard. Define 'cost,' because going without a survivable future is too high a price to pay, at least if you ask me.
Dear Amazon,
We want pictures on our Kindle subscriptions, even if they are (currently) only black-and-white on the flagship device. They are often important parts of the content. Please stop, or come to a more reasonable (to you, anyway) conclusion--for example, I would gladly wait until a Wi-Fi connection to download the images if it makes you happy. (And others won't, but I say this as someone who rarely reads such publications and won't want to do so right-now-at-an-airport or something.)
Except you foolishly left Wi-Fi off the new Kindle DX despite putting it on the Kindle 3. Don't do that, either. I'm not going to want to hook it up with USB. (Hey, Wi-Fi would also help with your 3G costs!)
Sincerely,
Your users
R.Mo
Kindle + calibre + torrents = awesomeness. Screw paying for anything.
Too many precedents have been set lately by allowing manufacturers/distributors to control content.
Amazon (and Apple) are not being "allowed" to control content. They have managed to build something desirable to put content on.
They have figured out how to make devices on which people enjoy reading content. A great part of the reason WHY people enjoy reading content on those devices is because of the way the systems have been set up - in Apple's case extreme ease of purchase for applications or content you wish to buy, in Amazon's case that plus free always-connected status.
Neither of those things is free to provide, and content PRODUCERS are welcome to sell content elsewhere or even make competing devices if they so choose. But the truth is there is great value in the path to readers that Apple and Amazon provide, and there's nothing wrong with paying for that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do what I do.
Sit back and laugh at the entire e-reader industry until it figures out how to behave like a real business environment.
One might argue that new-growth trees take carbon out of the air and put it in paper. But would this carbon sequestration have a measurable impact on greenhouse gases?
I think the problem is in the 3G carriers pricing...
I'm trying to work out what dimensions that has (none I think), but mixing dollars with pence like that is enough to make even Verizon wince.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I bought my first Kindle book last week -- "Selected Stories by Philip K Dick"
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0027MJTNS
I'm very unhappy with the Kindle experience.
There are typographical errors on 50% of pages (usually missing spaces between punctuation). And most importantly, the Kindle edition simply LACKS those "blank-line paragraph breaks". In the physical copy I can tell that time has jumped forward or we've switched planet by that half an inch of whitespace. But on the Kindle, it all just flows together and I have to slow down, stop, reverse, and figure out that there should have been a break there.
I'm not sure how Barnes and Noble's pricing structure works, but it's no better there for the end user. For example, here's most of a message I posted on B&N's Nook forum:
I love my Nook, but I'd never pay for a small, electronic, black-and-white version of a magazine when I could get the colorful, ergonomic dead-tree version delivered for half the price. Their subscription model is miles away from making sense for me.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And that is why paper books/publishing isn't going away anytime soon.
~Syberz
US data plans are on the order of $10 a gigabyte.
$.15/MB is cheaper per byte than text messages are. The publishers should be thanking Amazon for that.
It's interesting that The Economist was the example chosen in the original text because I have personally complained about the pricing for that title. Silly me I complained to The Economist and not to Amazon. It is ridiculous that I currently pay $69/year for the print edition (Which also includes access to a podcast where actual humans read the entire paper to me) but if I want it on the Kindle I have to shell out over $125.
Apple saying that you can't sell for a lower price than what you sell in our store. Or Amazon having complete control over pricing.
I just want them to smash their fat faces in a brick wall. You tried selling used college books on that site? It's pure rip-off, both in terms of their cut & the shipping fee that they give you.
I believe that Amazon has the fee in place to provide an incentive to publishers to keep their files small, not because of bandwidth or storage costs, but rather because large files degrade the user experience on the Kindle.
This thread on an end-user bulletin board shows the frustration that users frequently experience because of the device's limited memory. Amazon sells the idea that the Kindle will hold 1500 books despite having only 2 GB or 4 GB of storage, depending on model. Image-rich files, especially if the image compression is not applied with care, can easily exceed the 1-2 MB size that must be reached for that promise to come true.
Rather like the U.S. government rationing gasoline during the second world war despite its abundance. The real goal was to limit tire wear and therefore consumption of rubber.
Doesn't this pricing figure make the assumption that physically making a paper magazine or newspaper costs $0.00?
When you read the Note on the Text for the ebook of LoTR, which was excellently done, you see how much effort it takes to get a good copy. "The Victorian Internet", OTOH, is a crappy OCR. Much of the action took place in "Rritain", and sometimes entire words are rendered as "????" when the OCR broke down.
Best Slashdot Co
It says it's $0.15/MB, but is that per book sent, or for all their books? Because if a book is ~200KB, with one method it costs $0.15 to send 5 copies, and with the other it costs $0.75 to send five copies. This is an important distinction (that might be solved if I RTFA, but)
Why can't users just connect to their home network at download the content from the publishers' websites?
They can. Nothing is stopping anyone from doing that, in fact on a Kindle or iPad you can load PDF or ePub files on it yourself if you like.
But for the same reason I fly instead of walk to New York, people like to get content through automated feeds and directly on a device wherever they are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If the prices Kindle charges are so extortionate, then the publishers should simply refrain from making their content available to Amazon. That they do not, tells me something. If I was in the book- or magazine-selling industry, I'd be getting together with the other heavy hitters and creating my own device.
But then again, I don't understand why MP3-player manufacturers never got together to design a standard interface that could be used to connect to and control their devices.
Since I believe the Kindle and other e-readers have built-in browsers, couldn't the magazine embed links to pictures (or thumbnails with links) that would open up in the browser? This would mean the actual number of bytes delivered with the "magazine" would be fairly low.
That's pretty much how a lot of web sites handle large photos associated with stories.
"There's a sucker born every minute". To spot them see if they're using a Apple or Amazon device. LOL
Hope is the currency of fools
They invented paper?
Paper is still desirable for content I plan just to read once?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Programmer or unix admin? I saw those matched parenthesis -- so which is it?
And pundits say printed magazines are dead. TFA cites the kindle edition of the Economist as costing more than a subscription which includes the print edition and full access to the website. Of course it gives the costs in the UK. In the US the Kindle edition costs $10.49. I semi-regularly buy the print edition from Barnes and Noble for a few dollars less. Thing I notice though is that the Kindle edition seems to be monthly whereas the print edition is weekly. And I bet the web edition, which has the archives, is updated daily.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Economist and other rags amazon pushes out with their prices.
B&N does. B&N sells yearly subscriptions to the "Economist" for $100. That includes the weekly and web editions. When I first saw it on display I wanted to buy a subscription, I didn't because I didn't have the money.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The point was though, why can't users do this, then no one gets charged for file size. The obvious reason for this is that Amazon has to make money.
So "obviously" to you, user convenience and never having to enter a WiFi password means nothing to you.
It's also mysterious how "obvious" it is that Amazon is making a lot of money when they are the ones that have to pay the carrier for the bandwidth to transmit that data.
Man are you going to be confused in the coming years. When you cannot understand the true reason behind a behavior, you lose all ability to predict what people will like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Suddenly that 30% bite from apple doesn't sound half bad.
right?
"Fortune magazine" has the article A fantastic use for Apple's cash about the $60 Billion Apple has. Businesses raised include Disney and Sony, both are publishers. Thinking about it I wonder what the reaction to Apple announcing a buy-out of ABC, CBS, or NBC would be.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Kindle 1 and 2 do not have WiFi hardware.
If Kindles can't download, what good are they? They have to be able to download. Or are you saying downloads can only be done over cellphones? I use mine everywhere, even at home. Bluetooth? Both my cellphone and laptop have that built in.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
SMS messages are carried by photons, which have exactly zero mass. Does that make them undefinably expensive? What the hell was your point anyway?
Balance of Power by Harry Turtledove on the Kindle is a prime example of an eBook plagued by OCR typographical errors. (see user reviews) Yes, somebody ran a spell-checker on the resulting text. The problem is that words are misused throughout. Man becomes men. Commas are in place of periods. It's quite distracting.
I submitted a message to Kindle support about the typos in this title just to give them a heads-up on the issue. Without any discussion, Amazon's off-shored tech support decided to refund my original purchase price and then remove the book from my collection. I wasn't complaining. I wasn't demanding a refund. I just sent them a message to alert them of the sub-par quality of their content conversion process. Instead of wanting to fix the problem, they are choosing to ignore it by dishing out refunds.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Post a link to it, because I can't find it anywhere on their site. Unless you're talking about the print edition, in which case you're missing the point.
Breakfast served all day!
Post a link to it, because I can't find it anywhere on their site. Unless you're talking about the print edition, in which case you're missing the point.
A subscription to the print edition includes access to the online version. What is hard to understand? I actually saw it in a brick-and-mortar Barnes and Noble. But here it is from the Economist:
And like I said B&N sells subscriptions.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
To me, they are offset by the advantages they have over traditional media.
Like being able to read without electricity? Oops, Kindles need electricity. Like being able to stick it in a pocket. I wear cargo pants and shorts but I doubt a Kindle will fit in one of the pockets. On the other hand one can hold a bunch of books, so they save space and weight. That is the only advantage they have that I can think of. A big disadvantage though, to me and a few others, is that reading screens over a period of tyme hurts. Reading these posts I have to glance away maybe a few tymes a minute otherwise my eyes start to hurt. Next then is I'll get a headache as well. Reading paper though I can read and read and read without looking away for many minutes. Occasionally I lose track of tyme reading books and magazines but I rarely do when reading on screen.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm one of those people paying for both; I own a Kindle and several iDevices. I am very happy to pay for them.
And for all of the bitching and moaning, you cannot get the same experience with Android or Sony e-readers (no, no, no, you cannot; you can get some alternative that open-sourcers are happy to prefix with the words "all you have to do" or "you just" which really means "it isn't the same at all").
I've also sunk $1k+ on software in the last year after not buying software and using OSS from 1993 through mid-2009.
Know what? There is a difference. A big difference. There is, in fact, a significant value-add coming from Apple, from Amazon, and from many other sellers of "closed" technologies. Yes, they're also closed. But in many cases they're much faster, much cleaner, much more reliable and stable, and much more accessible than their open alternatives.
I love the iPhone App Store, so there, and what's more, I'm willing to pay a PREMIUM for books that I can get in the Kindle store versus paper. In fact, I'll happily pay 2x-3x as much for the Kindle version, where everything I highlight automatically goes into a clippings file that I can quickly inject into my personal notes database, all text is searchable, and an entire library of texts can be carried with me all the time, with new titles able to be added instantly, the moment I need them, without delay.
Yeah, that's worth money to me.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
HAHA!!! Slashdot has had a number of articles about Apple censoring apps, books, and software.
Being a gatekeeper does not mean you have control over anything, if there are other gates to be entered through. In the end Apple is only keeping the gate of its own garden, not the city - that is why rejection is not control, because content people can still do whatever they want.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I prefer to get stuff from another incredibly more convenient location know as the web.
The thing is, it's really not more convienient. What it is is more available.
I've been an O'Reilly Safari subscriber for quite some time. It's great because I can look at a vast array of technical books, and find some useful stuff on demand.
But, I still prefer to buy electronic versions of the better books, because for reading long sets of text the web is just awful. Never mind the evil Flash reader Safari introduced which you cannot disable on all books, even downloading PDF's (which costs too much) was still inferior to getting a whole DRM free digital copy (which is what many technical publishers offer these days) and being able to use a reader built specifically for the task of reading quickly.
Books are something where any network lag really is noticeable as you have a certain rhythm of reading and variations of that really can distract.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well I own an iPad, and while I can buy books from Apple and Amazon (which I have), I can also load on books and documents from other sources and read those too. In fact there is a document interface in iTunes that allows exactly that.
Yes, that is exactly what I was talking about with buying ePub books (I read them on an iPad and sometimes an iPhone, though I prefer the larger screen for long reading).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually no, it still sucks, dead-tree editions are the ones that are looking attractive right now.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Nice advertisement. But the point is a digital subscription. And you can't get it from B&N.
Breakfast served all day!
Most of the books I wanna buy are *CHEAPER* on real paper than in ebook format. WHAT THE H***?
Ask for a prince on the Kindle that compensates for the bandwidth costs. If your customers think that price is too hight, let they buy your book through another service.
But, anyhow, I doubt anybody will pay attention to that advice, because everybody is quite certanly doing this already.
Rethinking email
And you can't get it from B&N.
Your reading comprehension: F.
Barnes and Noble sells subscriptions and subscriptions include print and online access. I sometimes buy a cop of the print edition off the newsstand, and sometimes it includes a special access code that allows access to the compleat online edition for a week.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?