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."

Comments

Now you know

[Overzeetop]

An now you know how they can make the 3G whispernet free. They get somebody else to pay for the connection.

Re:Now you know

[The End Of Days]

Well, duh. How many people really thought it was an altruistic contribution from the bottom of Amazon's heart?

No surprise there

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

Too many precedents have been set lately by allowing manufacturers/distributors to control content. And not just in publishing, either.

Smallest Violin

[MightyYar]

Between EVIL Amazon and EVIL Apple, I'm running out of tears for the publishing industry.

</sarcasm>

Re:Smallest Violin

[SuricouRaven]

The usefulness of an auction site depends upon the number of users - thus it's almost impossible for a small site to succeed, just because it's small. A similar situation applies in places like social networking or IM services: People won't join unless their friends already have. It's not impossible to break into such a market, but it requires a great deal of luck, excellent management and a lot of capital.

This doesn't apply so much to publishing, but you still have the traditional barriers to entry there: Publishers arn't going to be interested in your distribution system until they consider you a serious contender, which means you need either a ton of money to spend on marketing or the backing of an established and respected player.

Costs

[Elder Entropist]

"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.

Not really a moving narrative

[shogarth]

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.

Re:Not really a moving narrative

[bark]

By the way, the magazines that can be had for less than $18 per year are actually subsidized by advertising. The true cost of printing + mailing a full length (around 100 pages / perfect binding / good paper / good printing) magazine is around $5 - 10 per issue per customer. Add in production/design/content costs, and the actual cost of a single magazine can be anywhere from $20 - 30. If you take a look at the sale prices of unsubsidized (ie magazines with no ads) - you can find that the cheaper magazines use poor quality paper, while the really glossy ones (which are usually high art / high fashion mags) costs around $30 per issue.

Hope this clears up some things.

Re:Please.

[tm2b]

Dear Users,

You are obviously unclear on the dynamics of our relationship.

Love,

Amazon

Not "allowing" anything

[SuperKendall]

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.

I want PARAGRAPH BREAKS and proofreading!

[ljw1004]

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.

Re:I want PARAGRAPH BREAKS and proofreading!

[CRCulver]

The Kindle doesn't lack these things. The edition of the text that you bought lacks these things. Blame the publisher who converted the text into Kindle format, not the manufacturer of the device.

Re:I want PARAGRAPH BREAKS and proofreading!

[cruff]

Indeed, even recently published material that you would think would be available in digital format to begin with seems to have OCR style errors in the Kindle edition. Either that or editors and proof readers aren't doing a very good job. Oh wait, that's always been the case for a lot of publishers.

Nook is no better for end users

[Just Some Guy]

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 was playing with the store on my Nook and was really impressed by the magazine prices. For example, I picked "National Review" at random and saw that it cost $3.95 an issue, or $4.95 for a subscription. "Wow," thought I. "These magazines are early adopters, expanding their readership through cheap subscriptions in a digital form that has approximately zero distribution costs. How clever of them!"

Looking at the bn.com page for the magazine, I found the catch: that's $4.95 per month.

Holy cow. First, that's $59.40 a year. I could subscribe to the physical version for $29.50 (and apparently get a free book as a gift). Second, I have never, anywhere, ever seen magazine subscriptions priced monthly. They are universally priced annually. Upon reviewing the Nook screen, sure enough, there it is at the top: "Monthly Subscription: $4.95". I missed that in favor of the large-font, glowing "Subscribe for $4.95" button on the touch screen. Tapping that button gives the prompt, 'Would you like to buy "National Review" for $4.95?", again with no indication that you're buying a monthly subscription.

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.

Crappy OCR is the bane of e-readers.

[wiredog]

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.

Re:I 3 my kindle

[KeithJM]

Ignorant shits like you give them a reason to push for DRM.

I'm certainly not going to defend the guy who's pirating books, but I don't think this gives an excuse for DRM. Quite the opposite -- this method will circumvent any DRM they apply. I don't want to pirate books. I just want to buy a book and have permanent ownership of it. I want to back up the file and put it on laptop, or ipad, or phone, or even print a copy out if I feel like it. I'm willing to pay pretty much the cost of a hard-copy book to do it. With or without DRM, the publishers already depend on the customer's goodwill to not steal from them. Why don't they try to maintain that goodwill by letting us buy the product that is already available if we were willing to steal it?

They can

[SuperKendall]

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.