Slashdot Mirror
DRM Lawsuit Filed By Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, "Big Six" Publishers
concealment writes "Three independent bookstores are taking Amazon and the so-called Big Six publishers (Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) to court in an attempt to level the playing field for book retailers. If successful, the lawsuit could completely change how ebooks are sold. The class-action complaint, filed in New York on Feb 15., claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the U.S., Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers."
Even $5 is too much for a ebook unless it's brand new. I can buy a dead-tree version of a paperback novel for less than that if I wait until it's on the clearance rack or get it secondhand. A dead tree book has to be printed, bound, and shipped someplace and there are inherent production costs. A file can be replicated an infinite number of times so there's no cost involved in production after the publisher has paid someone to convert the original text to pdf, epub, or mobi format (unless you count the cost of bandwidth, which is negligible). Everything they make on ebook sales is pure profit.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
I hope you're joking. $15 for any fiction ebook is not a sound business model. I'd buy a good ebook for $5, but not $15.
I can only accept prices like that for certain kinds of non-fiction works where the market is smaller and the production/compilation effort is way higher.
I agree - if I'm going to pay for an eReader that takes away nearly all of the printing and distribution costs of a book along with most of the marketing costs, then I expect a significant discount on a $30 hardcover that's routinely discounted to $17 which is later sold as a $12 paperback discounted to $8.
$5 - $7 sounds more reasonable. Many Kindle books are priced higher than the discounted paper edition - even though I find reading the Kindle to be more convenient, I usually end up buying a used paperback (or even hardcover) because they are usually less than half the price of an eBook. I could even sell the used book after I'm done for a few dollars, making it even cheaper (though I usually just donate them to Goodwill)
So instead of getting $5 from me (minus the bookseller's profit), the publisher gets $0 from me for most of the books I read.
I disagree. You obviously need to spend more time with pre-edited books- most novels before editing are barely readable. The editors work for the publisher, who also promotes the book and acquires the copyright in most cases.
As long as the author was getting at least a third I'd be ok.
Two things never discussed in the ebook / paper costs debate are the costs of warehousing and taxes on unsold inventory and availability of "out of print" books. One of the reasons it's nearly impossible to get older works is they are purposefully allowed to go out of print. No publisher wants to do another run of 40,000 copies of "Pride of Chanur" and then hold onto them as they trickle out to bookstores and buyers. Publishers want the latest flavor of Teen Paranormal Romance which is selling NOW. They want to print 10,000 copies and then move on to the next latest Zombie Teen Paranormal Werewolf Romance. There's thousands of excellent books no longer available even used at a reasonable price. Ebooks allow publishers to warehouse zero copies, saving the tax on inventory and space requirements. Ebooks allow YOU as a writer ( assuming you've been at it a while ) to sell your backlist to new readers. Some of the great SF authors of the 60's and 70's have dozens of titles that are impossible to find. For the cost of converting or creating an ebook, you will continue to have a copy available to sell, in theory, forever as it will never go out of print.