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Amazon Finally Bundles Ebooks With Printed Books
nk497 writes "Amazon is bundling ebooks with print copies for the first time, via its Kindle MatchBook programme, admitting that 'bundling print and digital has been one of the most requested features from customers.' The digital copies won't all be free — as with AutoRip, which offers free MP3s for selected CDs and records — but Amazon promises to charge no more than $3 per digital copy. The programme will apply to books bought as far back as Amazon's 1995 launch. So far, only 10,000 books are listed as being part of Kindle MatchBook, but Amazon hopes to add more, telling publishers it 'adds a new revenue stream.'"
Fortunately, Amazon is not alone on the online books market. Other companies (eg some publishers) sell books online along with a free PDF. This is why competition has to be kept alive, and Amazon should not be the only choice when it comes to purchasing books, movies or music.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Please do this with textbooks!
No, because you've paid for the base content already. That's like saying if a restaurant offers you a free dessert with the purchase of an entree, the dessert must be worth $0.
I have several series in hardback that I'd like to continue with. But since I travel a lot, kindle is more convenient.
I would say I couldn't be happier about this, but I want this extended to audiobooks.
I know RTFA is frowned upon, but even from RTFS and a bit of reading comprehension you will realise that it goes something like: book = full dead tree price, eBook = full digital price, book + eBook = full dead tree price + $3.
captcha: smolders
And their customers have stated that an eBook, without a dead tree version, should sell for whatever they're willing to pay. Who are Amazon to argue with their customers over this matter?
Only they do it with multiple ebook formats.
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Ah, the good ole' flawed physical analogy...
Ezekiel 23:20
I had no idea I would take to ebooks so vociferously. I checked my Amazon account recently and was astounded that I have over 200 titles in there that I've picked up (some free, many at the .99-1.99 range) over the years. I still buy dead trees (mostly programming references.. I have yet to embrace electronic documentation in full), but I did notice that Manning (?.. the ... In Action books) seems to include an ebook code in all of their print books.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
But if a restaurant emails you a free photo of a dessert you just ate and paid for, then the photo must be worth $0.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I think you have things backwards. They aren't going to start only selling ebooks with paper books. They are going to give the ebooks additionally for a small fee. If you want you still can just buy the ebook alone.
And Amazon is not a publisher - it's just a retailer.
Yes, because I want to buy a 1 pound paper wrapper for my ebook. By the time the publishing industry figures out how to adapt to technology it will be too late.
Surely the logical fallacy of, "I'm a consumer, and thus every consumer on the planet is just like me, and thus if I have no need for a product or service than no such need exists" is already named?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
This should keep me from scanning, OCRing and formatting books I bought off of Amazon just for the convienance of reading on an eReader. I was just so annoyed that print copies cost less than digital copies.
I used to think that, but at some point I can't keep doing it. What the hell am I supposed to do with the books? I have an entire wall covered in them. Unless I want my house to look like a library something has to give.
You're paying twice for the same content, just in a different format. That's the difference between a physical book and an ebook.
I don't know that you can use a food analogy here since the content isn't consumed once.
There's definitely some titles sitting in a box somewhere I'd love to have the ebook for now that I've moved most of my reading to it (outside the out of print stuff they haven't deemed worthy of ebookness yet).
I've been pretty pleased with the AudioRip stuff on amazon - in a few cases its actually been cheaper (with Prime) to get the CD instead of the digital album (or maybe $0.50 difference). True that it starts out in the "cloud player" but its been easy enough to file the resulting files off to my home storage solution instead of doing the rips myself.
A lot of the Baen hardcovers come packaged with CDs that contain multiple ebooks. If you buy a hardcover copy of, say, Mission of Honor, of the long-running Honor Harrington series, the packaged CD contains the *entire* series in multiple formats.
And their customers have stated that an eBook, without a dead tree version, should sell for whatever they're willing to pay. Who are Amazon to argue with their customers over this matter?
So now you know why I practically never ever pay for an ebook. Aside from the well-discussed problems of DRM (thanks again, ignoble*.py), I view the prices of e-books as drastically out of line with cost. No diff from the insane premium music CDs commanded over vinyl. So until ebook prices drop to maybe $5 or so, fuggedabadit.
Heck, in all honesty, I'd probably drift over to a NetFlix-style rental system if such existed. Pay, say $1 or so to rent a book for a month or so. That's more or less equivalent, admittedly in my personal accounting, to supporting my local dead-tree library.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Unless I want my house to look like a library
Sounds like a dream-come-true to me. :p
I wouldn't mind that, but that much wall space is pricey. (Add in the wall space for framed posters and such and we're getting into 'need a fractal house' territory :)
Go look at what shelves/bookcases cost and get back to me. I am already putting up shelf supports and wood planks as that is cheaper than real bookcases.
No, the analogy is correct. Physical printing and distribution is a tiny part of the cost of a mass marker paperback - 5%-10%, depending on volume.
All the significant costs for crating a book are fixed costs, not per-unit costs: the author's advance, copy-editing (which can get expensive for genre books - someone has to double-check usage of all those made-up words), page layout for printing and/or ebook formatting, marketing costs, and so on.
The cost of a book is your share of the one-time costs, not the 50 cents the actual printing and shipping costs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is it in a nutshell (dammit, I hate agreeing with h4rr4r ). I have a bedroom converted to a library, and about 1000 physical books, and I regularly purge them when I move. If I could find a reader I actually like, I'd be happy to stick to ebooks and recorded books in the future.
For a DRMed ebook, I'll pay no more than a paperback, because both have a diminishing chance to still be readable as the years pass. But a DRM-free ebook? I'll happily pay hardback prices, because I literally have a ton of hardbacks already, don't really need more.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The flawed physical analogy is that electronic "goods" cost nothing to duplicate. If I have paid for the hardcover and they want $3 for the ebook, fuck 'em, I'll go to TPB for the ecopy because I already paid for the damned content when I bought the hardcover.
I'm really sick of the greed these days. Charging extra for an e version when I've paid for it already is just plain wrong. Those people must have no shame or morals at all.
And they have the gall to call pirates "thieves".
Free Martian Whores!
I've heard it referred to as "mirror image fallacy", mostly, but I don't know if that's a formal term. Looking at wikipedia's list of fallacies, it seems most like a subset of Hasty Generalization (generalizing, in this case, from a sample of 1).
If I've bought a hardcopy I've paid my share of fixed costs.
Free Martian Whores!
Heck, in all honesty, I'd probably drift over to a NetFlix-style rental system if such existed. Pay, say $1 or so to rent a book for a month or so.
Wow, you kids are sure willing to part with your hard-earned cash for shit that used to be free. TV shows, bottled water, books... you can "rent" a book from the public library for free. If I'd had to pay for all the books I've read in my life it would take more money than I've ever earned.
Free Martian Whores!
Long after I started switching to eBooks, my wishlist still had print titles on it and I continued to receive them as gifts from friends and family that know I read a lot. I wonder if this will apply to those books that were purchased off my wishlist directly.
Of course they will only work on Kindle, since that's what Amazon sells. But that's easy enough to get around :)
I get all my Ebook versions of dead trees that Iown for free from TPB, and will continue to do so as I refuse to allow DRM on my books.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I used to think that, but at some point I can't keep doing it. What the hell am I supposed to do with the books? I have an entire wall covered in them. Unless I want my house to look like a library something has to give.
Several years ago we bought my wife a Kindle for this very reason - our bookshelves were full, and we had resorted to stacking books on the floor in front of them! It's worked out quite well; and now my daughter and I both also own Kindles.
I still chafe at the DRM (which I strip, and save copies of the books to our main backup drive); but electronic books are very convenient. I'm now a believer.
#DeleteChrome
An article (possibly even TFA, but I wouldn't know) I read earlier said that it will only apply to purchases of new books, not used. Probably only those fulfilled by Amazon, too.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
So essentially, the analogy would be correct if the cost of actually buying the ingredients, making the dessert and serving it would be a tiny part of the price for the recipe, that's what you're saying?
Ezekiel 23:20
$59.00 for a 6 shelf tall unit. IKEA is your friend.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Now go find one the wife will tolerate, not some particle board thing.
I don't mind my house looking like a library. But there's a non-trivial chance that if I kept buying physical books, I'd hit critical mass and my entire house would collapse into a black hole.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I understand -- and I rented a zillion library books in my youth as well. Now that I'm old and rich ( :-) ) I can enjoy the luxury of paying a buck or two to 'rent' a book without having to leave my comfy chair & wolpies.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/
Silence is a state of mime.
I'm really sick of the greed these days. Charging extra for an e version when I've paid for it already is just plain wrong.
If you have already paid for the e-version then yes, charging extra is wrong. If you haven't paid for the e-version, then you haven't paid your share of the additional typesetting and formatting costs and so charging extra is absolutely correct.
Now, my moral compass is such that when I got my Kindle, I downloaded all my paper books from sites like Mobilism and TPB because I have already paid for the content (I do pay for ebooks that I have not yet purchased offline or online). But it doesn't negate the point that there are additional costs incurred with providing an ebook over and above just writing the content.
Is $3 a reasonable cost? For most books, I'd say so. For popular books, they are probably raking it it.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
But you know what the beauty is? If you think something isn't worth the price, you don't buy it. If enough people agree with you that it's overpriced, the price will go down.
And if even more people agree with you, you can modify copyright laws, impose price controls, and generally regulate the market. If authors think they're getting a raw deal, they can always wait tables. Of course it's unlikely authors will take their ball and go home; relatively few independent authors make a living solely from writing now -- lots of them have day jobs or rely on outside support. The money's nice to get, no question, but for many authors it is not the only reason to write and often not the most important reason.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Amazon doesn't set book prices. Publishers set book prices. Well, unless selling at a loss, which is part of what the big price fixing lawsuit was about as publishers didn't want to let Amazon do that.
It's obvious to everyone that ebooks don't cost $8 to $15 to produce and distribute. Publishers have always said that they set ebook prices higher to prop up dead tree sales.
This makes some sense as hardcover sales are still very important for things like the New York Times' Bestsellers lists.
I think they also need to make back the money they make on the first run of books but I don't remember exactly how the publisher<->book store monetization works (I remember something about unsold books getting their covers ripped off and publishers not making money on those books?).
I imagine Amazon negotiated with the publishers and was like "Hey, people really want to bundle ebooks with their dead tree books and we could all make a little extra cash if you let us bundle ebooks at a reduced price without hurting your dead tree sales!"
Hey Chapters/Indigo,
Retail bookstores need to do this. If they can get the pricing right, they might actually get my business back
no.. they've stated that people will pay three bucks for text of a book you bought alredy while they will give you digital copy of an audio file ripped from a cd for free.
book publishers are ripoff artists, that's their message.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The "variable costs in creating more copies of" a physical book are vanishingly small as well, something else /.ers don't seem to get. There's very little difference. There are some additional costs to prepare both a physical book and an ebook for printing, and many shared costs.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There are additional fixed costs to prepare each format of a book: hardcopy, paperback, mass market paperback, ebook, etc. The $3 pricing model for each format after the first makes a lot of sense to me.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You've paid your share of the fixed costs of the PHYSICAL medium... Now it's time to pay your share of the fixed cost to GENERATE and HOST ebooks/pdfs.
Although the "master" copy of the book is most likely in digital form somewhere, you can't say with a straight face that it costs nothing to turn that into something available on amazon (or elsewhere). Time to convert it to the standard ebook/pdf, programming to provide service, hard drive space, electricity, ISP charges, etc... Its undoubtedly less, when considering mass "production", than $3/per but it's still Amazon's prerogative to make money.
(I say this knowing full well that I'll "pirate" PDF/ebooks for stuff I already "own" without guilt. I wouldn't consider paying $10-15+ for an ebook when I have the physical copy... I will consider up to $3, personally, just to know I'm not getting a bad copy - virus', bad scans, etc.)
(I wish this was an option for audio-books... I can't see myself paying $10 for a paper book and then $45 for the audio book, which is too common. I don't buy audio books for this reason, although I own the hard copies for most of my audio books)
Unless the general book market is a lot different than what I have seen working in more specialized areas, I doubt very seriously that you'll find a publisher willing to accept a manuscript submitted on typewritten pages. Unless maybe it was from Stephen King, where it would be worth it to pay a typist. And King isn't a Luddite anyway. He's been using computers longer than a lot of people.
There is a certain amount of work to be done in converting to ebook format, but not that much. The computer-ready manuscript already needs to be made flexible by the initial editors, since a book will often be printed in different form factors: hardbound, trade edition, paperback. And book files are generally pretty compact by Terabyte standards, so a single drive could hold much, if not all of their entire inventory. Drives are cheap. Servers are cheap. Even electricity isn't that expensive. In short, ebook costs above and beyond the basics required for hardcover publication aren't going to be that high. I won't say that there's a flat minimum price I'd pay for the ebook edition, although any publisher who wants to throw one in for free gets my hearty approval.
And, of course, the ones who charge more for unshareable electronic editions than the paperback price can go sit in the corner,
You're already paying for the server's time, the restaurant overhead, and so on. Whether it's a $20 dinner with free desert, a $20 desert with free dinner, or somewhere in between is just marketing.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I really wanted to get one of my friends into the "Planetary" series of comic books. I made the decision to buy them all for the Kindle. I'm not about to lend out my Kindle. Now I can lend out the hardcopy for someone to check out.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
You've paid your share of the fixed costs of the PHYSICAL medium
That's what's usually called "marginal costs", which is why it is by no means called "fixed costs" by anyone (well, by anyone who knows what he's talking about).
Ezekiel 23:20
you can "rent" a book from the public library for free
I can't rent a *current* tech book from my public library, but if I could, the round-trip gas cost for a two-week rental is about $2.
If somebody were willing to rent me the current book online for a month for 99 cents, I'd be a fool to not take the offer.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
$59.00 for a 6 shelf tall unit. IKEA is your friend.
Can that support books without bowing? I'm under the impression that IKEA sells meatballs and compressed sawdust, but that's just from hearsay, they don't have them around here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Matchbook is a great solution for print books purchased from Amazon... but what about all the books you buy at B&N, Chapters (Canada), your local indie bookseller, the used bookshop around the corner, or that you received as gifts? A Canadian start-up called BitLit (www.bitlit.ca) has developed a solution for print and eBook bundling no matter where you got the print copy. (Full disclosure, I'm one of the founders of BitLit). Simply write your name on the book's copyright page, submit a photo using the BitLit app, and download your free (or discounted) eBook. BitLit is set to launch on Android at the end of the month with select publishers. Feedback on the idea is most welcome.
Until it gets a single scratch or starts to sag as it will with time. Buying good furniture once vs buying that stuff over and over is worth it.
Or less generally, generalizing from a sample of "me".
But people are egoists, whether they realize it or not. "Of course, my opinion matters more. I'm normal. Anyone who disagrees with me is probably too dumb to matter."
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I am sure it can for a very short time.
The food is decent, the particle board furniture is good for what it is. They are meant to generally be decorative and not that durable.
Our non-IKEA book shelves are made from compressed sawdust. They don't bow unless you try to fit three layers of books onto a shelf designed for one.
If it's anything like the IKEA shelves I've seen, it can't support itself without bowing.
I would suggest an addition service be added to this program: I would like amazon to hold my physical copy of the book and send them to me should the ebook ever become unavailable to me.
But there's a non-trivial chance that if I kept buying physical books, I'd hit critical mass and my entire house would collapse into a black hole.
You'd be lucky to get off with a black hole.
It can get so much more dangerous
I wonder how they will deal with buying books for gifts. If I bought a physical copy of a book and gave it as a gift to someone else, would I get a free/cheap Kindle copy to keep for myself?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Do tell! Do these things include marketing (which Amazon won't have to pay because it is selling these as an "upgrade" item to people who already own a different edition)?
You think publishers pay for marketing?
Oh, sure, they do, if you're Stephen King or JK Rowling[1]. For everyone else, maybe they'll send your book to a newspaper reviewer and ask them to review it, if they really think it's worth pushing.
[1] Except when you're JK Rowling publishing under a pseudonym, when you get as much marketing as any other unknown first time writer. That is, probably none.
Go find a wife that is not a high maintaince money grubbing type. If she freaks out at those you need to ditch her as soon as you possibly can.
You will save a LOT more in the long run.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I am Italian,and I always read books written in English in the original language. Over the years, I think I bought the "S" in Bezos. As soon as Ebooks came out, I thought about ways to get the books I bought in paper version electronically, and I expected Amazon to offer something like that.
After all, they know every book I bought off them over the years, and that I own a Kindle. It does not strike me as such a big insight to offer me, for a fee, my whole library in E-book form.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
No it's not.
$60.00 shelf every 2 years versus $2500 "good stuff" Yes I know how much the overpriced anal rape "good stuff" costs, I used to have a trophy wife that though money = happiness.
You can buy shelves for the next 80 years for the price difference.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But have a very nice sauce made of paste and old sneakers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Or you can get $100 worth of lumber and do it yourself. You could also get $500-$1000 worth of unfinished furniture and finish it.
There is also cost to removing everything from the shelf and placing it on the new one, that you must also construct.
Putting shelves up, by screwing brackets into the studs and putting up big wood planks is the cheapest reasonable answer I can find. Plus you can put them up in interesting ways and fit them into or around corners.
I save a lot more by just hanging decent wood shelves on the wall.
She is not high maintenance, but she does recognize cheap shit when she sees it. Do your really want to have particle board furniture in your home? That shit is for dorm rooms.
Consider that the resale value of the physical book in mint condition is almost as much as its original cost, and the market of people who still want physical media is still pretty overwhelming, it probably costs a bit more than 10 cents just to make the pattern of purchasing the bundle, then immediately reselling the physical media only, unprofitable enough to guarantee that others will pay their share of the fixed costs.
Of course ultimately price isn't that directly tied to cost-to-produce, it's tied to maximum profitability.
Done. I've already set up my books to give the eBook away for free when you buy the paperback.
So that means y'all should rush out and grab my paperbacks to get the free eBook, right? ;)
(P.S.: Just in case you're ready to take me up on that, http://amazon.com/author/thomasaknight is where they're at.)
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
Can that support books without bowing? I'm under the impression that IKEA sells meatballs and compressed sawdust, but that's just from hearsay, they don't have them around here.
IKEA sells cheap stuff for cheap money. They also sell excellent quality products for a lot more than the cheap rubbish.
But the marketing can be useful. A real world example I'll use is for fountain drinks at a sit down restaurant (at takeout places, I rarely get a drink, unless it's part of a free combo promo). If the meal is $15 and the drink is $2, I'll be much less likely to get the drink than if the meal is $16 and the drink is $1. Since people are there to get food, it actually makes more sense to charge more for the food, and less for the drinks. But places don't seem to do that. $2-3 for a soda that costs a couple of cents at most is ridiculous, when I can basically always get a 2 liter for $.99 at a grocery store. Yes, you could extend the analogy to the food being cheaper at the grocery store too, but I'm mostly paying for the food to be cooked and dishes cleaned for me.
What insane premium? I got the vast vast vast majority of my CDs (of somewhere around 300, as my 300 CD changer was close to full and I've still bought more since stopping using that long ago) through CD clubs, and averaged under $6/CD even including the inflated "shipping" charges. (Just wait a couple of months for the frequent buy 1 get 2 free, or better, deals and buy a couple then.)
So you expect Amazon to sell you the ebook at wholesale? Why would you expect that from a retailer?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Does this mean that if eBooks cost more to produce, you'd pay more for exactly the same thing? Why? The product would be exactly the same and have exactly the same value to you.
Unit manufacturing cost for media has been pretty small for a century or two. The cost has always been about dividing the cost of creating the original source between all potential buyers. Given how poorly most authors are paid, I don't really feel in being gouged here.
Do they exist on computers (Linux, Windows and Mac OS X?) for those who do not have Kindle hardwares?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
First I thought that it's nice, maybe they have some of the books I bought if the go back to the days of Amazon starting. Then I checked and I haven't bought any books since before 2006. I know that because the only entry in my order history the last years is from 2006, and it was some CDs.
All books I have bought have been using other email accounts, accounts I no longer have access to, or even remember. So no ebooks for me.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Authors get rather little relative to what the publisher gets.
And your first question is invalid. Ebooks have no marginal cost and microscopically small cost of delivery, and AFAIK no inventory value (see FIFO vs. LIFO tax codes), and seeing as print books are generated from an electronic copy to begin with, they've got nearly no fixed cost either (assuming the publisher continues to produce hardcopies).
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
That's what's usually called "marginal costs", which is why it is by no means called "fixed costs" by anyone (well, by anyone who knows what he's talking about).
"fixed costs"
In economics, fixed costs are business expenses that are not dependent on the level of goods or services produced by the business.[1] They tend to be time-related, such as salaries or rents being paid per month, and are often referred to as overhead costs.
GP claimed there are additional fixed costs for production of the ebook. This is independent of marginal costs of an ebook which are essentially zero.
This applies to paper books as well.
Why does this make my question invalid? If eBooks did have a marginal cost, would they be worth more to you? Is an item that costs $10 to produce worth more to you than an idenical item that is free to produce? I'm questioning why the cost to produce something should affect the price you're willing to pay.
What the hell am I supposed to do with the books? I have an entire wall covered in them.
Donate them to the public library; donate them to organizations that provide books for the poor; sell them at a used book store, there are all sorts of solutions.
Free Martian Whores!
there is a nice little FAQ on submitting book reviews, but, how do we do it? I mean.. the machanics of it? Submitting a Story isn't submitting a book review, What am I missing?
Heck, in all honesty, I'd probably drift over to a NetFlix-style rental system if such existed. Pay, say $1 or so to rent a book for a month or so. That's more or less equivalent, admittedly in my personal accounting, to supporting my local dead-tree library.
http://www.safaribooksonline.com/individuals
Have a banana.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World