DoJ Investigates eBook Price Fixing

dave562 writes "The U.S. Justice Department's antitrust arm said it was looking into potentially unfair pricing practices by electronic booksellers, joining European regulators and state attorneys general in a widening probe of large U.S. and international e-book publishers. A Justice Department spokeswoman confirmed that the probe involved the possibility of 'anti-competitive practices involving e-book sales.' Attorneys general in Connecticut and, reportedly, Texas, have also begun inquiries into the way electronic booksellers price their wares, and whether companies such as Apple and Amazon have set up pricing practices that are ultimately harmful to consumers."

Comments

zzzz

[Hotweed Music]

Obviously providing the means to download relatively small files is cheaper than manufacturing and shipping books, so good thing something might be done about it.

Re:zzzz

[Chrontius]

A lot of the fixed costs of production must be amortized the same regarding both ebooks and paperbacks.

Marginal costs are far lower for distributers, but I need to buy an expensive electronic reader.

You never have ebooks that are sitting around taking up valuable shelf space so they get put on sale or clearance to get them to move, however, as ebooks don't really compete for finite retail space. If they go on sale, it's as a loss leader, or to get at least a little money out of price-sensitive consumers who have more time than money.

Re:zzzz

[rtb61]

Competition is the killer of ebooks. Not only do you end up with all available content, you can also add all out of copyright content to that list. Now that you have paid for an expensive eReader there is also all that other content available, like video content and of course interactive content.

They are setting electronic publishing cartel because that is the only way that they can survive, well, survive for as long as possible whilst the corporate executives suck as much money as possible out of foolhardy investors and less than honest pension funds.

The likely reality is universities will simply end up sponsoring book production, whether it be fiction or non-fiction (years down the track) and then take in donations and use volunteers for proof reading, editing and critiquing work. Many universities will share this effort by forming associations for the various scholastic styles involved.

The publisher was a middle man that assisted in providing the needed skills to link between, the author, the printer, the distributor, the retailer and the reader. When the need for a printer and rubber and bitumen distributor ended, so did the need for a publisher. The only need left is for funding, the 'one of' payment to authors to produce the work.

Re:zzzz

[Osty]

Obviously providing the means to download relatively small files is cheaper than manufacturing and shipping books, so good thing something might be done about it.

The fallacy here is that the physical cost of a book (printing, storing, shipping) is the largest contributor to its price. It's not*. For mass market books, print runs are done in such large quantities that the economies of scale bring the physical price down to pretty much nothing per book. The real cost of a book comes from people -- the author, editors, proof readers, cover artists, marketers, agents, researchers, people doing layouts, etc. That and marketing, of course, because nothing will sell if it doesn't have a million dollar marketing campaign behind it. All of the rest of that is needed for ebooks just as much as it's needed for paper books, so the net result is that from a pure cost perspective a paper book and an ebook should cost about the same (assuming the mass market paperback print copy here, not the limited-run hardcover). Also, at least currently, the big publishers are still very much stuck in a print mindset and all of their processes are geared toward a print world. This has obvious repercussions for ebooks, but less obvious is that a lot of editing that happens for a print run is done on copies other than the original manuscript, in formats that are difficult or impossible to convert back to a proper ebook (mobi/epub, not PDF, as PDF is not a valid ebook format). This is why we end up with so many poorly-edited ebooks from major publishing houses, some of which are very obviously OCRed rush jobs without even broad proof reading for obvious mistakes.

The investigation here is whether or not price fixing has taken place, and at least from my perspective it very obviously has. The agency model prevents retailers from setting their own prices or running sales. If you want to sell a book under the agency model, it can be no more and no less than the same price your competitors charge. That removes competition, and that's the problem. The funny thing is that agency pricing was just the first step in Apple's evil plot for (ebook) world domination -- first force everybody to sell at the same price as Apple, and then for step 2 charge ridiculous fees for in-app purchases of books such that Amazon et al can no longer viably work on your platform (if 30% has to go to Apple and 70% has to go to the author, and the price cannot be more than the price in the iBooks store, how can Amazon make money selling on iOS?), thus driving everybody to buy their books from the iBooks store (muahaha!). Of course step 2 failed, with 3rd parties finding loopholes or simply abandoning the platform for greener pastures, leaving Apple in a tough position. Nobody wants to buy anything from the iBooks store, and Apple can't run sales to entice new readers to buy because they're bound by the agency pricing agreements. Oops!

* This applies to large-scale publishers, not smaller houses or vanity presses. In the paper world, if you're not guaranteed to sell several hundred thousand copies you're not going to get a contract with a big publisher because they can't afford to do a small print run. Smaller presses afford it by charging more per book. In this scenario, ebooks are a huge win for smaller/independent authors because the huge cost of a tiny print run is no longer a factor. And of course let's not forget the ability to cut out the middle-man entirely. Ebooks make it much easier for authors to self-publish, depending on how much effort they're willing to put into the process beyond simply writing a book.

Re:zzzz

[Richard_at_work]

>

The publisher was a middle man that assisted in providing the needed skills to link between, the author, the printer, the distributor, the retailer and the reader. When the need for a printer and rubber and bitumen distributor ended, so did the need for a publisher. The only need left is for funding, the 'one of' payment to authors to produce the work.

The publisher also provides the marketing, editing, proofreading, typesetting, illustrations and quite a few other services that the author cannot provide themselves.

Re:zzzz

[ortholattice]

The likely reality is universities will simply end up sponsoring book production, whether it be fiction or non-fiction (years down the track) and then take in donations and use volunteers for proof reading, editing and critiquing work. Many universities will share this effort by forming associations for the various scholastic styles involved.

I think the likely reality is that university professors will continue to rearrange the chapters in next year's version of the Calculus 1 textbook, making it incompatible with this year's so there's no resale value, and sell it for $150.

Re:zzzz

[phayes]

Thats a mighty wide brush you're using in describing all publishers as only being involved in the production side of book creation & thus useless in the ebook world.
Some publishers are much more helpful to their authors and actively participate in the creative process. Jim Baen comes to mind, who has nurtured many authors to greater success. Baen was also a forerunner in making part of their book catalogue available free for download in a number of formats: http://www.baen.com/library/

Re:zzzz

[Liambp]

"The publisher also provides the marketing, editing, proofreading, typesetting, illustrations and quite a few other services that the author cannot provide themselves."

This is an important point. Traditional publishers provided a lot of valuable services to authors not least of which were marketing and publicity. However in return for these services publishers asked a very high price - up to and sometimes even including all ownership of the creative work. They got away with this because of the monoploy power they held due to the huge barrier to entry caused by high printing and distribution costs. Ebooks have effectively eliminated printing and distribution costs and have undermined that entire business model. I don't think traditional publishers can continue as they are now that their main source of power is vanishing. The question as to who will take over from publishers as the dominant power in the market is as yet unresolved:

In my favourite scenario it will be the authors themselves. A small number of successful self published authors are showing this is possible and when a superstar like J K Rowling opts to self publish you have to take it seriously. Unfortunately the much larger number of poor quality self published works makes me suspect that most authors lack the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate, edit and market their own works.

In my least favourite (bud sadly more likely) scenario it will be a small number of (possibly only one) mega online retailers who will own the market.

As for the publishers, well everything they used to do will probably become just a service for hire.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

The professors/teachers I had at college wouldn't do that, they absolutely despise that practice.

One of them is even trying to get an open source math textbook project going.
Reasons: The books are too expensive, they keep shuffling around the problems and other text, and they are loaded with mistakes that they never correct, even when hundreds of people write to them to explicitly point out the errors and the corrections. Please note that they tend to come out with a 'new edition' every year.

Re:zzzz

[TiggsPanther]

Obviously providing the means to download relatively small files is cheaper than manufacturing and shipping books, so good thing something might be done about it.

The fallacy here is that the physical cost of a book (printing, storing, shipping) is the largest contributor to its price. It's not*.

The problem with ths fallacy, though, is that it is reinformed by the retail side of it. Hardback are pricey, paperbacks are cheaper. Hardback prices still stay at the same price even after teh paperback comes out, therefore hardbacks cost more. Therefore printing is a key factor in cost.

The conclusion may be false, but it is logical given the perception of the facts at hand.

There is also the matter of value.

Personally, I don't mind paying close to paperback prices for an ebook. Hardback prices, on the other hand, make me want something persistent. Maybe if the file was DRM-free. Maybe.
But hardback pricing for less functionality than a paperback? It's just not worth it.

Re:zzzz

[Luckyo]

You forget the single most important part of publishing: it provides stable(ish) income to the author when his royalties do not. Income such as advance payments.

Re:zzzz

[Pastis]

So according to you
* printing, storing, shipping costs are not a large part of the book price as Extra costs (marketing, etc) are to be applied
* this is only valid for large scale sales as low scale aren't envisioned due to poor viability
* because of large scale, they need to have large marketing costs, increasing the cost ratio of these Extra activities
* because of large scale, publishing costs get lowered per item, thereby reducing its ratio

The publishing costs are just low per item because the system is focusing on large scale printing to actually lower the distribution costs per item...

Aren't you just describing an inefficient system that justifies itself ? I say cut the inefficient part.

According to http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-of-physical-book-publishing/

And author's get 8/15% of a book. That's a bit small to me. And that's in part caused by this inefficiency.

Re:zzzz

[honkycat]

The fallacy here is that the physical cost of a book (printing, storing, shipping) is the largest contributor to its price.

For new books, maybe. But this doesn't explain why the eBook for For Whom the Bell Tolls costs more than the paperback on Amazon. Pretty sure that book recouped its pre-production costs long, long ago.

Re:zzzz

[Lord Apathy]

A fiction ebook should never cost more than $5. A text book should cost more than $5 but only because there is more research going in to it.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Authors are finding that doing it themselves is FAR better even selling at low prices. This blog -> http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/?m=1 ought to open your eyes. This author has had huge success and he's not just using Amazon to do it. His income is greater, steadier, and he helps other achieve his success. I for one welcome the inquiry into pricing, it's two years overdue!

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

I too used to wish that authors would self-publish. However, as I've aged, I've realized that this is not as good as I had initially considered it to be. The division of labor is a good thing, and produces more products of higher value.

I do not want my favorite author to cultivate skills in marketing, editing, proofreading, typesetting, illustrations, and distribution (yes, the cost is lower via internet, but it still requires skill). I want my favorite author to cultivate skills in writing. I want them to pay people to perform all of the aforementioned tasks, and instead focus energies on writing better or more often. They are a better writer than proofreader, and this is a more valuable skill to them and me.

Re:zzzz

[lightknight]

Agreed. I've been recently introduced to DiscWorld, and am looking to pick up the rest of the series.

I stopped by Amazon and B&N to check the prices of their eBooks offerings, and found them to be higher than the cost of print. I kind of did a double-take.

Re:zzzz

[iamwahoo2]

I think can explain why an ebook might cost more, though I cannot say for this particular book, but it is feasible that the side of a business has different salary costs, marketing costs, etc. In time, electronic publishing will be cheaper. There is no argument, but in the short term the costs might be higher as the market adjusts to a new way of doing things and has not completely worked out all of the inefficiencies.

Re:zzzz

[neyla]

printing 100000 books, doesn't add up to a lot for each book.

But packaging, storing and distributing that million books physically to 2000 bookstores, does cost quite a bit.

They're then laden onto the shelves, in a high-price central location in town, and sold over the counter in units of 1. This costs *substantially*, especially in high-cost locations.

Even if a bookstore sells 20 books/hour for each employee, that's still 1/20th hourly wage for each book sold, or where I'm at, about $3 to add to the price, and that's actually substantially *above* what especially smaller bookstores can hope to achieve.

It's not the print-run as such, printing a large number of books, is cheap, because it's done in bulk. Selling on main-street though, is expensive, and not done in bulk. It costs.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Marketing is not something useful for customers. I'd certainly prefer if there was no marketing at all.
Editing and proofreading can certainly be done by the author. It's not fun, but there's a time when even author must do uninteresting work like the rest of us.
There is no need for typesetting with e-books.
Finally, why can't an author hire someone himself for illustrations?

Re:zzzz

[will_die]

The market for ebooks has people who have disposable income, they purchased a machine to read books from, and are known to purchase the higher costing ebook version. Why should they not increase the amount of money they make when the market will allow it?

Re:zzzz

[CastrTroy]

Ah so very true. Free market at work here. Some of us may be screaming at the top of their lungs that they should be cheaper. But there's plenty of people out there with enough money that they will buy the eBooks anyway. For a lot of people eBooks are probably worth more than the physical book, because they are more convenient to tote around, and because if you have a kindle (free 3G) you can buy it from anywhere with cell phone reception; you don't even have to find a book store. There is a monopoly on every single book (that isn't under public domain), and the owner of the copyright can charge whatever they want. Any book that's in the public domain is often free or 99 cents. If you don't like the price of the new stuff, there's tons of stuff out there where copyright has lapsed. Classic books that have stood the test of time. You could read these you entire life, and never run out of books. If you want a particular, newer book, I don't think there's any solution, because the author and publisher still want to make a lot of money.

Re:zzzz

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Sweet, thanks for the arbitrary numbers! Say, what do your dice think concert tickets and kidney transplants should cost?

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, what?

I promise you, from the deepest, darkest reaches of my greedy, evil heart that publishing companies will ALWAYS offer two important services to authors.

1) Editing. Writers cannot edit. If they could edit they would be editors. If they could do ANYTHING else they would do it. Witness what happens when King directed his own movie. Can you really tell me that man can edit his own work?
2) Promotion through contracts. A Stephen King - caliber writer will not pass up a big, fat contract with Random House or Harper-Collins when they first start out. They know that their strength is putting words on paper, not self-promotion. They'll sign a contract and let some wonk in an office contact three hundred book stores and line up that tour while they smile, sign books, and grind away on their three novels.

For those two services the publisher gets most of the sales and most of the rights.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

_CANNOT_ provide themselves?

Let's just say that was an oversimplification, but it's gone a bit too far. Doctorow figured plenty of those things out before and without the use of publishers. It's a lot of work, but it can be done. Get creative.

Re:zzzz

[Zebedeu]

Amazon has Discworld on ebook format?

I couldn't find it, so I had to get the pirate version with lots of OCR errors here and there.
The dead-tree book is sitting on my shelf, BTW. As far as I'm concerned, I've already paid for the right to read it, but I was even willing to pay again just to get a corrected version.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

And, you clearly don't understand how it works.

Advance payments are money on advance of royalties owed. If your work doesn't make the money they advanced you, you OWE what it didn't make back.
Sablish income? Hardly.

Re:zzzz

[Luckyo]

You're not getting any "sales at low prices" for your book when you're writing your book, period. So you either do a shitty, inspiration-sapping job while writing your book in your spare time, or you get a proper advance and can actually focus on producing best writing you can.

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

The publisher also provides the marketing, editing, proofreading, typesetting, illustrations and quite a few other services that the author cannot provide themselves.

No, they don't. Publishers pushed editing off onto agents and writers years ago, proofreading costs about $100 even if you hire someone to do it rather than spend a few evenings doing it yourself, typesetting is irrelevant for an e-book, illustrrations, if you need them, can be bought from an artist, and the only marketing that a publisher does for a typical book is to try to get it into book stores, not to get readers to buy it.

While publishers are still essential if you want a print book in a lot of book stores, the kind of services the average publisher offers a new writer for e-books might cost the writer a couple of thousand dollars if they paid for it themselves. In return for that, they'll be handing 50% of the cover price of that e-book to the publisher forever, and from the 20% or so of the cover price the writer recieves, they'll have to give 15% to their agent.

Publishers simply cannot justify their existence financially at this point in time with the royalty rates they're offering writers. They're raking in the cash from e-books while the person who wrote the book has to work in Walmart to pay their bills.

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

You forget the single most important part of publishing: it provides stable(ish) income to the author when his royalties do not. Income such as advance payments.

From what I've read, a typical advance these days is down to around $5k. Unless you're selling a book a month, you're going to be working a day-job.

Re:zzzz

[mcgrew]

Well, duh, of course delivery of electronic media is cheaper. That doesn't mean there's no collusion, or that someone isn't using unfair or unlawful business practices to sell them at a higher price than a free market would allow them to.

Re:zzzz

[Oswald McWeany]

Both should be provided free by the government. ;)

Re:zzzz

[Luckyo]

You other options are:

1. Get a job that will take your time and focus away from writing.
2. Get a loan from the bank, and risk your property (if you have any), or get declined if you have none. Your terms will be very unfavorable even if you do have property backing you up, as writing carries a very big risk.

Yes, advance is a very viable option to many authors. Most published authors in fact.

P.S. It's sad how many people out there nowadays are strongly opinionated, very clueless on the subject they're opinionated on, and actually see it appropriate to lecture knowledgeable people on the subject.

Re:zzzz

[mcgrew]

The professors/teachers I had at college wouldn't do that

I only had one whose own book was required. It was, however, a very good tome and I still have my copy 35 years later.

Re:zzzz

[mcgrew]

Some of us may be screaming at the top of their lungs that they should be cheaper. But there's plenty of people out there with enough money that they will buy the eBooks anyway.

I don't think that argument holds up. Those with the extra income are likely to buy hardcover books to display on bookshelves (rich people love flaunting their wealth, or nobody would buy a Lexus), and perhaps buying the ebook version as well. But there would be a LOT more money to be made from middle class people wo DO have to watch their budgets if the prices for ebooks weren't insane. There are a hell of a lot more middle class and poor people than there are rich people, or nobody would buy a used Ford.

Re:zzzz

[WorBlux]

What a load of nonsense, self-publishers still divide labor. Nothing stopping a self-publisher from hiring the services of an editor, typesetter and illustrator. Also marketing is the single most beneficial skill that anyone can learn. What self publishing means is don't give up your copyright to a bunch a suits who care nothing for you or or work except the money they can wring from it and how little they can get away with paying the author.

Re:zzzz

[Luckyo]

But you will not be forced to pick any job at all, and you will be able to work hours you choose, rather then ones your manager will choose for you. Which is the whole point of advance for the first authors, who are the ones pushing median size of allowance down.

If you're successful, advance starts to function more of an equalizer of your income, so that instead of spikes of royalties at release, followed by long dry periods you get steady income. Until then, it functions as a small allowance to help you get by and find time and motivation to write.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

the only marketing that a publisher does for a typical book is to try to get it into book stores, not to get readers to buy it.

Publishers get bloggers, online media and newspapers to review books.

Publishers create cover designs that create attention in the bookstore.

Publishers organize reading tours for authors.

Publishers actually pay online retailers for virtual rackspace, and stores for actual rackspace.

Re:zzzz

[BLKMGK]

Apparently that's horseshit. The publishers make the authors do most of the promotion, price badly, and overcharge. Authors who are doing it themselves have found this all out and many of them won't work with big publishing any more as a result.

Read this blog some -> http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ Do especially read his much older postings where he was just realizing how full of crap the publishers are and how he has learned to outsource, at HUGE discount, the many functions big publishing charges so much for...

You can also get a laugh from this blog -> http://blog.macmillanspeaks.com/

Re:zzzz

[BLKMGK]

They don't have to - plenty of current authors outsource this to include cover art and editing at a huge savings over what the publishers charge. This isn't a good reason to stick with publishing houses...

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

Writers cannot edit. If they could edit they would be editors.

Editors are mostly failed writers. Why would a successful writer want to spend their day editing other people's books when they could be writing their own?

A Stephen King - caliber writer will not pass up a big, fat contract with Random House or Harper-Collins when they first start out.

Stephen King was rejected by a bazillion publishers before someone decided to take a chance on Carrie. He did not 'get a big fat contract' when he first started out, though he made a ton of money when Carrie turned out to be extremely popular.

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

You're not getting any "sales at low prices" for your book when you're writing your book, period. So you either do a shitty, inspiration-sapping job while writing your book in your spare time, or you get a proper advance and can actually focus on producing best writing you can.

Where do people get this idea that Joe Nobody can go to Big Publisher X and say 'hey, give me $50k and I'll write a book for you'?

The only people who'll get money before they deliver a book are writers with a proven history of delivering profitable books. And those people have no need for a publisher anymore.

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

But you will not be forced to pick any job at all, and you will be able to work hours you choose, rather then ones your manager will choose for you. Which is the whole point of advance for the first authors, who are the ones pushing median size of allowance down.

Again, how does Joe Nobody get a publisher to give them even $5k for a book they haven't written yet? And how does he manage to live on that amount of money without a day job while writing the book?

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

For a few books, yes. The average book gets none of that; even an 'attention-grabbing' book cover is of little value when the cover is only visible after you pull the book off the shelf because the publisher paid for the next Stephen King novel to be the one that's positioned on the shelf with the cover showing (and who the heck thinks Stephen King needs a ton of marketing?)

Re:zzzz

[hedwards]

That's not true, care to provide some form of citation? The advance is based upon what their experts estimate that a book of that type is likely to make and is generally pretty conservative. If it ultimately doesn't sell enough copies to pay for the advance what generally happens is they don't sign you for another book. No reputable publisher is going to ask for the advance back.

Unlike the MPAA and the RIAA the deals that publishers sign with authors are pretty transparent and well tested in court.

Re:zzzz

[Quirkz]

This gets stated in every discussion about publishing, and it is always refuted. You do not need to pay the advance back. Why do people feel the need to keep saying this over and over?

Re:zzzz

[hedwards]

Unless you're writing nonfiction or are already a successful author nobody pays an advance on a book that hasn't been through at least one draft. The whole notion that I can take my idea for a novel to any publisher large and small and get an advance before I've done the work to complete at least the first draft is pure fantasy. There may be a small number of celebrities that get away with that by virtue of having enough name recognition to sell a book on that alone, but for people that have to worry about bills it's not going to happen.

Re:zzzz

[wygit]

So all one has to do is be one of the authors of the most linked-to blog in the world ( http://bit.ly/uWa81A ), with something under 2 million readers, publish 6 novels through mainstream publishing channels and have them sell well (partly because of #1; that's a heck of a marketing platform) and THEN successfully self publish a novel, and you say "Get Creative"?

Yes, I love Cory. I love his writing. He has a LOT of excellent points when he talks about publishing. But he's not exactly an example for how the average author can make it in self publishing.

Re:zzzz

[wygit]

True.

But there's "want to make a lot of money" and then there's "stupid".

J/K/ Rowling refused (and so far as I know STILL refuses) to allow Harry Potter to go ebook, because she's afraid it will be pirated; hence it's one of the most pirated book series available on the torrent sites. It's the only way you can GET them.

Yup... still only available electronically for free. Can't pay for it if you want to.

http://news.yahoo.com/harry-potter-e-book-sales-postponed-until-2012-202829043.html

Re:zzzz

[Quirkz]

I agree, and this isn't a small point at all. I don't think anyone knows yet how all those other costly features will be covered - it's a huge investment for an author and will be very inconsistently applied if that becomes the norm, but it doesn't get us anywhere interesting if we fall back on the same old (or maybe some new but still traditional) publishing houses. And you rightly note a very key point that removing the cost of printing barrier is only being replaced with the obstacle of being found amidst an increasingly large sea of self-published works of dubious quality -- basically marketing, but on perhaps a slightly different level. It would be a real waste if it becomes a requirement that every author is required to become a search engine optimization expert and marketing whiz, just to get their book out there.

I'm still hoping for a world where there's a better option than the two scenarios you lay out: neither author pays nor traditional publishing house are really satisfying to me, but I don't really know exactly what that other option would look like. I'm fairly sure the only possible way of finding decent electronic-only books is going to require the internet - search functions and crowdsourcing to get decent reviews of books, recommendation tools to correlate your interests (and tolerance or lack therof for really crappy editing, say) with available options. Maybe Amazon will just end up doing this by default, but I think there ought to be room for a dedicated community or communities to really focus on the "how do I find something good to read?" problem without being one of the mega-corps. If they can get that far, they may be able to assist with some of the other key issues. Illustration may not be all that necessary for most e-books, but editing most certainly is. It's probably not too hard, in the context of a community like that, to find volunteer proofreaders who would go over a free early edition of the book and catch most of the typos and bad grammar, but I don't have any idea how you'd get the services of a more serious editor without someone coughing up the cash, if that's what is really needed.

The other possible option I see is places that specialize in "assisted self publishing" which helps provide a small stamp of quality to the work, and thus will eventually be recognized enough to help it stand out from the messes created by a lot of totally lone wolf self publishers. Problem is I think trying to hit that spot is going to lead down a slippery slope, either back to the traditional model where the publisher takes some financial risk themselves and demands a big portion of the reward, or the author has to pay for everything anyway and it's not much different than what they face now.

Re:zzzz

[andrewirwin]

On the whole, it's the publishers that do the rearranging of problems, not the author.

Re:zzzz

[Quirkz]

1) Editing. Writers cannot edit. If they could edit they would be editors. If they could do ANYTHING else they would do it.

Close, but not quite. I can write. I can edit. I cannot edit my own writing, and I think that's the case for almost everyone. It's not that they don't have the skills, it's that they can't get the right perspective on their own work.

Re:zzzz

[Quirkz]

Publishers pushed editing off onto agents and writers years ago, proofreading costs about $100 even if you hire someone to do it rather than spend a few evenings doing it yourself ...

This isn't true in my experience. I used to freelance copy edit/proofread, and it paid $20/hour, which for most books was between $600 and $1000 by the time I was done. And that was after one, two, or sometimes three editors (if there was a subject matter expert) had worked it over, in addition to the author. This is for nonfiction -- maybe the fiction market is different.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

You piss me off. You really need to read the following book: "Steven King on writing" http://www.stephenking.com/library/nonfiction/on_writing:_a_memoir_of_the_craft.html

Several of his stories were written when he was working in low paying jobs that him and his wife lived off while he wrote in his spare time. He had short stories in several magazines making only 50$ a shot off of them till he was able to finish and get a publisher.

So to say that people will only make shitty stories in their spare time is a crock and you should be a shamed of your self. Talent will always show though regardless of how it got written.

Re:zzzz

[Luckyo]

I'm getting the idea that "Joe who has this interesting book idea, and sent a decent manuscript of first chapter" can get a couple of thousands, and as he sends in more, he'll get another couple. Which is how the system indeed does work.

Re:zzzz

[Luckyo]

No, but he will give him a few hundred to a couple of thousands for good idea and a first chapter, after a face to face meeting. Another couple of grand after he gets book done well over halfway and sends it in. Another grand after the book is fully in and waits for marketing + press.

Re:zzzz

[flappinbooger]

most authors lack the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate, edit and market their own works.

Is that because sometimes people with really interesting story ideas, creative talent, and the ability to tell a story might have their education and background in the technology fields, such as engineering, and are not English majors?

This thread is very interesting, and everyone must admit that ebooks are the future, yet as you say all books need edited and proofread. How can Joe the Writer do that on his own when just starting out?

Re:zzzz

[Quirkz]

Does that get adjusted annually for inflation?

Re:zzzz

[makomk]

The problem is that a lot of the time no-one's actually been proofreading the official eBook editions properly and they're full of mistakes that no self-respecting book pirate would ever have allowed.

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

Which is how the system indeed does work.

Perhaps where you live, but that's not how it works in America. Most people won't even get their cover letter read at a major US publisher unless it comes from an agent, and an agent who receives a letter saying 'look, I'm writing this book, I've got a couple of chapters, can you get a publisher to give me money to finish it' would just laugh.

Re:zzzz

[0123456]

No, but he will give him a few hundred to a couple of thousands for good idea and a first chapter, after a face to face meeting.

No they won't.

Not in America, anyway.

Re:zzzz

[lightknight]

http://www.amazon.com/Color-Magic-Discworld-Novel-Novels/dp/0060855924/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323370003&sr=8-1

Kindle Edition -> $9.99.

Re:zzzz

[Zebedeu]

I guess we were speaking of different discworlds :-)
I meant Niven's one: http://www.amazon.com/Ringworld-Larry-Niven/dp/0345333926/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_3

Re:zzzz

[steelfood]

It's the same reason most programmers cannot debug their own code. The a priori knowledge of the work defeats any attempt to significantly alter it.

I suspect most writers are more than capable of editing, just as every programmer skilled in programming is capable of debugging. A peer-review process similar to that of code reviews would probably be just as beneficial as having a separate editor.

What keeps the editor employed is the fact that editing takes time away from writing. And writers I think would prefer to keep churing out pages while they still can than interrupt the moment by switching to editing.

Re:zzzz

[taustin]

According to industry indisders, the cost of putting paper on ink and getting in to the store is about 10% of the cover price. Yeah, that little. (And that's consistent with most other forms of manufacturing, too, where the average is more like 15%.) Charlie Stross estimated that as many man-hours are put in by the publisher as by the author, to turn a manuscript in to a book.

Every vote for 99 cent ebooks is a vote for less editing, no proofreading, amateurish layout, and generally even lower quality. And quality has suffered quite a lot in the last few decades as it is.

Re:zzzz

[HiThere]

FWIW, and just in the field of Science Fiction magazines (are they all gone now?) most editors were successful writers. Not top writers, but not failed ones, either. If you're a top writer, you'll want too large a salary, so they aren't interested, and if you're a failed writer, they don't trust your taste. (Both strike me as reasonable considerations.) E.g. John W. Campbell, Jr. published over 10 books and numerous short stories. He was a much better editor than an author, but he certainly wasn't a failed author. Neither was Stanley Schmidt or Damon Knight. Don't know about H.L. Gold and can't think of any other editors off the top of my head.

Re:zzzz

[HiThere]

You might want to read what Piers Antony wrote about Lester Del Rey as a editor. You might revise your opinions. Granted, Lester Del Rey was an unusual editor. But he was an editor, and a good one. And he was hired by a publisher to run his section the way he thought it should be run.

I will grant that this doesn't speak of how most editors act, and of the relations of most publishers with their authors. But don't do a blanket condemnation.

Re:zzzz

[cdrguru]

$5K? That might be for a first-time author in a very small niche. Heck, I got a $6K advance on a book about CD and DVD forensics that has sold around 2000 copies.

A published author with any kind of track record of sales is going to be able to command more like $50K as an advance. Of course, how do you get there? By getting a $5K advance on the first few books that do well.

Also, once you are established and have a real name in the marketplace you can make a deal for no advance but a much higher royality rate. So you are getting 15-20%% of every book sold instead of 8%. This is possible when the publisher knows they are going to spend $40K on getting the book out and make $200K from it.

Part of the problem with self-published books is no matter how good the author is, they are never going to spend $40K on publishing a book, ever. You are going to have a cover that was done by a neighbor that once used to be a graphic artist before they became a soccer mom. You are going to have a book design straight out of a word processor sample template. And it will have been proofread by five people that are astounded by the author's vocabulary. Editing? Probably none at all, or just some suggestions from someone the author plays golf with.

Re:zzzz

[fafaforza]

> Every vote for 99 cent ebooks is a vote for less editing, no proofreading, amateurish layout, and generally even lower quality. And quality has suffered quite a lot in the last few decades as it is.

That's already the case with $15 ebooks and $5 emagazines.

Re:zzzz

[fafaforza]

You also have all the man hours figuring out how many copies of a book to sent to a specific store.

And when they aren't able to sell all, the publisher, as far as I know anyway, often repurchases those books, has them shipped back, and has to deal with them.

I'm sure they pay someone good money to figure out how many books to print per run, where to ship, what kind of an agreement to sign with a retailer, etc. With 500k ePubs, all of that is gone.

Re:zzzz

[cdrguru]

Marketing is the difference between the book being something that nobody has ever heard of and is ranked dead last in a huge pile of books vs. a book that has been reviewed and rated highly. Getting your Aunt Sally to review the book doesn't count - getting someone with an audience counts. It is not optional, it does matter and if you leave it out you end up unknown with a product that doesn't sell.

Proofreading can be done by the author, but they suffer from the usual problem that they know what is supposed to be there regardless of what is really on the page. Editing is a far different problem - even some very well known authors need editors to cut out a lot of crap that doesn't need to be there.

Typesetting translates 100% into book design. It is not just a pile of text without any form. Ignoring book design is probably error #3 on the self-publishing checklist with 1 and 2 being proofreading and editing.

Illustrations for self-published authors often end up being done by the soccer mom down the street that used to be a graphic artist. Cover design also - which is what all the book catalogs show. A crappy cover on Amazon ends up meaning fewer sales. So sure, authors can hire out the work, but how much are they spending on it?

The answer on all of this is not enough importance is placed on important things and never enough is spent on it. So you end up with a book that would have been interesting and readable but because of a lack of editing it is tedious to read and nobody likes it. You end up with an ugly cover that nobody likes and it turns off browsers. You don't pay enough attention to marketing your book and nobody reads it - the people that do find it after wading through thousands of similar titles see it is rated poorly and nobody they ever heard of reviewed it.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

I had two times where the book required was written by a prof at that university.

In one case, the (soft cover version) book was provided free of charge because the prof felt guilty requiring his book to be purchased (and he wasn't even teaching the class I was taking). The other case, the prof was very good and definitely provided a different learning experience than what his book did, so I don't feel that I was too gypped there either.

Re:zzzz

[Osty]

Aren't you just describing an inefficient system that justifies itself ? I say cut the inefficient part.

Yes, I'm describing an inefficient system that justifies itself. However it's facetious to simply say, "cut the inefficient part." You're talking about huge companies, some of which have been in the business for a hundred years or more. They have no incentive to cut the inefficiencies.

Also, this is exactly what smaller independent publishers are doing. They're cutting out a lot of the inefficiencies, allowing them to make a profit on lower-priced ebooks while paying the authors more of a cut. But these publishers generally don't print paper books, and right now paper is still king (sadly). This is changing, but it would change much more quickly if agency pricing wasn't in the way.

However the point was, and still is, that "printing cost" does not give the whole story when looking at purchase price. There are things that you simply can't do away with and still have a good book (editors, proofreaders, typesetters familiar with current ebook formats, etc) and those will cost you money even if you never generate a physical paper product.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have to use words like unusual and qualify that most aren't like your example than perhaps your example isn't an outlier and the statement stands?

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Jon Konrarth, go checkout his blog which explains how to do this then. He tried going through traditional channels and couldn't make a living at it. Self published rejected books on Amazon and he now makes a comfortable living doing what he loves - and he shares what he's learned to include sales numbers....

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

35 years later

That means 35 years ago you were in college. Things have changed since then, my friend. The textbook racket is absolutely criminal now-a-days.

Re:zzzz

[lightknight]

*Sighs and opens wallet* Yet another one for the stack of books I will eventually get around to reading. ;-)

Re:zzzz

[Coren22]

I bought ringworld on my Nook, and have to say, I am disappointed that even paying more than paperback, it is still a shitty OCR with the inherent errors. They don't even run a spellcheck, let alone hire an actual editor.

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspected as much.

I downloaded three or four versions and they had the same errors.
I think they're all based off the same master.

Re:zzzz

[thejynxed]

From what I've read online, and in author's notes in books, Lester Del Ray is the lone exception in the entire industry. They even talk about him on the Baen Books site, and how fortunate they were to have worked with him, compared to the endless sea of worthless publishers/editors.

Re:zzzz

[tmarsh86]

You weren't even speaking of discworlds. ;)

Re:zzzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Del Rey and Baen, the true masters of their discipline are painfully rare.

How do they decide what to investigate?

[mykos]

There isn't a lot of consumer outcry about ebook price fixing, but there's quite a bit of complaints about telecom price fixing. Any chance we could get that looked into?

Re:How do they decide what to investigate?

[antifoidulus]

Well, a quick google search of the numbers may be helpful:

The list of biggest companies shows that Verizon and ATT&T combined for a total revenue of about 230 billion. Meanwhile the the biggest publisher in the US only had revenue of about 2.5 billion, and the industry as a whole is much smaller than the telecom market. So who do you think can buy more influence in Washington?

Re:How do they decide what to investigate?

[Richard_at_work]

Is there any actual evidence of price fixing in the telecoms sector? In this case we have Apple publicly stating rather onerous pricing terms that affect the prices on third party outlets for products you wish to buy - that's price fixing, ensuring that no one can undercut your store.

Re:How do they decide what to investigate?

[jrumney]

Ever tried to use data when roaming? If telco A can offer unlimited bandwidth to any country in the world for less than US$50 / month and telco B offers the same deal as telco A for CA$50 / month, why is it that when roaming on telco B's network, telco A customers are charged US$10 / MB?

Re:How do they decide what to investigate?

[fafaforza]

Plenty of people complaining about ebook prices, especially as compared to physical books.

Re:How do they decide what to investigate?

[Pitr]

Text messages.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/12/text-messages-c/

I always wondered...

[Mitreya]

How can the electronic copy of the book cost more than paper version of the same? (Just like audio tapes used to cost much less than CDs)

I guess that's unfair book pricing in action
Although I am unsure what they can do about it. Amazon can increases prices if they want to, can't they?

Re:I always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

E-books and CDs are more durable, so publishers end up selling fewer replacement copies.

Re:I always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about pricing things unreasonably, it's about colluding with other publishers or merchants to keep the price up artificially when normal competition would bring it down.

Re:I always wondered...

[will_die]

Because the people who own ereaders have more disposible money and are willing to pay more to have it on the ereader.
That is all good and the correct thing to do.
Where they would be in trouble is if the various publishers started talking together and decided on prices in collaboration. Since Amazon is now acting as a publisher they could be in trouble if they were in those talks or used thier market strength to directly dictate costs for other resellers.

Re:I always wondered...

[ZombieBraintrust]

Amazon is allowed to discount the prices of physical books. Amazon isn't allowed to mess with the prices of ebooks because of the agency model. So Amazon discounts the physical book below the cost of the ebook. Then people get pissed off at the publisher or author. Amazons market share was built on being the lowest price. They lose money on some books to keep reputation as the lowest price.

Re:I always wondered...

[fafaforza]

Well, if the paper book was not originally created on a computer, then it would take someone's time to digitize it and format it correctly.

About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is dumb enough to believe that a single 400KB PDF that can be sold an infinite number of times over, costs more per unit than a paper book that takes materials, manufacturing, distribution and storage for every copy sold. So why do the publishers and online retailers think so? They need their greed checked. Go D.O.J.!

Re:About time

[Richard_at_work]

That has nothing to do with what the DOJ are investigating - they can't stop a publisher or retailer from setting their own price at a rate you deem "greedy", but they can stop what Apple is attempting to do in saying "you cannot price your book cheaper anywhere else than the set iTunes price - if you do that you will cease to be able to sell on iTunes" while still adding an extra 30% cost over other outlets.

Similarly, the publisher can set it's wholesale price but cannot set the price every retailer must sell for, retailers can pick their own prices and even sell at a loss.

So it's not about high prices or greed, it's about control of the market.

Re:About time

[Osty]

That has nothing to do with what the DOJ are investigating - they can't stop a publisher or retailer from setting their own price at a rate you deem "greedy", but they can stop what Apple is attempting to do in saying "you cannot price your book cheaper anywhere else than the set iTunes price - if you do that you will cease to be able to sell on iTunes" while still adding an extra 30% cost over other outlets.

Even that's not really the issue here. Apple can charge whatever they want for you to sell on their OS, though there could certainly be monopoly concerns (leveraging their mobile OS "monopoly" to gain an advantage in the ebook market?). The problem with agency pricing is that it's not an MSRP value. It's a price set by the publisher that cannot be changed. For example, a publisher can price a paper book at $15 but Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc will often sell that book for $7 or less because they can. The MSRP is just what it says it is, a suggested price. But Amazon, Kobo, Sony, BN, etc cannot run a sale on an agency-priced ebook. This is why it is commonplace to see ebooks selling for a higher price (and often much, much higher!) than the exact same paper book. That's what the DOJ is investigating, and Apple's part of it because they were the ones who started the whole "agency pricing" crap in the first place.

Re:About time

[qualityassurancedept]

Convenience is worth something too. Sure, the actual production and distribution costs are lower for a download than they are for a paper book (probably) but making the book available online so that readers don't have to go all the way to a brick and mortar store adds value and ought to increase the price of book. Also, I hardly ever go to bookstores anymore unless I just feel like browsing magazines because I have hardly ever seen a bookstore that has anything more than the most popular titles in every category so if I did want to buy a book they would just order it online themselves and make me wait a week for it to be delivered...

Re:About time

[rufty_tufty]

Three things:
1) it's not what something costs but what it is worth to someone else
2) Speaking as someone who has tried publishing my novel on an ebook, why shouldn't I be able to charge what I see as a fit price for my years of work? No-one else has to buy it if they don't think it is worth it.If I sell 0 because it is too expensive then that is my choice.
3) this investigation is about price fixing not about the actual cost

Re:About time

[powerlord]

Convenience is definitely worth something, but if I order a book on-line, and select standard UPS shipping, it is usually at my door within 2-3 days.

That hardly seems like an exhorbitant time to have to wait for a book. If I MUST have it today, and it is not carried in my local bookstore, then I suppose digital is my only option, but that seems to imply poor planning (or being way to use to immediate gratification), rather than any huge convenience factor.

If you're a reader, then you usually have at least a few books you are in the middle of, as well as a stack you are working through. As long as you remember to replenish the stack as you go, its not a problem.

That's leaving aside the whole "have you checked out this thing called a library" or "have you started a lending library with friends"? both of which amp up the convenience and lower the cost.

Price is too high Price fixing

[Boscrossos]

Although I don't disagree with the posters before me that the price is too high, that's not what's at stake here, I think. Price fixing does not mean a company setting a price too high. It means multiple companies, together representing a large majority of the market, conspiring to all keep the prices high, thus eliminating the normally healthy effect of competition, with the prupose of making more money for all. If Amazon wants to sell its ebooks for more than the manufacturing costs plus some profit, that's perfectly fine and nothing wrong with it. However, if they make a secret arrangement with all other major ebook players, that is not, because then competition is bypassed, and customers are cheated by cartels.

It's a jungle out there

[pntkl]

I go on a safari, when looking for eBooks, and don't care to own them. eMedia does seem pricey, however. I asked an amazonian for a refund; when I realized you could get a subscription to the same book, and more.

Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers do

[inflex]

This is something that has had a lot of discussion in the past on various e-book forums. The publisher sets the price, not Amazon. When you submit a book for resale on Amazon they take their 75% or 32% cut depending on what you select (books under $2.99 are generally only eligible for the 75% cut).

A lot of independents have been working the 99c book sale pricing but lately we've been finding that it's just about impossible to make any sort of sane living at those levels, so we're gravitating more to the $1.99 and $2.99 brackets, sometimes pushing to $4.99 if it's a book from a popular series (Amanda Hocking, David Dalglish etc).

I'd be very surprised if any action is taken against Amazon, while they do have a strong hold on the distribution market of eBooks they aren't (yet!) controlling the publishing prices.

Most of us are just self-publishers in the eBook market, it's almost like the whole OpenSource software movement all over again.

http://elitadaniels.com/

Basic economics....?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just the result of absurdity of the 'price-fixing' idea; in a standard competitive market, the price goes down to fixed+variable costs. The problem is that for ebooks, there are ultimately negligible variable cost AND no further fixed costs involved. Therefore the "equilibrium" price for abook according to "standard model" is basically 0.

If you use standard economic model, you can prove that there is price fixing. Because the price is 0 and there is no other way that the price could long-term be higher, than implicit or explicit collusion. However, at price 0 there would be no e-books. I would suppose that in such case we should say that standard economic model doesn't apply, therefore we cannot conclude, that price-fixing is price-fixing, nor that it is actually harmful.

Re:Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers

[rolfwind]

When Amazon controls that much of the market and takes that big of a cut (really, how do they justify that?), they ARE setting the price upwards.

Good Luck

[captjc]

Seriously, Good luck. As much as I would love to see something good come of this (such as ebooks NOT being the same price if not higher than the printed version which happens in some cases, especially after the printed book goes in the "bargain bin"), I doubt anything useful will happen. Either there will be some punitive fines which will get passed to the consumer, or money will change hands and the problem will be swept under the rug or "justified" in some legal jargon that will set a bad precedent that will poorly influence cases involving price-fixing of digital goods yet to come.

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

And then piracy will continue to grow in this market. Ever since Amazon got slapped down and forced to raise prices I've stopped buying and begun downloading. Unlike music the file sizes are TINY. The publishers are going to learn their lesson the hard way and IMO it will be worse than it was for music. The publishers are fools...

Re:Good Luck

[T Murphy]

punitive fines which will get passed to the consumer

If only some eBook sellers are hit, then the fines cannot easily be passed to the customer, as they have to keep up with the competition. If they raise prices, they lose customers to the competitors who are able to remain profitable thanks to their lack of fines.

Of course, anti-competitive penalties usually are too small to matter, or most of the industry colludes and there is no fine-free major competitor to prevent a fine-induced price-hike. That just means we need bigger penalties until companies see it more profitable to try and be that odd one out, than to join in on collusion.

What the publishers say...

[bhunachchicken]

I've spoken to a few publishers about this sort of thing, and they've told me the following:

You are not and never have been paying for the cost of the book, but the words and the story contained within.

They've never explained why a hardback costs twice as much, though.

They need to charge as much as they do for the cost of a book because they have a number of overheads and they need to get back the advance they paid the author. There is a lot of risk involved in publishing a book, due to the subjective nature of storytelling.

Why pay advances at all? Isn't that basically just a form of credit? Apparently, a lot of books don't earn out their advance. This makes no sense to me, whatsoever. Why not just pay higher royalties quarterly, when you know what the book has actually made. This reduces your risk and allows you to invest the accrued money for a period before handing over the author's share.

If you self publish a book (that they didn't want to publish) then you are both impatient and doing the work of the Devil.

Sure, not every book needs to be published, but given that I've spent around $50 on crap books this year, I don't really think they should get their knickers in a twist over someone selling a book for $3. I'd rather pay $3 on a crap book, than $12. Also, what are they REALLY scared of?

The publishing industry is a really strange beast, that I'm sure which anyone has at one time worked within or tried to get published in probably knows. It's a bit of a circle jerk, with a lot of cliques and infighting. It's also somewhat fascist in places.

Re:What the publishers say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just pay higher royalties quarterly, when you know what the book has actually made.

Sure, you can do that - and you'll watch your authors take ten times as long to write the book, because they have to do such silly things as eat, pay the electricity bill, pay the rent, pay the gas bill, fix their car, and so forth - and hence, since they won't actually see any money until the book is written, they have to keep at their day job for longer, which will distract them from the task of writing the damn thing.

Advances are the publisher's way of saying, "We think you have a good book coming up. We'd like to publish it. Please work on it for us, so we can get it out quickly."

Re:What the publishers say...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why pay advance? Because if you don't pay an advance payment, e.g. 1/3 of royalties, the author probably won't even be willing to start to work. Remember there is competition between publishers, and the publisher who offers an author the highest advance gets the book. Would you work for 6 months or a year writing a book, without getting paid up front? Even just a small share? If your job is writing, advances are your income. You don't want to finish your work first and then get paid months after.

You probably think the book industry is some kind of money making machine. It is not. As a programmer or engineer, even entry level salaries are sometimes higher than publisher's executive salaries. Authors, with the exception of a few dozen bestselling authors, barely make amends. It is not easy to make a living writing books, or publishing books, or even selling them. If it was easy, you'd see publishing companies among the top 100 companies. Do you see any?

Re:What the publishers say...

[rklrkl]

Paying advances allows the author to actually pay their bills whilst working on the book. However, you'd expect publishers to offer authors other models that might result in a bigger overall payout for the author if the book is really successful (e.g. smaller advance/higher royalties or even no advance/even higher royalties) if the author is already wealthy enough not to need the money right away. It's also not clear what happens if the book doesn't sell enough to cover the advance - does the publisher swallow that or does the author have to pay it back? I guess it depends on the contract.

As for e-books, it's clear to anyone that e-books should cost less than the physical version - it *must* be cheaper to distribute the electronic version than the physical one. How much less is up to debate, but even a nominal amount (e.g. 10%) would at least encourage more e-book sales if nothing else. A good example of publishing greed this year is that the #1 Amazon book of 2011 was the Steve Jobs biography. amazon.com has the hardback at a decent $17.87 (basically half price) - the Kindle version is $20.67 - WTF! It's price-gouging on e-books lke that which puts people off buying them and they end up pirating them.

Re:What the publishers say...

[mjr167]

*Why pay advances?*

Because the author needs to eat and pay their mortgage while they write the book? That whole 'starving artist' mime pretty much sucks as a lifestyle. Go do some research into the lives of some of the people we consider the great artists of the 19th and 20th century. You will find a large portion of them were unhappy, poor, starving, indebted, homeless, alcoholic, drug addicts, and depressed.

Writing a good book takes time. It's very hard to do as a weekend project and if you want to commit full time to it then you need to have a large chunk of cash sitting around to pay your bills. Most people don't tend to keep a year's salary sitting under the mattress.

Re:What the publishers say...

[0123456]

Paying advances allows the author to actually pay their bills whilst working on the book.

Not when the average advance is down to around $5k. Plenty of writers who've dropped their publisher and started self-publishing have said that they earn more money more regularly than they did before.

As to e-book prices, publishers don't want people buying e-books because their entire business model is based around control of the print distribution market. There's no need for a publisher when you can just write a book and upload it to Amazon, rather than having to go through a publisher because most book stores won't sell self-published books.

Re:What the publishers say...

[0123456]

Would you work for 6 months or a year writing a book, without getting paid up front?

You think you get an advance before you write the book? Perhaps if you're Stephen King, but not if you're Joe Nobody.

You don't want to finish your work first and then get paid months after.

You do realise that you probably won't get the whole of your 'advance' until a year or more after the book is published?

You probably think the book industry is some kind of money making machine. It is not.

Publishers have fancy New York offices. Writers have day-jobs in Walmart. Book sales are down, but profits are up, because publishers are typically getting 50% of the cover price of an e-book sold on Amazon while the author gets around 15%.

50% of the sale price of a product where an additional copy costs nothing to produce? Most industries would be falling over themselves to own that cash cow.

Re:What the publishers say...

[Anonymous Coward]

>50% of the sale price of a product where an additional copy costs nothing to produce? Most industries would be falling over themselves to own that cash cow.
It costs nothing to produce for every competitor, so it is an advantage for no-one.

There are still tens of thousands of books competing in the market. It's not like you can say "our e-books are only $1" and then magically sell it a million times. Because there still is something called supply and demand.

Re:What the publishers say...

[0123456]

Apparently, a lot of books don't earn out their advance.

Note that 'earning out the advance' doesn't mean 'making a profit'; most books will be profitable well before the advance is earned out. And a writer whose books don't earn out probably won't be published for long.

Re:What the publishers say...

[0123456]

It costs nothing to produce for every competitor, so it is an advantage for no-one.

The competitors here are not publisher #1 and publisher #2. They're the publishing industry AND THE WRITERS.

A writer can sell a book to a trade publisher, get a $5k advance, pay 15% of it to their agent and then hope they earn out (in which case the publisher makes $12.5k on the same book they paid the writer $5k for), or they can self-publish and get 70% of the cover price of every book they sell.

Re:Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers

[Anonymous Coward]

$4.99 for a eBook on Amazon? I wish!

I've only see prices of $9.99 on up.

Re:Oh Noes ... Flood of Apple Fanboy postings

[Anonymous Coward]

Flood of Apple Fanboy postings

I'm waiting . . .

I'm waiting . . .

Where are they?

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[kenshin33]

if you think of profit as a consequence of doing something then no. If it is an end in its self, then yes you're right

Re:Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers

[inflex]

It's only that big a cut on books under $2.99. Over $2.99 it's back down to 35%, which is actually a bit lower than some other distributors.

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[xelah]

? You want a product more than the money, the publisher wants the money more than the product. Who's losing? Obviously, it gets more complicated with partially non-rival goods like books, but there's still no reason why it has to be harmful to consumers in principal. It might be, but you've failed to establish that.

Re:"Real Cost"

[TaoPhoenix]

"The real cost of a book comes from people -- the author, editors, proof readers, cover artists, marketers, agents, researchers, people doing layouts, etc."

Good effort, but I feel we have an "Emperor's New Clothes" effect going on here.

Author: By definition the indispensible one.

Proof Readers: I'll skip that one, nothing that a spell check can't fix, and if the Author missed a "plot hole" ... issue a "patch!"
Editors: Cut this down by half. Take care of the Big Picture stuff and then do a major revision by the author for the Second Printing.

Cover Artists: Isn't there tons of Indie Artists out there on the web?
Layouts: What layouts? It's text on a e-Reader. Let people fiddle with the fonts and stuff. It's a Feature not a Bug!

As for Marketing and Agenting, if we just fix the copyright law instead, people could form their own markets instead.

Cheap eBook Webstore

[splutty]

Probably interesting to most Slashdot readers, but I have most of my ebooks from a webstore called www.webscription.net

The publishers here include ones such as Baen, Del Rey, Tor, etc.

Fairly focused on SciFi/Fantasy, but almost all their books are in the $4-6 price range, a lot of them are older books, they have a quite extensive free library, and allow you to download in a number of formats, all DRM free.

Jim Baen alone has probably done more for the SF/Fantasy book world than any other publisher out there and I find the fact his publishing company stands behind this very promising.

And as a sidenote to all you US readers that think not a lot is done for disabled veterans: They give away everything for free if you're one..

Re:Cheap eBook Webstore

[harr2969]

**Baen's (normally inexpensive) books are also provided free of charge to those who are physically disabled: http://www.webscription.net/t-disabled.aspx **

Baen's Rocks!

Note their free library selections are pretty extensive; I read voraciously (and quickly, 350+ wpm) but it still took many months to get through their entire free library (http://www.baen.com/library/) several years ago. Awesome free resource.

Re:Cheap eBook Webstore

[Anomalyst]

Another thumbs up for Baen's Books, check out the free earlier works of David Weber and John Ringo. Hours of enjoyment for no cost. Discovered that I like Lois McMaster Bujold from a samp[e and have subsequently paid cash for other books by her.

Re:Cheap eBook Webstore

[powerlord]

One more huge thumbs up for www.webscriptions.net !

Baen also has monthly bundles (going back to 1999 when they started publishing eBooks if I remember correctly).

Each "WebScriptions" bundle costs ~10-18$ (depending on the year) and contains ~6 books. Basically, everything in that months "Monthly drop" including a "new hardcover" or two, a few "soft cover releases" and the rest filling out from the back catalogue.

Its a great way to fill out an eLibrary if you're into Sci-Fi/Fantasy. As an added bonus, check out the CDs they distribute with some of their books that usually contain all of an author's back-catalogue, along with some other stories for variety.

Oh, and did I mention that all the files Baen publishes are DRM Free and in several formats?

Re:"Real Cost"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Issue a patch"???

"Major revision for the second printing"???

WTF? In what world does this make sense? This isn't software. If the book sucks because it wasn't done right the first time, I'm definitely not going to reread it after it's "fixed."

Not trying to be anti-Apple, but...

[killfixx]

Before Apple colluded with publishers to offer books at a significantly higher price than Amazon et al., were doing, there wasn't any problem with the existing structure.

C'est la vie...

Why is Amazon being investigated?

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I don't understand: if Amazon originally tried to set ebook prices based on feedback from their customers and then tried to fight the Agency model when it was forced down their throats why are they being investigated?

Re:Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers

[Anonymous Coward]

Even at 75% to Amazon, 25% goes to the author. How much do you think a regular publisher give them? 10 cents from each sale at best. That's way lower that 25%.

Like musicians, just because you create something, if no one likes it, you are wrong to expect to make a living from your "art".

When you have 3GB in your eReader

[Anonymous Coward]

and a book is about 1MB, what other option is there to fill it?

IMO, I'd like to see the ebook version FREE with each dead-tree book.

/. needs a pretty icon for No-Shit-Sherlock

[epine]

Does it harm the consumer if the majority of authors give up in disgust?

Does it absolve Apple and Amazon that the consumers wallow in boneheaded thrall to convenience?

Re:Price is too high Price fixing

[ZombieBraintrust]

Yeah but its more complicated than that. It is not price fixing if the Publisher sets the price. The publisher is the seller, they are allowed to set the price. Its only price fixing if publishers conspired together to set the same prices.

Re:"Real Cost"

[aslagle]

Nothing that a spell check can't fix? Eye don't think ewe know what a proofreader does.

Hope they fix the lending system too!

[teambpsi]

While touted as replacements for traditional dead tree varieties, ebook book owners should have the same rights to lend and transfer on a 1:1 basis as they see fit.

Perhaps look at how the BitCoin "public transaction" model works to manage the lending (DRM) ??

Re:Oh Noes ... Flood of Apple Fanboy postings

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Here I am!

Based on buying the entire Wheel of Time series, every book by Brandon Sanderson, the first two books of the Malazan series, the first two books of the Kingkiller Chronicles, and a book by Fred Saberhagen that isn't a book of Swords on iBooks, and all of Joe Abercrombie's books on the Kindle store, iBooks' quality (typos and formatting mostly) is far superior to Kindle.

There, happy?

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[virg_mattes]

Ultimately someone's profit is someone else's loss.

That's about the dumbest thing I've ever read on Slashdot, and having read some very out-there stuff on this site I can't say that lightly. The idea that profit on one side must equal loss on the other is entirely incorrect because value isn't zero-sum on almost all trade anywhere. I can buy a tire from Goodyear for a lot less than I'd have to spend to make it myself, for example, so the fact that they're profiting doesn't reflect a loss on my part. QED.

Virg

When business is saying that

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the publishing world insists that their costs are going up because of the cost of sourcing materials, printing and distributing the dead-tree version have gone up, in what way is it a fallacy?

Re:When business is saying that

[0123456]

And they also say their profits are up despite lower sales because profit margins are much higher on ebooks.

Re:Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers

[0123456]

$4.99 for a eBook on Amazon? I wish! I've only see prices of $9.99 on up.

Amazon has roughly a bazillion e-books for $0.99 each.

Of course most of them suck, but there are some good ones in the swamp too.

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

But didn't you just lose money to purchase the tire? Money is finite, and transferred to the profit of one party, and the loss of another.

Re:Amazon doesn't always set the price, publishers

[0123456]

I don't know about other countries, but in America Amazon pay 35% royalties under $2.99 and 70% at $2.99 and above. A trade publisher typically pays 15-20%.

Re:"Real Cost"

[mcgrew]

Proof Readers: I'll skip that one, nothing that a spell check can't fix

Watt in the whirl ore ewe talking a boot? Dew knot truss yore spill chucker! That's what's wrong with most slashdot comments. A spell checker can't tell that your using the wrong word (yes, that was intentional). A spell checker doesn't know if you want to loose the dog or if you want to lose the dog. A spell checker won't tell you that your use of apostrophe's is retarded.

Take care of the Big Picture stuff and then do a major revision by the author for the Second Printing

I fucking HATE patches and the lazy bastards who issue them. Get it right the first time, damn it! If I'm paying full price for a book or an operating system the damned thing should WORK. You don't have to patch a new pair of jeans, do you?

Nothing better to do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh good, looks like there's nothing to see at Connecticut Light and Power and their more-than-a-week-before-service-was-restored-itude . . . sooooo let's investigate ebook price fixing instead of neglegence of disaster planning.

Eeeeeeeexcelent.

Re:"Real Cost"

[wygit]

I've actually gotten several notifications from Amazon that there was an updated version for a novel that had "fixes".

I don't care

[Anonymous Coward]

I want my ebooks, and I want them cheap (a novel-sized book should be five bucks or less).

All I really need beyond that is a good way to search through the market-flood of crap in order to find books I will actually like.

That is all.

Traditional Publishers Desparate

[TonyXL]

Traditional publishers are using the last-resort tactic of government force. Also, the idea that a price could be "harmful" is ludicrous. A price cannot cause bodily injury, it cannot stalk or threaten you, it cannot forcibly take your money. If a price increases dramatically, you are free to seek alternatives.

Re:"Real Cost"

[0123456]

If the book sucks because it wasn't done right the first time, I'm definitely not going to reread it after it's "fixed."

Note that I've seen a lot of people complain about trade-published ebooks because they just OCR-ed the print book and then did a few fixups before shipping it. And probably haven't released a new version that's 'fixed'.

Re:"Real Cost"

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to patch a new pair of jeans, do you?

If they're 'designer-stressed' jeans, then they come full of holes already.

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[hsbaker]

Money does not equal value. If I value the tire more than the money I'm trading for it, then it's a gain for me. Since Goodyear values the money more than the tire, it's a gain for them.

That's how the free market is supposed to work. The final price of an item is determined by the value placed on it by both the seller and the buyer.

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[fafaforza]

You didn't lose money. You exchanged it. Now, you can once again get to work to make more money. Same way you exchange it for a book so that you enrich your mind, possibly in a professional manner, where the knowledge will mean a higher salary or better financial rewards.

Re:"Real Cost"

[TheLunarMagician]

Were these minor fixes, like correcting spelling or grammar? I can understand that (and there's a lot of OCR'd crap that could use such treatment.) But skimping on an editor because you can just "take care of the Big Picture stuff and then do a major revision by the author for the Second Printing" would seriously piss me off if I was someone who had purchased the first run. I would move right along to an author who gave a crap.

Re:"Real Cost"

[TheLunarMagician]

Ugh. I've read some of those OCR'd books and they are painful. I can usually figure out what the word (or words) were supposed to be. I got to the point where I expected every "d" to be a "cl" in disguise.

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

But you gained a tire. Goodyear has lots of tires and would like some money. You have money and would like a tire. Who's losing? Money is just bartering abstracted. Would you feel better if you gave them a pig and they gave you a goat?

Re:Everything is ultimatly harmful to consumers

[virg_mattes]

This only makes sense if the tire had no value. If you assume the word "profit" represents only cash in possession, then you're using a definition of the term that nobody else does.

Virg

Re:ProofReader

[TaoPhoenix]

I do know what a proofreader does, and I am remarking that if it comes with a cost "let me do it myself on the raw text". Once the spell check is done, all that's left is Homophones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone

All the top ten ones we like to pick on at slash dot are Homophones. Lose/Loose, etc.

It turns out that not all Homophones are equal. Your example is funny but rare - that's not the type of mixup a writer would make. (Lately I'm more worried about "You're" coming out "Ur". Dammit, leave Mesopotamian Cities out of this!)

So back to my original point, it's like the Unfinished Furniture model. I'll supply some of my own labor with a couple of custom tools rather than pay an extra X dollars on the price.

Re:Watt in the whirl

[TaoPhoenix]

((Sorry Mods, don't hurt me for the Redundant half, I got the same question that needs the same answer to two different fellows, because I try to be responsive.))

I do know what a proofreader does, and I am remarking that if it comes with a cost "let me do it myself on the raw text". Once the spell check is done, all that's left is Homophones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone [wikipedia.org]

All the top ten ones we like to pick on at slash dot are Homophones. Lose/Loose, etc.

It turns out that not all Homophones are equal. Your example is funny but rare - that's not the type of mixup a writer would make. (Lately I'm more worried about "You're" coming out "Ur". Dammit, leave Mesopotamian Cities out of this!) Meanwhile the grammar checker is getting better lately, it picks up most of the homophones.

So back to my original point, it's like the Unfinished Furniture model. I'll supply some of my own labor with a couple of custom tools rather than pay an extra X dollars on the price.
----------------

Meanwhile we suffered too long with the "print once and hold your peace" model of books. Sure, they shouldn't be as sloppy as some software we can name, but many books could benefit from new insights the author has a few years later.

Re:Watt in the whirl

[mcgrew]

I don't know, I'd feel better if my book had a proofreader, that's one reason I put it on BitTorrent.

Meanwhile we suffered too long with the "print once and hold your peace" model of books. Sure, they shouldn't be as sloppy as some software we can name, but many books could benefit from new insights the author has a few years later.

Like having Greedo shoot first? That's one thing I like about physical media, it doesn't change.