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Publishers Warned On Ebook Prices
An anonymous reader writes "The DoJ says Simon and Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, Macmillan and HarperCollins conspired to raise the prices of ebooks. The report originates from the WSJ, but the BBC adds comments from an analyst bizarrely claiming increased prices are somehow a good thing and thinking otherwise is the result of 'confusion'. I'd like to see an explanation of why the wholesale model, while continuing to work fine (presumably) for physical books, somehow didn't work for ebooks and why the agency model is better despite increasing costs for consumers."
Sounds like these publishers don't know their market. I only buy ebooks because they are inexpensive. At relatively close prices I'd prefer a physical book (where at least I won't be restricted by the publisher's "loan" policy!).
Well he got one thing right: "All the costs are the people in the publisher's HQ..." Exactly. So why don't authors just upload their e-books and cut out publishers all together?
Probably because some of those cost are for editors, proof readers, illustrators, cover designers; all of whom play a crucial role in producing an outstanding or even good, for that matter, book. There may be a lot of extra costs that can be cut, but a writer alone, except in rare cases, can't produce a work nearly as good, or even good, without the help of others. Witness the proliferation of garbage titles now that the cost of entry is nearly zero.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
This is why at least three quarters of my ebook purchases are from Baen. They price their regular books fairly reasonably, "hardback" books are about $10 than list price, and when they come out in paperback they're about $2-3 off the list price. And for a lot of books if you're willing to pay a small premium they'll let you get the ARC version ("Advance Reader Copy") before the publication date. They also do monthly bundles of books, five or more books packaged together for the price of two or three books, well worth it if you know you really want at least two of the books in the bundle. Plus they have a free library that will let you try out a large number of books for free (in the hopes that you'll buy more books from that author later of course) and their books are DRM free, because they understand that piracy isn't a real problem.
Hopefully if Baen continues to do well eventually the big publishers will learn from their example.
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If I'm typical, (and I probaly am not) Amazon, et al, would get more money from me by LOWERING the price.
90% of the ebooks I "buy" are free- either from Amazon, or Gutenberg, or elsewhere. The other 10% I will only buy if they are cheap. If eBooks were in the $2.99/3.99 range (for books I wanted) - I wouldn't hesitate- and the vast majority of books I read would be eBooks.
Instead of making $7 profit on me once or twice a year- they could be getting $1 profit from me 20 or so times a year. Multiply me by a few hundred thousand and that profit margain goes up.
I don't know that I am typical though- in fact I probably am not- because I actually enjoy reading HG Wells, Oscar Wilde, etc- and I don't consider it too much a hassel to not be buying the latest-pop ficiton mega-release.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Try Baen Books or Smashwords. They sell DRM free titles.
Baen has mostly top notch, mainstream authors, albeit only SciFi and Fantasy. Smashwords is a little more of a mixed bag, but some well established authors (like Kristine Kathryn Rusch) are publishing on Smashwords.
The agency model is where publishers set the price of books and retailers get a percentage. This isn't MSRP, the publisher actually gets to set the price the book is sold for.
As opposed to the wholesale model print books use, where publishers sell books to retailers, give them a MSRP, and then the retailers get to set their own prices.
When Amazon started selling ebooks, they used the wholesale model and would frequently set the price to just over whatever the publisher charged them, or even for a loss. As this frequently put the cost of an ebook below the price of a paperback when the book was only available in hardback, publishers got worried that Amazon would get too dominant. When Apple offered to use the agency model, publishers used that to force Amazon to switch.
The thing that really annoys me is that some publishers are lazy about updating their pricelists, so you'll often see the ebook still listed at hardback prices months after the paperback version is available. That sort of crap makes me buy the paperback, use the IRC scanner, and then stuff the book in the attic. The publisher actually makes less money, but at least they kept their precious paper sales.
This. The writing and editing parts are trivial in comparison with getting people to know your books exist. I can see the appeal of a publisher if you're writing in hopes of actually being read -- not because the publisher does any work for you, but because the fact that your book is associated with a publisher means that more people are willing to risk reading it. If you self-publish, and even if you paid to have your book edited, you're still going to have huge amounts of trouble attracting the first tiny bit of an audience unless you are writing some obscure non-fictional stuff that can be judged at a glance as useful or not, and maybe even then you'll still have trouble. I only have experience with self-publishing fiction, so I can't really say for sure on the latter.
That said, people severely underestimate the gatekeeper effect that these traditional publishers play, not just for books but for music as well. It's not that I think that publishers are actually _good_ arbiters of taste or quality, but I can't deny that people would prefer to take a chance on a crappy song that is getting radio play after being pushed by labels than they are to waste 5 minutes listening to random MP3s on some guy's website. Truthfully, it's hard to blame them. I'm a writer and I make electronica, and I still find myself hesitant to waste time on random stuff I find online, simply because of a few bad early experiences doing that. So I'm sure that I'm missing great content in the same way that some people would probably really enjoy the things I create but skip it rather than take the risk.
The short of it is, human nature is to blame here. People usually (and fairly rationally, I think) prefer the guaranteed payout in entertainment that they expect from a curated source, one that they are familiar with, to the real risk of wasting their time listening to or reading horribly flawed creations that they randomly stumble across online. The only way around this, from a creator's point of view, is to either delegate the marketing jobs to a publisher or to spend a lot of time doing it yourself. For the average writer/artist/programmer/musician/etc, I think that's something that is not really much fun when you'd rather just be making more stuff.
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