Hi everyone

I am assuming almost everyone agrees that ebooks are (generally) way too expensive: it is common to find ebooks at the same price of the printed edition - some even hard covers! And it is also very frequent finding e-books more (sometimes even much more) expensive than the same paper books. A good example are the prices you can find at Mobipocket's ebooks and Amazon's paper books (as you know, Amazon owns Mobipocket).

Why is this?!

I have a theory: publishing houses are really not interested in the ebook market; in fact, they are afraid of it.
The reason seems quite simple: they fear that once the ebook market "explodes", the piracy will take over and (as happen with the music industry) their profits - and the industry - will free fall. So they prefer not incentivate it.

(I heard recently a well known publishing house defending - off the record - that they believe ebooks and paper books should have the same price. The SAME price!!! The same price with very diferent costs it should have been said!!! And when asked about those diferent cost, that same house said that ebooks will have bonnus features... - please, do not insult readers inteligence! - with or without "bonnus", the costs are not just little but immenselly diferent!:angry:).

I believe they are going the wrong path.

High prices will incentivate piracy - precisely what they want to avoid. It will take much longer that it took in the music industry because ereaders are expensive, a diferent experience not everyone is willing to take and the public is a very diferent one, but it will happen. And then publishnig houses will no longer dictate anything anymore...

I really do hope thinhs change fast: being able to buy any ebbok with a reasonable disconut over the printed edition: the publisher will still be able to take a bigger profit, and literally everyone would benefict.
But quire frequently I believe it won't happen in the next decade or so.

What do you think about this issue?

Regards!
Nelson

I copy /paste my answer from another thread on exactly the same subject started at about the same time (might be worth putting the two threads together)

I personnally believe editors do not hate eBooks, but they're definitly scared of their books getting copied on the web if they come out. Sevreal ways to control this, they believe, is to put on DRMs and to charge a lot so that only the "good" people will prurchase them (it's a well known idiocy to believe that because you have money you're honest...) and so they can recoup the losses that will be incurred by copying.

I think one thing that might help hugely would be to make editors aware that illegal sharing of their books has started long before the first ebook reader ever came out. I don't think they're aware there are some people out there who will quite happily take the time to entirely scan/OCR/Correct hundreds of volumes. Perhaps once they realise piracy is already there (AND HAS BARELY AFFECTED THEIR SALES, OR THEY WOULD HAVE NOTICED BY NOW!), they'll stop peeing in theit pants every time the "e" word comes out.

I've been in the publishing industry in some capacity for the last 17 years. You may be surprised to learn that the "immensely different" costs are not that immense.

Following a book through the author's writing, agent, publishing house, to store, the only pieces you remove from the printed equation is the physical paper & ink and physical distribution.

There are other comparable costs added into the equation for ebooks: licensing fees for the owner of the ebook format, fees to distribution companies (ie. Lightning Source), additional cost of reformatting for ebook vs. print.

I'd be startled if the cost difference between paper and digital was more than 5% of the book's total cost to produce at this point in time, even for the large publishing houses. In my case, working for a small publisher, it would actually cost us more per book to follow that route. As such, we release our work in open formats without DRM to minimize cost and we hope our customers respect that and refrain from widely distributing our work.

I'd be interested to hear experiences from others in the publishing field.

Mobipocket.com isn't really a good comparison. They have a deal with the stores that license their format that they will not compete on price therefore their prices will always be higher than any other place you could buy a book. This is why Amazon uses a format that is only nominally different. Otherwise they would likely have to abide by this agreement. No more $9.99 new releases. Stores like Fictionwise are more realistic. Still, it's the publishers that have the most influence on price. If they charge the ebook sellers a high price, the only choice they have is to take a loss or pass that on to the customer.

As xianfox says, there are certain costs that must be borne regardless of format and some additional costs that come specifically with electronic format. I do think it's still a bit high considering you don't have to absorb the high return rate you have with paper distribution but I think many publishers are also trying to recoup the capital outlays they had in starting their ebook divisions. Many of them decided to start their own storefronts. I'm no expert but I don't think that's a good move for most publishers. I think it can work well for some genres like it has for Baens. I bet Harlequin's storefront gets good traffic. Publishers have brand recognition in these fields. Most mainstream fiction consumers don't know who publishes their favorite authors. They want to go to one bookstore, not hit five publishers trying to find the title they want. I can't imagine their e-commerce efforts pay for themselves. It's overhead they don't need.

An additional note about DRM: Not only would publishers save money by not paying to license proprietary formats, I think many consumers would regard the DRM-free, open format book as more valuable. Many people who are aware of DRM regard buying such files as not really buying at all. It's renting. You can't guarantee you'll be able to use it for as long as you like so it's hard to justify paying as much for it as you would a paper copy.

I've been in the publishing industry in some capacity for the last 17 years. You may be surprised to learn that the "immensely different" costs are not that immense.

Following a book through the author's writing, agent, publishing house, to store, the only pieces you remove from the printed equation is the physical paper & ink and physical distribution.

The costs for digital setup, licensing, marketing & distribution may be roughly equivalent, or only a bit lower, to start.

But selling 10,000 paper copies costs for a lot of paper, a lot of storage & distribution. Selling 10,000 digital copies costs... negligible per copy. Cost for SETUP is high; cost to actually distribute each copy is almost nil. And once the programming has been arranged for "convert publication-ready Word/InDesign/whatever doc to ebook format" (a sensible publisher would write their own in-house code for that), it can be done in seconds for each new book.

Claiming the cost of infrastructure makes the book costs equal would only make sense if book prices spiked when when gas prices get high, because distribution costs more.

Nobody's saying ebooks should be free. Just that, with equivalent infrastructure costs, actual cost-per-book is so low that it's insane to charge the same as a hardcover book, and not really sensible to charge paperback prices.

We know what paper costs. We know it's cheaper in bulk, but some of us know those prices, too. If 2/3 the book cost goes into layout, infrastructure & marketing... there's still the issue of "no paper, no storage fee." (Hard drive space & server activity don't remotely compare to warehouse and shipping fees.)

There's an interesting logic to, "this is a new market and so we need to create an entire infrastructure for it, and we're not sure how profitable it'll be so we'll make a tiny number of customers pay for the full infrastructure costs."

Actually, the cost to distribute each copy is not almost nil. Most publishers aren't handling this themselves. Why? The demand simply isn't there to bring on the necessary staff, additional equipment, and write the necessary software themselves.

Instead, they hire out a firm, like Lightning Source, who are charging fees to handle conversion and distribution that are in the same neighborhood as conventional printing and distribution per copy. The publishers, to a large degree, have not realized the savings yet as they haven't even built the infrastructure yet.

The Kindle is far too new to have had an influence on prices yet, but I believe that is coming. And if the fuel crisis was/is prolonged, you will see it influence the price of everything that entails physical distribution, including pbooks; it takes time for the reports to show the real impact and prices to adjust accordingly.

I have no doubt that ebooks will eventually become cheaper than pbooks, but this will take time. The Kindle--love it or hate it--is going to do a lot to speed the process up, but it will still take time. I have my doubts that this will be realized as a price drop of ebooks rather than a price increase of pbooks though due to economic and environmental influences.

I am assuming almost everyone agrees that ebooks are (generally) way too expensive:

Heh.. I think everything I buy is too expensive. Cable TV service, Cell Phone service, electricity, gasoline, food, water, Dr.s bill, Dentist, etc.

If you think it is to expensive... don't buy it. At least you have a choice with eBooks. You don't so much with "some" of the stuff I listed above.

I've said many times, I don't have a problem paying the same price for an ebook as I do for a paperback. Give any extra to the authors. Or, why not get a free ebook when you buy a pbook?

BOb

It does not matter that distribution is handled by an outside firm, it is still reflected in the cost for the end user. All the distribution fees off, the - small - website cost on, and you have what an eBook should REALLY cost.

Give any extra to the authors.

BOb

If that actually happened, I might not complain. Guess what, though, it never does! :p

Instead, they hire out a firm, like Lightning Source, who are charging fees to handle conversion and distribution that are in the same neighborhood as conventional printing and distribution per copy.

So, they are being charged:
Conversion costs equal to printing costs--even though short books cost less to produce than long ones because they use less paper? Where books with fancy covers cost more than plain ones?

Webhosting/marketing costs equivalent to physical distribution--
size of books affects storage costs,
size & weight of the books affects the cost of getting it to market,
inventory clerk has to log the receipt of the books in the store or warehouse,
cashier has to be on-hand to ring up every sale (or in cases like Amazon, shipper on-hand to package every sale),
packaging includes a printed receipt and a bag to carry the book,
poor sellers are returned to be warehoused at additional cost?

What's the digital equivalent of these costs? The digital equivalent of the difference between a hardcover and a paperback and a special collector's edition? Between glue binding and sewn bindings? Between pulp paper and glossy paper?

The high cost of ebooks has very little to do with the cost of arranging ebooks to be sold, and a lot to do with publishers knowing there's a market and not knowing what to do with it or even how to understand it.

They're terrified that offering books "too cheaply" will lose them the opportunity for millions of dollars. They're *not* terrified that offering them too expensively will drive away customers... they don't know how to acknowledge those people as potential customers in the first place.

And their business model doesn't have a slot for what happens when they make the "legit" version so expensive that the potential customers make a bootleg version for themselves, or give up on that line of books and seek out something else to read. Technology has surpassed them--amateur publications of ebooks are no less elegant and useful than professional ones, and their business plans assume that amateur-made "books" are just not as desirable as professional ones.

They don't know how to compete with amateurs. Nothing in their models requires it. They're trying to pretend that the public will *of course* prefer mainstream publishing house versions of ebooks, and therefore will just accept whatever protocols they decide on.

Hi guys from a new arrival...

I too am astonished at the short term attitude of these publishers and this is what I posted on this topic to Teleread last week:

I am the new owner of an iPhone and have been searching for ebooks over the last two weeks to read on it. I am completely flummoxed at the pricing of ebooks and to add to that I am repeatedly coming across current newly published books where the ebook is significantly MORE EXPENSIVE than the paperback version !

What on earth is going on ? I am a capitalist and a commercial director of a hitec business. I believe in profit and as a wanna-be writer I also believe that writers must earn a fair shake.

Let’s get real guys. The retail price of a book includes a significant percentage that goes to the shop owner, to cover his profits, his staff wages, his light and heat and his rent, and also to the distributor(s) in the chain between publisher and seller. This percentage is usually in excess of 60%.

I see parallels here with the ‘head in the sand’ music industry that has been and will, deservedly, continue to bleed income to copiers. I see the same blind effort to screw as much money out of the readers before the inevitable explosion of e-reading occurs and before the parallel explosion of hackers who will start distributing these books free on torrent sites happens.

Is there no one in the publishing industry who can lift their head up and see the big picture ? High prices are suppressing the whole development of market. One might almost think that the publishers are PURPOSELY trying to suppress the ebook market because they feel they are making bigger profits from paper books - and it is supporting the millions of corners books shops. This would be fine - if it were not for the fact that there is an inevitable momentum in the progression from paper to ebooks. It is as strong a momentum as from Vinyl to CDs to MP3s. It cannot be stopped. It CANNOT be stopped.

Whether is be reading on the Kindle, the Sony ebook reader or on mobile phones such as my iPhone. This is the future (no not 100%, there will always be a market for paper books, but I see an 80:20 mix 20 years down the road). So the sooner the publishers get their head around this future marketing model the better.

Average decent people do not want to waste their precious and valuable time searching for illegal copies of books any more than they want to do it for their music. They have a natural tendency to want to pay a fair price. The music industry are still driving ordinary people in their millions to illegal download sites because of their crazy prices and complete lack of awareness of the ‘added value’ principle.

If the publishing business goes the same route then they will find that the same thing will happen to them. Ordinary people are not stupid and if the publishers fail to wake up in time they discover a huge portion of their readers will be subscribing to torrent sites, and they will be fighting a rear guard action they will inevitably lose.

Publishers need to start now - drop prices to a sensible level, promote their writers and their own names. If they do this and pay attention to the principles of added value - they will develop a solid readership base that is happy and willing to pay reasonable prices. If they do this they will keep the torrent sites and the hackers in the shallows and will generate the maximum earnings for themselves and their writers.

I don’t mind one bit paying a FAIR price. But I am not a complete fool and willing to pay 20 dollars for a book that is available on the high street for 10 dollars.

Most ebooks of leading ‘quality’ writers should in my view be priced at between 5 to 7 dollars, with recent publishings of best sellers at 10 dollars. That is my absolutely upper limit and I believe it is MORE than fair considering there is NO PRINTING, NO DISTRIBUTING ! and very limited web based distribution. Only marketing remains and that is quite small spread over a decent readership. Non best sellers should be prices at approx. 5 dollars. Of course this is only my broad-brush view. Specialty sectors must be priced differently.

Am I holding my breath ? nope . . .

Saoir

Actually, the cost to distribute each copy is not almost nil. Most publishers aren't handling this themselves. Why? The demand simply isn't there to bring on the necessary staff, additional equipment, and write the necessary software themselves.

If it isn't you have some people who need to be fired yesterday.
Internet Texoma (in north Texas) is not far from me. They design and host Ecommerce sites for all sorts of mom and pop web businesses.

If your company can't find someone of their quality and pricing to handle distribution - then I will submit outright that there is likely embezzlement going on and you need a top to bottom outside audit right now.

Welcome to this forum, saoir - I am a "junior member" myself.

I completly agree with you.
It is a shame such a big mistake is being made in this industry.
In the end, if publishing houses do not change their attitude, I will not feel much sorry for their fate.

Let's hope things can change in the near future. But, as you, I am not holding my breath...

Meanwhile, we'll just have to really dig in the web to find the best possible price - one that is not completly insulting.

Regards
Nelson

Instead, they hire out a firm, like Lightning Source, who are charging fees to handle conversion and distribution that are in the same neighborhood as conventional printing and distribution per copy. The publishers, to a large degree, have not realized the savings yet as they haven't even built the infrastructure yet.


I defer to your industry knowledge. But paying to "handle conversion and distribution?" Authors submit manuscripts in ASCII, right? Conversion, absent DRM, takes what, a few days? And "distribution," after establishing initial contracts with on-line booksellers, thereafter consists of an attachment to an e-mail, no?

This makes me think you're right about "haven't even built the infrastructure yet." Perhaps haven't even thought about it.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm not about to buy stock in Lightning Source.

Actually, the cost to distribute each copy is not almost nil. Most publishers aren't handling this themselves. Why? The demand simply isn't there to bring on the necessary staff, additional equipment, and write the necessary software themselves.

Instead, they hire out a firm, like Lightning Source, who are charging fees to handle conversion and distribution that are in the same neighborhood as conventional printing and distribution per copy.

Then they're being ripped off by these firms.

Edit.

Authors submit manuscripts in ASCII, right? . . . Conversion, absent DRM, takes what, a few days?

The day I receive an author's manuscript in ASCII will be the first day in the 25 years I have been in publishing that such an event will have occurred. Authors usually submit their manuscripts in a MS Word document that is riddled with styles and formatting -- usually haphazardly done. At least for the books on which I work, cleanup takes a lot of time. Then the manuscript has to be edited and recoded to conform to the codes needed to produce the final version of the book.

I'll admit I do not work on novels and there may be less involved -- or not -- with that genre, but the nonfiction books I work on take several weeks worth of work to prepare a manuscript for publication. The process is not as cut and dried as some would make it to be.

I, too, think prices for ebooks with DRM are too high but I also think that the pricing would be fine if there were no DRM. In other words, a leased product is worth significantly less to me than an owned product. To me, it is DRM that is the bugaboo in the mix.

The day I receive an author's manuscript in ASCII will be the first day in the 25 years I have been in publishing that such an event will have occurred. Authors usually submit their manuscripts in a MS Word document that is riddled with styles and formatting -- usually haphazardly done. At least for the books on which I work, cleanup takes a lot of time. Then the manuscript has to be edited and recoded to conform to the codes needed to produce the final version of the book.

I'll admit I do not work on novels and there may be less involved -- or not -- with that genre, but the nonfiction books I work on take several weeks worth of work to prepare a manuscript for publication. The process is not as cut and dried as some would make it to be.



Turning a book manuscript file--even a clean one--into an ebook is a time-intensive process, far more than most people on this forum seem to realize. It's definitely not "a few seconds" as someone earlier said. The manuscript-file prep alone can takes days, starting with someone making sure all the final editing changes are in. This process could be shortened if typesetting files were designed to optimize the process, but they're not.

If you'd like a taste of what's involved, read the threads on my creation of free ebooks of The Infinite Sea, Sunborn, and others.

As someone said before, the costs of editorial, art, marketing, sales and promotion, and a lot more are costs that will apply to any book, tree or e.

I'd like to see less expensive ebooks, too, but the notion that ebooks are a trivial expense to produce and sell is very much a myth.

Do people really buy reader devices to save money on ebooks? I agree that the prices are too high considering the publishers aren't paying for printing and distributing, but I would buy the books anyway for the sheer convenience of buying books at home, receiving them instantly on my computer and then reading them wherever I go. I would rather buy an ebook that I can read on any device, though - technology changes pretty quickly and I love to have the newest gadgets!! It's not the price of the ebook that keeps me from buying it, it's usually the format of the book! If I can't convert it for use on multiple devices - I don't want it!!
kaz

(...) the notion that ebooks are a trivial expense to produce and sell is very much a myth.

I agree with you. And most of us here have certainly no doubt that those costs are real.

However, it is also very true that many other (substancial) costs are specifically related to printed editions - and I fell my inteligence insultated when some publishing houses says it isn't.

Publishing industry should deal with this new book age in a more intelligent and less cynical way.

Regards
Nelson

I will irrefutably point out at this point, that putting a function into existing word processors to format what is being written directly into whatever ebook format is desired is not only doable - it would be something that authors would not likely balk at. It is a feature I myself might pay for

The whole cost of formatting thing still is a cost that can be cut out.
And done that way it would take little time.

You are sitting here reading this forum in front of a computer people.
How hard is it to remember just what it is that computers do.

http://www.ohionapus.com/mediac/400_0/media/Wag~Finger.gif

/justifiable chastisement

Do people really buy reader devices to save money on ebooks? I agree that the prices are too high considering the publishers aren't paying for printing and distributing, but I would buy the books anyway for the sheer convenience of buying books at home, receiving them instantly on my computer and then reading them wherever I go. I would rather buy an ebook that I can read on any device, though - technology changes pretty quickly and I love to have the newest gadgets!! It's not the price of the ebook that keeps me from buying it, it's usually the format of the book! If I can't convert it for use on multiple devices - I don't want it!!
kaz

Well considering I got mine Reader as a present, and every book I've bought is cheaper than the pbook, plus the gas, I admit saving money was a factor.

But I didn't buy it strictly for that reason though :)

Do people really buy reader devices to save money on ebooks?
I did! And, when buying from Baen (my #1 supplier by number of books purchased), I saved the cost of the reader in the first year. Well, actually... I bought their entire output for that year in bits. Buying same in paper would have cost well more than the cost of the reader. But I'd only have bought about half of those books in a bookstore, so it really took me two years to cover the cost of the reader. Then when I read the 'extras' as well, I found that many of those authors also belonged on my "buy-and-read" list. Not all, but most.
I agree that the prices are too high considering the publishers aren't paying for printing and distributing, but I would buy the books anyway for the sheer convenience of buying books at home, receiving them instantly on my computer and then reading them wherever I go. I would rather buy an ebook that I can read on any device, though - technology changes pretty quickly and I love to have the newest gadgets!! It's not the price of the ebook that keeps me from buying it, it's usually the format of the book! If I can't convert it for use on multiple devices - I don't want it!!
kaz
Prices aren't too high everywhere. Baen sells eBooks at $6.00 for singles, or in various bundles that are even more attractively priced. They're a great place to visit if you like SF and Fantasy (plus a little Horror and some Paranormal Romance, now that they're also carrying books from some small publishers too). And NO DRM!

Xenophon

Do people really buy reader devices to save money on ebooks?

I bought most of my pbooks in paper and with some form of discount (usually at least 25%). I rarely bought a hardcover book and usually with a 40% off coupon (or deeper discount). I also used to share pbooks with co-workers, friends and family...the average book would be read 2-3 times. I read too much and books aren't cheap.

So while I didn't buy a reader to save money, I did wait until I was comfortable that it would not cost me more. In fact, although I was fascinated by the Sony eReader long before I got my Kindle and specifically did NOT buy because of eBook pricing. The big sell-point for me was Amazon's pricing model at the time.

Unfortunately, I'm not a Sci-Fi, Fantasy or classics reader.

This will be the last time I weigh in on this discussion. I'm going to give a couple of real-world examples from the company I work for.

Keep in mind, we are a very small publishing house serving a very select niche market.

The last book we printed was a 324 page, trade paperback book that we put a list price of $9.99 on. We printed only 5,000 copies of this book; a ridiculously small number. Our final cost per printed book is $0.89.

The last time we did a run of a similarly sized book of 20,000 copies, our cost was $0.48 per book.

If we were a large publishing house, printing books in the 100,000 copy range, on a daily basis, buying paper directly from the manufacturer, months in advance, our costs would be far lower per copy.

I get the impression some may think that a $10 book has $3 worth of paper in it. I hope this is helpful.

Even though I am able to save a little by purchasing ebooks through various online sources than I would buying a paperback from my local bookseller, that wasn't the point of buying my first reader. I LOVE being able to have a number of books available to read no matter where I go! Saving a little money on ebooks just makes it possible for me to buy more books!!;)
kaz

Yes, but assuming the cost to produce is the same. Ebooks cannot be shared.

Major publishing houses acknowledge that its the growing resale market that is hurting them. So if they encourage eBooks which cannot be shared and price them to encourage e over p, it could be a win-win.

This will be the last time I weigh in on this discussion. I'm going to give a couple of real-world examples from the company I work for.

Keep in mind, we are a very small publishing house serving a very select niche market.

The last book we printed was a 324 page, trade paperback book that we put a list price of $9.99 on. We printed only 5,000 copies of this book; a ridiculously small number. Our final cost per printed book is $0.89.

The last time we did a run of a similarly sized book of 20,000 copies, our cost was $0.48 per book.

If we were a large publishing house, printing books in the 100,000 copy range, on a daily basis, buying paper directly from the manufacturer, months in advance, our costs would be far lower per copy.

I get the impression some may think that a $10 book has $3 worth of paper in it. I hope this is helpful.

I knew it was low, but I didn't think that low.

All the belly aching and whining about how big are the digital costs or how much of the cost is about editing, converting, marketing and so on are given a lie by the difference between the price of a mmpb at 8$ and a hc at 25$ - and I am talking here about original releases since lots and lots of books are realeased mmpb first and also lots and lots of books released as hc do not see mmpb editions, so we cannot say that mmpb is a second hand edition so to speak.

Why the same kind of content is priced at 8$ vs 25$. Case in point Way of Shadows which is a mmpb original priced at 7.99$, no hc edition - only some bookclub whole trilogy edition - and say a comparable 600 page hc release fantasy. What is the difference in all those intangibles that seem to figure out so high in ebook accounting? Editing, marketing, advance... I contend none, and the 16$ list price difference or the fact that one costs triple another is due ONLY to format, a solid durable nice hardcover vs a cheap, disposable mmpb.

So people bellyaching about those high intangible costs are dissembling at best, putting it politely. If Orbit can release and hope to make good money on Way of Shadows as mmpb original - and it seemed they sold boatloads of it so made good money btw - no hc edition at 8$ a pop, there is no reason any (fiction) ebook whatsoever should cost more since ebooks are even more disposable than mmpb's...

The high costs of ebooks is simply due to a normal desire to get revenue, or as some put it best not to exchange the analog dollars for digital pennies and sadly this strategy failed badly until now and I do not think it will succeed with books either.

The last book we printed was a 324 page, trade paperback book that we put a list price of $9.99 on. We printed only 5,000 copies of this book; a ridiculously small number. Our final cost per printed book is $0.89.

The last time we did a run of a similarly sized book of 20,000 copies, our cost was $0.48 per book.

I get the impression some may think that a $10 book has $3 worth of paper in it. I hope this is helpful.

Well that's great.. but are you saying there are NO other costs involved in that? What about shipping, warehousing, returns, pulping... If you print 20,000 books and 10,000 get pulped that doubles the cost of each book you've sold. If you do a run of 20,000 and 50,000 people want to buy it you have lost out on 30,000 sales because of your poor projections. Most of those people won't come back after you've printed another run. That is opportunity cost.

Also, now consider what would the cost be of NOT printing that book. Putting it on a server somewhere that you perhaps rent for $20 a month, or pay storage/transfer fees to a service like Amazon S3. You make those files available to ebook sellers. They can sell 1 or 1000 of that book and your costs are the same.

I think to say it costs 48¢ per book is simplistic and not looking at the full business cycle.

That said, lets assume printing a book is 48¢ per unit. Lets assume doing digital only costs you 10¢. Also, lets say that you sell that book directly so your revenue is $9.99 per book rather than whatever you get wholesale for each book. Isn't that a better business model?

But, I think that the basis for alot of the complaints and miff is the fact that ebooks are selling for MORE than the price of a TBP or MMP. That certainly makes ZERO sense to any of us.

Thanks for you comments.

BOb

This will be the last time I weigh in on this discussion. I'm going to give a couple of real-world examples from the company I work for.

Keep in mind, we are a very small publishing house serving a very select niche market.

The last book we printed was a 324 page, trade paperback book that we put a list price of $9.99 on. We printed only 5,000 copies of this book; a ridiculously small number. Our final cost per printed book is $0.89.

The last time we did a run of a similarly sized book of 20,000 copies, our cost was $0.48 per book.

If we were a large publishing house, printing books in the 100,000 copy range, on a daily basis, buying paper directly from the manufacturer, months in advance, our costs would be far lower per copy.

I get the impression some may think that a $10 book has $3 worth of paper in it. I hope this is helpful.

Thanks for your insight. I am quite surprised for those numbers.

Still, as already said, there are other costs related exclusively to printed editons.

Regards
Nelson

Well that's great.. but are you saying there are NO other costs involved in that? What about shipping, warehousing, returns, pulping... If you print 20,000 books and 10,000 get pulped that doubles the cost of each book you've sold. If you do a run of 20,000 and 50,000 people want to buy it you have lost out on 30,000 sales because of your poor projections. Most of those people won't come back after you've printed another run. That is opportunity cost.

Also, now consider what would the cost be of NOT printing that book. Putting it on a server somewhere that you perhaps rent for $20 a month, or pay storage/transfer fees to a service like Amazon S3. You make those files available to ebook sellers. They can sell 1 or 1000 of that book and your costs are the same.

I think to say it costs 48¢ per book is simplistic and not looking at the full business cycle.

That said, lets assume printing a book is 48¢ per unit. Lets assume doing digital only costs you 10¢. Also, lets say that you sell that book directly so your revenue is $9.99 per book rather than whatever you get wholesale for each book. Isn't that a better business model?

But, I think that the basis for alot of the complaints and miff is the fact that ebooks are selling for MORE than the price of a TBP or MMP. That certainly makes ZERO sense to any of us.

Thanks for you comments.

BOb

100% with you.

Regards
Nelson

The day I receive an author's manuscript in ASCII will be the first day in the 25 years I have been in publishing that such an event will have occurred. Authors usually submit their manuscripts in a MS Word document that is riddled with styles and formatting -- usually haphazardly done. At least for the books on which I work, cleanup takes a lot of time. Then the manuscript has to be edited and recoded to conform to the codes needed to produce the final version of the book.

I'll admit I do not work on novels and there may be less involved -- or not -- with that genre, but the nonfiction books I work on take several weeks worth of work to prepare a manuscript for publication. The process is not as cut and dried as some would make it to be.


I appreciate the pros weighing in.

Ah, thanks. I was continually looking at the delta costs being minimal. But right, the cleanup work has to be charged to all editions evenly.

But once the fork is done (real pulp to typesetting, eBook directly to eStore?), except for marketing, it seems the costs shouldn't be shared. I fully expected very low eBook prices, since I imagined that that the majority of the costs of the physical book were for after-printing sales and distribution. Shelf space and shipping and retail sales *require* a high retail markup for physical books. Though again, I may be missing something or over-exaggerating the physical distribution and retail costs (Software stores take a ridiculous cut, but who knows why?). Just one uninformed person's expectations.

Do people really buy reader devices to save money on ebooks? I agree that the prices are too high considering the publishers aren't paying for printing and distributing, but I would buy the books anyway for the sheer convenience of buying books at home, receiving them instantly on my computer and then reading them wherever I go. . . .

I didn't buy (ask for as a Christmas gift to be technically correct :)) my Sony Reader to save money on ebooks. Truthfully, at the time I was unaware of the DRM problems, which might well have made me rethink asking for such an expensive gift.

I asked for the Reader because I liked the portability and because for me there are two categories of books: (1) books that I want to add to my library, my permanent collection, and (2) those that I want to read but do not want to add to my library. Naively, I assumed that ebooks would be less expensive than pbooks, when the truth is that because of DRM ebooks are signifcantly more expensive than pbooks.

However, I do buy ebooks but with caution. That is, I will not buy a fiction ebook unless I am already familiar with the author and like the author; or the description is intriguing and the ebook, even with DRM, costs less than $6; or the ebook is free.

Today is a good example. I had never read anything by Fiona McIntosh but HarperCollins gave away Odalisque and yesterday I finally got around to reading it. I found it so good, that I finished it in 1 day and this morning bought from the Sony store volumes 2 and 3 of the series, which I will start shortly. I would never have bought any of McIntosh's books absent that free one because of DRM and pricing.

So there is some connection between buying a reading device and expecting to spend less on ebooks -- at least for me -- but only because of DRM. Absent DRM, knowing that I own the ebook like I own a pbook, then equivalent pricing would be less a problem, althoug I would expect the pricing to be equivalent to the paperback version, not the hardcover version.

Turning a book manuscript file--even a clean one--into an ebook is a time-intensive process, far more than most people on this forum seem to realize. It's definitely not "a few seconds" as someone earlier said.

The belief is that it's "a few seconds" more than required for paper production, not that it's only a few seconds, total. That whatever process a publisher uses to format its books for print, could be adapted with relatively little effort to create two output forms: one print-ready, one ebook. Or three ebooks in different formats.

Conversion of raw text to ebook takes substantial time and effort for individuals because they're working with, well, raw text. Publishers aren't--they're working, at some point, with print-ready text, with whatever style & formatting arrangements work for them. They have a steady flow of books formatted with the same processes. If nothing else, I have trouble believing that making PDFs of all their books would take any substantial time per book.

However, even if an ebook requires starting from scratch, from the same base manuscript sent to the publisher, it doesn't take more effort than making a pbook.

As someone said before, the costs of editorial, art, marketing, sales and promotion, and a lot more are costs that will apply to any book, tree or e.

I'd like to see less expensive ebooks, too, but the notion that ebooks are a trivial expense to produce and sell is very much a myth.

Production costs are the same, or roughly equivalent--right up to the point where the pbook is printed. At which point, the pbook gains a whole cluster of costs that ebooks ignore entirely: paper for pages, special paper for covers, binding, inventory tracking, packing, shipping, storage, sales packaging, possible return costs.

Charging the same for both implies that those costs are negligible or non-existent. Charging *more* for ebooks than paperbacks implies that either paper costs less than creating hyperlinks, or that publishers want to discourage ebook sales.

The belief is that it's "a few seconds" more than required for paper production, not that it's only a few seconds, total. That whatever process a publisher uses to format its books for print, could be adapted with relatively little effort to create two output forms: one print-ready, one ebook. Or three ebooks in different formats.

Conversion of raw text to ebook takes substantial time and effort for individuals because they're working with, well, raw text. Publishers aren't--they're working, at some point, with print-ready text, with whatever style & formatting arrangements work for them. They have a steady flow of books formatted with the same processes. If nothing else, I have trouble believing that making PDFs of all their books would take any substantial time per book.


We're both talking about the same thing. Yes, once systems have been developed to seamlessly translate, for example, a typesetter's file into an ebook format, it should be a simple process. But it is not a seamless process right now. The typesetter's files are just too different. I worked with one for my own production of Sunborn, and it was a nightmare. The people at Tor are taking a slightly different avenue, but it's still a laborious process. Yes, it should be automatable, but I suspect part of the problem right now is that someone has to invest the money to develop the software. I'm sure they're working on it. Maybe some publishers have already solved that.

Tor just in the last couple of years started keeping PDF archive files of their books. That, in fact, is what I put up for free for my Sunborn download (http://www.starrigger.net/Downloads.htm). But it's a poor starting point for an ebook. Actually a terrible starting point. I tried to use it and gave up.


However, even if an ebook requires starting from scratch, from the same base manuscript sent to the publisher, it doesn't take more effort than making a pbook.


No. But with ebooks being only a small fraction of sales, most publishers aren't going to want to spend that same effort twice, with a low payoff for the ebooks.


Production costs are the same, or roughly equivalent--right up to the point where the pbook is printed. At which point, the pbook gains a whole cluster of costs that ebooks ignore entirely: paper for pages, special paper for covers, binding, inventory tracking, packing, shipping, storage, sales packaging, possible return costs.

Charging the same for both implies that those costs are negligible or non-existent. Charging *more* for ebooks than paperbacks implies that either paper costs less than creating hyperlinks, or that publishers want to discourage ebook sales.

There are distribution costs for ebooks that you're leaving out. As an example, my titles that are available on ereads.com (http://www.ereads.com/author.asp?authorid=89) get sold through fictionwise, among other places. Half the take goes to fictionwise. So that's similar to paper books. If they set up their own online store, that costs money. I'm not saying it's more than paper, but I'm not sure it's as much less as is commonly assumed. And remember, right now it's not making all that much money, by comparison.

Having said that, I agree completely that ebooks should not cost more than treebooks. I have argued in favor of lower prices on my own ebooks. I'm hoping some of them will be up on Baen soon, so they'll be available for a lower price. I am completely in favor of lower costs for ebooks. I'd rather sell 1000 copies for a low profit than 100 for a high profit.

I'm just saying it's not as simple as many folk seem to believe.

Side note: One area where I might agree with the cynical view is in textbooks. Clearly an area where ebooks could be of enormous benefit to the user, the student. But my brother is a textbook author, and he says his publisher simply doesn't know what to do about it, and they are, indeed, running scared.

Side note: One area where I might agree with the cynical view is in textbooks. Clearly an area where ebooks could be of enormous benefit to the user, the student. But my brother is a textbook author, and he says his publisher simply doesn't know what to do about it, and they are, indeed, running scared.

That's truly a shame... they're going to leave it for someone else to figure out, then try to decide whether they can emulate it, or shut down. The scary part is, what kind of textbooks are we likely to get out of such an industry sea-change?

I will irrefutably point out at this point, that putting a function into existing word processors to format what is being written directly into whatever ebook format is desired is not only doable - it would be something that authors would not likely balk at. It is a feature I myself might pay for

The whole cost of formatting thing still is a cost that can be cut out.
And done that way it would take little time.

You are sitting here reading this forum in front of a computer people.
How hard is it to remember just what it is that computers do.


Actually many word processors already have this feature for certain formats. Framemaker can produce eBooks in a variety of formats. Word has a free add on to produce eBooks in LIT format and can of course produce PDF eBooks. And with macros word processors can build eBooks behind the scenes as demonstrated in Open Office.

Dale

Yes, but assuming the cost to produce is the same. Ebooks cannot be shared.

Major publishing houses acknowledge that its the growing resale market that is hurting them. So if they encourage eBooks which cannot be shared and price them to encourage e over p, it could be a win-win.

eBooks without DRM can be shared all the time although it may not be legal. This is one of the fears of publishers.

Dale

However, I do buy ebooks but with caution. That is, I will not buy a fiction ebook unless I am already familiar with the author and like the author; or the description is intriguing and the ebook, even with DRM, costs less than $6; or the ebook is free.



I know what you mean. I have tried a few of the multiformat books from some of the online publishers but have only made additional purchases by a particular author a couple of times. For the most part, I've been a little disappointed in the quality of the writing and editing. I prefer to buy ebooks from authors I know and like so as not to waste my precious "book allowance"! :p Of course, there are plenty of classics out there that I haven't read yet. . .:o
kaz

It's definitely not "a few seconds" as someone earlier said.
Preparing manuscript for a publishing as an e-book can be *very* quick ...

... once you have done all that intensive work needed to prepare manuscript for your in-house format for p-book publishing.

And this is what people are referring to. We have been talking about selling an e-book for higher price than paperback or, in some cases, even a fancy hardback. The work for preparation the manuscript to a publishable format is the same, yet with hardback you have many significant additional costs:
- paper,
- printing,
- transport,
- warehousing,
- costs for running a brick and mortar store (rent, salaries, heating, ...)
- buying back unsold books from brick and mortar stores
and many others.

With e-book the additional costs are:
- rent for a server somewhere in your ISP server room (you would be surprised how cheap you can get that)
- price of some e-commerce software (you only need to pay this once and than you can sell virtually unlimited number of books. Here again you can get the basic functionality *very* cheap (**))
- salary of an administrator[s]
and OPTIONALLY
- license fees for whatever non-in-house DRM you might want to use
- maintenance fees for DRM authorization server after you stop selling the books. Here you can, of course, do what the vast majority of sellers of DRM hobbled content do when they stop selling. You can switch off the server immediately, leaving your sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers with unusable content.

(**) do not get me started about the Sony book store and their basic functionality - like searching for a book

Most of the books I'd like to read were released some time ago (not considered classics through) and they have run on best seller lists for weeks on end when people were purchasing the paper books at stores and online. My belief about those books is that the costs have been incurred and paid for by the bestseller prices long before they are converted to eBooks.

Most of the time after a book has run its course on the best seller lists, the price of the paper book goes way down. At that point, I expect the eBook price to be reasonably below the paper price, since I think any dollars that come in from the sale of eBooks for those kinds of books is gravy (well, after the publisher or distributor pays the DRM costs). For those kinds of books, my belief is that the primary cost for eBooks is DRM costs.

Now if a publishing company's business is purely focused on eBooks, then I'd expect to pay more for those books because there are still the usual formatting, layout, etc costs of creating a book, but for a publishing company who is primarily focused on paper books, I don't think the costs for eBooks should be the same as for paper books, especially when I consider the constraints associated with eBooks (DRM, not able to share books or donate books, etc.).

It's definitely not "a few seconds" as someone earlier said.

I'm sure it's not, yet several members of this forum (you know who you are!) are able to produce utterly gorgeous ebooks from various unformatted texts at a spectacular rate. Why is it so much harder for the trade to do this?

/JB

I'm just saying it's not as simple as many folk seem to believe.



To me it's pretty simple - the fact that publishers are able to release original mmpb's at 8$ and make a profit on the titles that catch, shows that whatever costs are there - including edit, store discount and so on - are included in that price and while a premium hardcover, price 3x of a mmpb, has some extra costs, the high premium price is simply due to the better, more solid format.

So it comes to utility/value of format and I think that e-books are much more disposable than mmpb's.

Regarding utility, it's trickier since for example I'd rather have an ebook than a print book for many books, so I place some utility on having e, but then you need differential pricing to include the utility preference of each person.

So overall, if e-books move toward a uniform pricing system, format based the way mmpb/tpb/hdc tiers function now there is no question that e-books should go somewhat lower than mmpb's, maybe with the same restrictions, like second editions if hc is released...

Personally though I think that digital allows much more flexible pricing and a reverse auction kind of system is doable - the way the used book market acts today in practice. Hard to say if it's socially practical though since the market kind of ingrained us with "new - fixed price with possible discounts", "used - variable pricing"...

Let's see how Apple will do with their differential pricing...

"I don’t mind one bit paying a FAIR price. But I am not a complete fool and willing to pay 20 dollars for a book that is available on the high street for 10 dollars."

This, to me, is the bottom line. The publishers are *crazy* if they think people will want to pay more money when they don't have to. If the costs to produce an ebook are really that much higher, then they need to economize and find cheaper ways (e.g. cutting out the middleman, requesting authors to submit manuscripts in plain text, whatever). They need to develop methods which will allow them to price their product in a competitive way.

Side note: One area where I might agree with the cynical view is in textbooks. Clearly an area where ebooks could be of enormous benefit to the user, the student. But my brother is a textbook author, and he says his publisher simply doesn't know what to do about it, and they are, indeed, running scared.
This is one of the few areas where licensing might work--being able to sell 2nd edition (or 3rd, 4th, or whatever) to people who already have the first edition, at a reduced price, the way many software vendors sell 3.0 at half-price to registered users of 2.0.

College students probably only want a textbook once--but professors would pay for the upgrades, and so would professionals in the relevant field. And they could sell new editions at full price (whatever that is) to students, and upgrades to the pros, who might otherwise stick with the older edition of their ebook.

But overall, all publishing companies are going to need to deal with the ebook markets. They'll have to decide whether to branch into the new area, or license it out, or try to avoid it and watch their book sales drop in comparison to those that cater to customers who want ebooks.

There's way too much "Hollywood Pricing" in the mass book industry. What do I mean by that? Here's an example from the book The Whole Equation. Creative head of a studio developes serious health problems in the early 1930's. His doctor tells him to take 6 months off or get fitted for a pine box.
So he does. But he loves his job, so as he's loafing on the French Riveria, he can't help but think about various picture projects in various states. He thinks about 50 pictures in six month, and calculates he's spent $50,000 worth of time thinking about them. How does he bill the time among the pictures? Simple. He bills $50,000 to each picture! That's "Hollywood Pricing"!

And so with p-books/e-books. Here are the general costs for a book.

Manuscript acquisition - (One price - all forms nowadays)
Editing cost to polish manuscript - (One price - all forms)
Typesetting/galley costs - (P-book only, once per edition)
Polished manuscript to e-book format (e-book only, once per format)
Printing and distribution costs (p-book only)
Server costs (e-book only)
DRM costs (e-book only, optional)
Marketing (p-book and e-book, verious amounts per type)

Let's assume a 4 tiered progress. HC first, pays for manuscript acquistion and editing. Second, Trade PB - pays on any residium from HC. Third - MMPB, editing paid for, but manuscript still costs. Each P-book has own typesetting/printing/returns cost. Finally, e-book, manuscript costs plus e-book only costs. All 4 have various marketing costs.

So why is everybody screaming about editing costs of e-books? It's already been paid for upstream! E-book is not the lead format, no more so than the broadcast showing of a blockbuster movie its premier! The only editing cost of an e-book should be for scanning the p-book, and proofing it to precisely the same as the p-book. That's all folks. If the author feels he needs to rewrite some passage(s), give the scanned/proofed copy and tell him to return it in the same format.

Now this is for fiction books. Reference books are a whole 'nother kettle of fish (i.e. much more expensive to scan and proof.) I, personally, have scanned and proofed several books for PG Austrailia, and completed the task in under 40 hours for a 300 page book. And that's for free! (And frankly, I did a better job that half the commercial e-books I've bought.) But if I were getting paid $50 an hour, that's still less than $2000 per book. For a scan that will last forever. Shucks, you could probably get a fan to do it for free. (But the "Hollywood Pricing" is busy spending a $2.5 million advance for a first book from a comedian (that hasn't even been written it yet), because it's gonna be a "Blockbuster", and whine about e-book piracy! <Shrug>)

This is one of the few areas where licensing might work--being able to sell 2nd edition (or 3rd, 4th, or whatever) to people who already have the first edition, at a reduced price, the way many software vendors sell 3.0 at half-price to registered users of 2.0.


Upgrades/updates. What a tremendous idea. It could even open up new markets.

- Technical books: The buyer for Java for Dummies 2008, who would rarely repurchase the full-price 2009 edition, would probably pay $1-$2 for the 2009 update merged into his full eBook.
- Different language: for those who think they might want to learn a language. There could be an option to merge the two books paragraph by paragraph.
- Biography: e.g., a sports bio about a current player, where a couple of years more of playing might warrant an upgrade. (Although society doesn't need the many biographical upgrades warranted by the varied exploits of O.J. Simpson.)

Fiction writers would probably find ways to cash in via updates. (Gah, we'd need to read Amazon reviews for the original and all subsequent updates!)

And publishing bigwigs might be less paranoid about offering upgrades once they knew only the updated information was being sent out (a PC-based book-merge program would be easy to implement).

And the merge could be turned on or off, or the updated info presented in a different font, for those who want to see what was in the original.

Or it's a terrible idea. Consumers' wallets will be milked dry by updates and sequels. And writers will look to embellish their "milk cows" rather than being creative. Oh, they already do that?

Preparing manuscript for a publishing as an e-book can be *very* quick ...

... once you have done all that intensive work needed to prepare manuscript for your in-house format for p-book publishing.

You're missing one point: Standard formatting for printed books is very different than formatting for e-books. At the moment, there is no one-click "translation" button to convert one to the other cleanly. Therefore, the publisher has no choice but to format the document twice, essentially from scratch.

Until that changes, publishers will be hesitant to commit that extra time, for so little of a return in e-book sales.

You're missing one point: Standard formatting for printed books is very different than formatting for e-books. At the moment, there is no one-click "translation" button to convert one to the other cleanly. Therefore, the publisher has no choice but to format the document twice, essentially from scratch.

Until that changes, publishers will be hesitant to commit that extra time, for so little of a return in e-book sales.

Interesting point.

Doesn't the marketing represent the lion's share of a book's cost? I have used the price of mascara as an example. A tube of mascara is probably about fifteen cents' worth of pigments and wax, but the elaborate packaging and advertising thereof elevates its price to the range of precious metal. No matter how simple it is to develop an ebook, it's the marketing that sells it, and I don't see ebook marketing as being very different from pbook marketing.

Doesn't the marketing represent the lion's share of a book's cost? I have used the price of mascara as an example.

But books don't get marketed with Madison Avenue-created TV spots, movie product placement and glossy photos featuring A-list models and starlets... generally book ads are print (sometimes in color) in lit-related magazines, an occasional end-cap poster, and in the back pages of other books. Even endorsements by other authors are largely built-in to their contracts, and likely not costing them anything extra. They simply can't be spending that much on advertisement.

Editing, production and infrastructure (storage, retail space and transportation) are all probably larger expenditures.

What Steve said on everything above. Except, er...

Even endorsements by other authors are largely built-in to their contracts

If that ever happens, it's news to me. Authors generally write endorsements (blurbs) as a favor to the other author or editor, or to help give a boost to a new writer. Never heard of it being written into a contract. The editor sends a copy of a manuscript and says, "Hey, if you have time, could you read this and send me a quote if you like it?" And the author says, "Sure," or, "Sorry, can't."

You're missing one point: Standard formatting for printed books is very different than formatting for e-books. At the moment, there is no one-click "translation" button to convert one to the other cleanly. Therefore, the publisher has no choice but to format the document twice, essentially from scratch.

Until that changes, publishers will be hesitant to commit that extra time, for so little of a return in e-book sales.

I guess that might be true.

IF and only if the publisher is an anachronism mired in the nineteenth century.

Period.

In the event, however, that the publisher should turn out to be an educated business man, there is obviously the third option of having software written and hardware set up to fully automate the process. Just like one does with any other repetitive process in any other business.

In the event, however, that the publisher should turn out to be an educated business man, there is obviously the third option of having software written and hardware set up to fully automate the process. Just like one does with any other repetitive process in any other business.

As Jeffrey mentioned, that may be happening, or may have already been accomplished by someone, but he is not aware of any publisher that has as yet done that.

So, I guess either some educated businessman is keeping that knowledge under their hat... or your estimation of the anachronistic tendencies of various publishing businessmen might be true...

If that ever happens, it's news to me. Authors generally write endorsements (blurbs) as a favor to the other author or editor, or to help give a boost to a new writer. Never heard of it being written into a contract. The editor sends a copy of a manuscript and says, "Hey, if you have time, could you read this and send me a quote if you like it?" And the author says, "Sure," or, "Sorry, can't."

Sorry... that's what I meant, I didn't mean to imply that it was a paid part of their contract... just that it is expected that authors will be asked to comment on other books. Bad wording on my part.

I guess that might be true.

IF and only if the publisher is an anachronism mired in the nineteenth century.

Period.

In the event, however, that the publisher should turn out to be an educated business man, there is obviously the third option of having software written and hardware set up to fully automate the process. Just like one does with any other repetitive process in any other business.

The number of errors I see in many of my purchased ebooks tells me that people do, in fact, automate the process. If you want a good quality ebook, you still need to have someone check it but that's not very expensive when you think of it terms of thousands of copies.

But books don't get marketed with Madison Avenue-created TV spots, movie product placement and glossy photos featuring A-list models and starlets...

(Yes, I'm quoting myself...)

Hey: How would it be if A-list actors and actresses did TV and movie trailer promo spots for books, acting out characters and scenes? That might help sales!

Oh, wait... naw. I guess everybody will just sit back and wait for a movie that will never come...

The number of errors I see in many of my purchased ebooks tells me that people do, in fact, automate the process. If you want a good quality ebook, you still need to have someone check it but that's not very expensive when you think of it terms of thousands of copies.

I think that's the key point: Most publishers aren't thinking of most non-bestseller e-books in terms of "thousands of copies"... they're probably thinking hundreds, perhaps only dozens of sales, lots of pirating loss, and lousy profit margins. If the e-book field is seen to be growing in potential, however, that could change.

Of course, with the changes to the economy, and to publishing, finding a new and better way to farm out such work, to make it workable even in the early days of e-book sales, would be worth their while...

I think that's the key point: Most publishers aren't thinking of most non-bestseller e-books in terms of "thousands of copies"... they're probably thinking hundreds, perhaps only dozens of sales, lots of pirating loss, and lousy profit margins. If the e-book field is seen to be growing in potential, however, that could change.

Of course, with the changes to the economy, and to publishing, finding a new and better way to farm out such work, to make it workable even in the early days of e-book sales, would be worth their while...

Yep. Most new books I get are good quality. They're probably starting with a good text manuscript so errors are few. There may be a formatting glitch here or there but they're pretty good. Back catalog stuff is iffy. I've had books that were obviously OCR-ed with no checking.

The number of errors I see in many of my purchased ebooks tells me that people do, in fact, automate the process. If you want a good quality ebook, you still need to have someone check it but that's not very expensive when you think of it terms of thousands of copies.

Actually it is more likely an indication that the process is adhoc and happens after the paper book is already published. Those same errors are not usually in the paper book so there was not a common source for the book and eBook. Often the paper book is scanned to produce the eBook since there is not a single point source for the electronic copy. (no source control)

Dale

Actually it is more likely an indication that the process is adhoc and happens after the paper book is already published. Those same errors are not usually in the paper book so there was not a common source for the book and eBook. Often the paper book is scanned to produce the eBook since there is not a single point source for the electronic copy. (no source control)

So they produce the ebook edition from the paper edition, so there's no reason why the cost of producing the paper edition should be transferred to the ebook price (it was already included in the paper price), so the ebook price should reflect only the cost of one single paper book (i.e., divided among all the ebooks expected to be sold), plus the cost of scanning and creating the ebook (plus electronic distribution, author rights, etc.), but it should specifically not include the cost of correcting proofs, editing, etc. :D

(It's a bit like a painter selling photographs of his pictures at the same price as the real pictures)

So they produce the ebook edition from the paper edition, so there's no reason why the cost of producing the paper edition should be transferred to the ebook price (it was already included in the paper price), so the ebook price should reflect only the cost of one single paper book (i.e., divided among all the ebooks expected to be sold), plus the cost of scanning and creating the ebook (plus electronic distribution, author rights, etc.), but it should specifically not include the cost of correcting proofs, editing, etc. :D

Unfortunately, scanning an e-book also leads to errors, so you still need editing/proofing of all material. A recent e-copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide series I purchased was filled with over a dozen instances of the same error, an improperly-recognized set of characters generated by OCR, that a proofer should have caught (not to mention other OCR errors, but the one recurring error was particularly noticeable after the third instance).

Actually, there are ways of improving the accuracy of OCR (such as xeroxing a printed page and enlarging it to the size of a letter or A4 page, and running scan and OCR on the larger pages... I've done it, it works), but few scanning personnel want to take even that extra step for accuracy. The Hitchhiker's errors I mentioned above would have been caught by this method.

Which comes back to the question, what sort of effort is a publisher willing to make to create e-books. They could use the long tail, they could use credit lines (which cost them nothing!) They could even (gasp) pay some money. Instead, they create crappy scan's with little to no proofing and then complain about the cost! There's a hundred plus authors I'd scan and do a triple level proof for free, just for the credit line in the e-book. And they're not all big name authors, either. :whitemencomeinwithstraightjackets:

Big publishers don't want a quality product... :Gaggoeson:

Unfortunately, scanning an e-book also leads to errors, so you still need editing/proofing of all material.

Of course, and if they make the effort of properly creating an ebook, it's fair to reflect that in the price.

My point was that if they just make a quick, crappy, unproofed OCR conversion of paper into ebook, then I don't see a reason to transfer the cost of creating the paper book to the ebook price. And especially, the ebook price should not include the cost of editing and proofing the paper book.

I must be missing something! :o Why would they go through all the trouble of scanning a paperback when the original was probably submitted in some digital form, ie. MS doc, etc (this applies to more recently published books)? I would think that this file would go through the editting process and saved and if they are anything like me, archived as well). It is this file that would then be formatted into whatever ebook format you want. Granted it's been a while since my programming days, but I would think that with the ease of use of the programming languages today, that software could be written to do any additional formatting needing for e-publishing. It would be great if someone would then physically edit the e-file for chapter breaks, etc., but not totally necessary as software can be written to do that as well. I understand that the process to create a paper book would be different, but I've written and in-house published fairly complex user's guides in both paper and digital formats and the process just wasn't that complicated - and that was 25 years ago.

As a side not - if I were a book publisher, I would want to make sure that any books coming out of my publishing house were availble in all formats so they anyone who wanted to buy it could. Why limit availablity to only those who read ereader, Mobi, etc, or paper for that matter!!

I must be missing something! :o Why would they go through all the trouble of scanning a paperback when the original was probably submitted in some digital form, ie. MS doc, etc (this applies to more recently published books)? I would think that this file would go through the editting process and saved and if they are anything like me, archived as well). It is this file that would then be formatted into whatever ebook format you want. Granted it's been a while since my programming days, but I would think that with the ease of use of the programming languages today, that software could be written to do any additional formatting needing for e-publishing. It would be great if someone would then physically edit the e-file for chapter breaks, etc., but not totally necessary as software can be written to do that as well. I understand that the process to create a paper book would be different, but I've written and in-house published fairly complex user's guides in both paper and digital formats and the process just wasn't that complicated - and that was 25 years ago.

As a side not - if I were a book publisher, I would want to make sure that any books coming out of my publishing house were availble in all formats so they anyone who wanted to buy it could. Why limit availablity to only those who read ereader, Mobi, etc, or paper for that matter!!

I think you are missing your gullibility.

I think you are missing your gullibility.

Excuse me?

I must be missing something! :o Why would they go through all the trouble of scanning a paperback when the original was probably submitted in some digital form,

Publisher have not had the tradition of saving the source material or even having the concept of a final electronic version that everynody know about.

I must be missing something! :o Why would they go through all the trouble of scanning a paperback when the original was probably submitted in some digital form, ie. MS doc, etc (this applies to more recently published books)?

That last bit is exactly it--digital submission of manuscripts has only been industry standard for a few years. When Steve Jackson Games started demanding digital submissions for their magazine, back in about 1990, there was much shrieking and yelling about how that was unfairly biased against people with typewriters and not computers. And that's a tiny, geek-oriented company with a strong online following; they ran one of the early popular BBSes. (io.com)

Anything published before 1990 probably doesn't have an existing digital edition. Anything published before 2000, it's questionable--a digital version may exist somewhere, but might be in an unusable format. (Wordstar? Saved on a floppy disc nobody can read? Stuck on a Win95 hard drive in a basement?) Even since then, if the publisher wasn't being conscious of ebook sales possibilities, they may have discarded the original as soon as a print-ready file was made, and discarded that as soon as the print run was done, for mid-level authors where they don't expect a second edition.

Tompe and Elfwreck, thanks for the informational responses to my question! :) I agree that my supposition would only apply to more recent publications. Back in the early 80's, I worked for a government agency that was pretty much on the cutting edge of technology and we practically had to beg our end users to use the software we developed to make their jobs easier! You can lead a horse to water. . .

I know my view was/is a little simplistic, but I get frustrated with the short-sightedness of publishing companies or any company for that matter that doesn't take advantage of the technology available as long as it is cost effective.
Kaz

Anything published before 1990 probably doesn't have an existing digital edition. Anything published before 2000, it's questionable--a digital version may exist somewhere, but might be in an unusable format. (Wordstar? Saved on a floppy disc nobody can read? Stuck on a Win95 hard drive in a basement?) Even since then, if the publisher wasn't being conscious of ebook sales possibilities, they may have discarded the original as soon as a print-ready file was made, and discarded that as soon as the print run was done, for mid-level authors where they don't expect a second edition.

This is very true, even for nonfiction books that I edit. I was always my policy to maintain an electronic copy of the final edited version that I produced for years -- just in case. But I wasn't being paid to store these files for my client publishers and every so often I would discard older files, especially if it looked like there would be no newer edition. But even if the publisher were to ask for the files, in these cases, they would not be exactly what appeared in the print version because after my editing, the files were returned to authors for review and any changes they may have made were not incorporated in my files. The same is true for the proofreading stage, which followed the author review.

As for the books that I edit and typeset, I do have the final typeset versions with all corrections incorporated. But prior to a few months ago, none of my publisher clients had any interest in having the manuscripts prepared for the possibility of ebooks; the focus was strictly on print. Consequently, even though the electronic files exist, they are not wholly suitable for conversion to ebooks. They would require some work to be made so. Again, these books are not novel-like, that is, essentially straight text; these books are significantly more complex. Only in the past few months have my publisher-clients decided that it is worth the time and cost to have these books prepared from the start for possible conversion to ebooks.

But the point is that the publishers rarely maintain their own libraries of the electronic files. If they are maintained at all, they are maintained by the vendors who did the typesetting, and the typesetting industry has dramatically changed in the past 2 decades. Many typesetters have gone out of business; others have consolidated; an increasing number of books are typeset in a country other than the publisher's country; and an increasing number are typeset by freelancers. There is no set repository or control over the final files.

Tompe and Elfwreck, thanks for the informational responses to my question! :) I agree that my supposition would only apply to more recent publications. Back in the early 80's, I worked for a government agency that was pretty much on the cutting edge of technology and we practically had to beg our end users to use the software we developed to make their jobs easier! You can lead a horse to water. . .

I know my view was/is a little simplistic, but I get frustrated with the short-sightedness of publishing companies or any company for that matter that doesn't take advantage of the technology available as long as it is cost effective.
Kaz

I agree for any other company. However, there IS a mindset within the publishing industry of being a bastion of staid gentility, of nearly 'Victorianism'. While the rest of the world has raced to the future, one works best within the publishing giants if one imagines oneself sharpening one's quills prior to receiving pads of foolscap straight from Charles Dickens himself. :D

In such an environment, there is no 'computer', no 'digital storage', no 'electronically-formatted text file'. No doubt several of the CEOs of major publishing firms who lovingly maintain massive buggy-whip collections. :D

Derek

While I do believe there are costs associated with eBook production, I also believe there is no viable reason why an eBook should cost more than a mass market paperback edition, and actually think it should be about a dollar or so less.

Let's take the average $8 paperback as an example. Most bookstores get at least a 45% discount off cover when they buy from the distributor (or at least they did when I managed a bookstore) which means the distributor is going to have to pay less than that to stay in business. I'm not sure what a distributor pays for a book, but I don't see any way it can be more than about 40% of cover (or 60% discount from cover to keep the numbers the same).

That means taking $1.00 off the mmpb cover price for the eBook edition will cost the publisher $0.40 in lost revenue, and as we've seen from earlier in the thread that figure is in the approximate ballpark of the printing costs.

As to DRM, that's a distribution cost.

So from what I can tell, there's no reason eBooks should cost more than the mmpb edition of the same book, and they should actually cost less as both distribution and retail costs are lower. In the worst-case scenario, they should be available for the Amazon cost of the mmpb edition.

Baen can make a profit on $6.00 eBooks, and Webscriptions has enough other publishers on board at the same price point that it's not unique to Baen. So the question becomes why can't other publishers?

(Please note - I do understand publishers not wanting to release a low-priced eBook simultaneously with the hardcover - that's the same as not doing a simultaneous hardcover and mmpb release. However the low-priced eBook edition should at the very least be released with the mmpb.)

Excuse me?

You lack the gullibility to believe making an ebook generally involves scanning paper manuscripts into a computer at the publisher level.

I can't imagine anyone writing books on a yellow legal pad then typing it on an old manual typewriter these days.

It is an even further stretch to ask me to believe that the editors in even the tiniest publishing house are using a red ink pen, some whiteout, and a manual typewriter to edit a book before it goes to print.

Ergot, the publishers have the book in electronic format already.

Or they are so incompetent that they need to be pushed out of the market place and are therefore no loss.

You lack the gullibility to believe making an ebook generally involves scanning paper manuscripts into a computer at the publisher level.

I can't imagine anyone writing books on a yellow legal pad then typing it on an old manual typewriter these days.

It is an even further stretch to ask me to believe that the editors in even the tiniest publishing house are using a red ink pen, some whiteout, and a manual typewriter to edit a book before it goes to print.

Ergot, the publishers have the book in electronic format already.

Or they are so incompetent that they need to be pushed out of the market place and are therefore no loss.

I can't swear as to their competency. They have or had electronic copies of the pages. They have a stack of electronic copies after several reviews and no body really knows which ones are the latest and which ones go with what. In addition they tend to throw them away once a master is made. They may have a PDF with all the crop marks on it but that is all.

Dale

They have or had electronic copies of the pages. They have a stack of electronic copies after several reviews and no body really knows which ones are the latest and which ones go with what. In addition they tend to throw them away once a master is made. They may have a PDF with all the crop marks on it but that is all.

Dale

Thanks for the insight. My last review of a technical book was about five years ago, and they e-mailed me a "final" copy. There could have been minor changes afterward. But that was a book co-written by two technically proficient authors 3,000 miles apart, so naturally it had to stay in electronic form till the end.

Since there is value in having a proper "source code control" of the electronic version, the question to the publishers is why don't they manage the process correctly, keeping one electronic copy as the master, forking at the last moment to the two products, eBook and paper. With their current process of throwing away the electronic copy, they throw away money (equal to the cost of converting back to eBook form). I think that is what many of us in this thread can't fathom.

You lack the gullibility to believe making an ebook generally involves scanning paper manuscripts into a computer at the publisher level.

I can't imagine anyone writing books on a yellow legal pad then typing it on an old manual typewriter these days.

It is an even further stretch to ask me to believe that the editors in even the tiniest publishing house are using a red ink pen, some whiteout, and a manual typewriter to edit a book before it goes to print.

Ergot, the publishers have the book in electronic format already.

Or they are so incompetent that they need to be pushed out of the market place and are therefore no loss.

The fact that I believe the publishers have the book in electronic format was what I was implying in my post. If that was obscured by my wording, forgive me. I also do not believe that anyone would write or edit a book in today's technology-driven age using paper and pencil. My comments about scanning paper books was refering to previous posting on this thread. You and I seem to be in agreement in everything you have listed here with the exception of your use of the word, gullibility. I may be naive in my lack of knowledge regarding the publishing industry, but I am not nor have I ever been gullible. The definition is: tending to trust and believe people, and therefore easily tricked or deceived. That really doesn't apply here.
Kaz

I also do not believe that anyone would write or edit a book in today's technology-driven age using paper and pencil.

I've heard a few people comment that they actually do all of their writing in longhand (surprises me, too). They may be writing poetry... :rolleyes:

But this is clearly one of those industries where many of the major participants hold onto traditional practices with a death grip. It's only partially surprising, as print publishing hadn't changed significantly for most of a century (again, one of the few industries that can make that claim), prompting the set-in-their-ways players to naturally enter denial when change began to loom over them. It is always the people who have been so comfortable, for so long, that protest most loudly about finally having to change.

Those people also have the hardest time finally changing, and many of them simply won't make it. But in their wake, new players will emerge, embracing the new ways, and the field will enter a new phase. At this point, it's only a matter of time.

Present e-book prices reflect the present publishing business model, which is already being shaken to its core by modern demands. It will be replaced by a business model that will be adapted to the strengths of the new tech, new sales models, new consumers, and new authors, and will outright reject many of the old practices as anachronisms. The wave is coming, but it's not close to cresting yet.

I can't swear as to their competency. They have or had electronic copies of the pages. They have a stack of electronic copies after several reviews and no body really knows which ones are the latest and which ones go with what. In addition they tend to throw them away once a master is made. They may have a PDF with all the crop marks on it but that is all.

Dale

Then that is a sad indictment of the publishing industry. Version control of electronic documents is a problem that has been solved for decades now. Nothing expensive is required - there are plenty of free solutions which are happily relied upon by billion-dollar businesses (and that work very well).

/JB

Then that is a sad indictment of the publishing industry. Version control of electronic documents is a problem that has been solved for decades now. Nothing expensive is required - there are plenty of free solutions which are happily relied upon by billion-dollar businesses (and that work very well).


Why do you think the time is free? Using version control systems with people who are not programmers usually cost a lot of time. Even with programmers there are costs. You also have cost for backup and running a repository server. And you might have to hire somebody new that have the competence.

Why do you think the time is free? Using version control systems with people who are not programmers usually cost a lot of time. Even with programmers there are costs. You also have cost for backup and running a repository server. And you might have to hire somebody new that have the competence.

I have to admit that I struggle to accept that. A backup and repository server costs less than a few hundred dollars these days - apart from the smallest imaginable publishers that should be a negligible cost per book.

Version control systems are really not hard to use - I really don't accept the argument that it would require too much training or other expense. Publishers are essentially in the business of managing and controlling the distribution of information. If they're not capable of doing that in a sensible way then they need a kick up the backside.

/JB

Publishers are essentially in the business of managing and controlling the distribution of information.


I do not think that is the business. If the business was managing information they would have looked very different. The business it to sell books and earn money. They have there old streamlined procedures that works very well for printing and selling books. Why should the change something that works to something that is more expensive?

I think you underestimate the time it takes to implement a new system and the extra time it take for people to use it. And to use it correctly. And to use it when a disk crash just before a deadline and so on.

I do not think that is the business. If the business was managing information they would have looked very different.
The business it to sell books and earn money.

Clearly making money is the aim of the business (as is the case for every business), but, given that what they are selling is essentially intellectual property (i.e. the words written by the authors), then any failure to look after that data is simply unprofessional.

They have there old streamlined procedures that works very well for printing and selling books. Why should the change something that works to something that is more expensive?

Because if DaleDe's comments are accurate then their businesses and future business opportunities are seriously compromised by their lack of control over the fundamental currency of their field.

I think you underestimate the time it takes to implement a new system and the extra time it take for people to use it. And to use it correctly. And to use it when a disk crash just before a deadline and so on.

I don't believe I underestimate anything - I have some experience in this field. I'm just talking about simple competence in data management - the sort of thing every business has to come to terms with if it wants to survive. I'll bet the finance and accountancy departments of these same publishers have more control over their data than was described by DaleDe! (They'd better, otherwise they're in some trouble).

/JB

I don't believe I underestimate anything - I have some experience in this field. I'm just talking about simple competence in data management - the sort of thing every business has to come to terms with if it wants to survive. I'll bet the finance and accountancy departments of these same publishers have more control over their data than was described by DaleDe! (They'd better, otherwise they're in some trouble).
/JB

I think you do underestimate. My own publisher only just started keeping pdf archive files of their own books (like in the last couple of years), and they have no usable digital version of earlier books. I know because I tried to get them. As for their financial departments, or at least their royalty departments--they're not setting any records for sharp business practices, either. (And this is a publisher that in many ways is on the cutting edge.)

People have already said this, but I want to emphasize that it's true. Most ms. files submitted by the author are never updated with final copy edits or proofreading changes. Many books are still typeset by keyboarding, rather than by converting the ms. file. (I don't know why, but it may be because of the first part--they may find it easier to type fresh than to enter changes, deal with erratic styles and formatting code in the author's ms., etc.) I know that when I correct galleys of my books, I often find typos that are not in the original file.

Understand: copy editing and proofreading are not done on computer files. They are done on paper--yes, with red pencil, or sometimes blue pencil, or even black pencil. And those corrections go back to be entered by the typesetter.

So...unless the author enters all the final changes, which is many hours of unpaid work, there really is no clean source file for an ebook. Except the PDF or the typesetter's files, neither of which is a very good source for the ebook.

Could that change? Sure. But institutional change comes slowly, costs money, probably calls for new typesetting software, and requires changing people's habits. That last may be the biggest hurdle.

As for someone's remark that costs for editing the paper book should not be carried over into the ebook, that just doesn't make sense. Of course costs for preparing the content should be amortized over all editions. Why should the ebook get a free ride? (Maybe someday, when ebooks are the standard, someone will say that the paper version shouldn't bear any of the cost for editing a book first issued as an ebook. That will be just as unreasonable.)

I suspect that most publishers figure an ebook of a hardcover should cost in the same price range as the hardcover because they don't want to undercut hardcover sales. Similarly with a paperback. I also suspect that this general thinking is erratically executed in practice, which is one reason we see such wonky ebook pricing. I'm not defending this; I'm just guessing that this is what is going on in practice.

Personally, I'd love to see all ebooks priced the way Baen does it--cheap, to sell more copies. But in the meantime, I think it's more useful to try to understand the problems than it is to demonize the publishers.

When a cow in standing on my foot, I don't worry about understanding Bossy's problems - I just try to get her to move her foot by any means necessary. We're not trying to demonize, we're just trying to figure out how to get the publishing world to stop being in the 360 position. Becuase if they don't, to paraphrase Chairman Mao - "Let a thousand scanners bloom...". Because in the long haul, whengiven a chioce of nothing at all or something that you want that only available illegally, not everybody is going to maintain that high moral tone forever....

When a cow in standing on my foot, I don't worry about understanding Bossy's problems - I just try to get her to move her foot by any means necessary. We're not trying to demonize, we're just trying to figure out how to get the publishing world to stop being in the 360 position. Becuase if they don't, to paraphrase Chairman Mao - "Let a thousand scanners bloom...". Because in the long haul, whengiven a chioce of nothing at all or something that you want that only available illegally, not everybody is going to maintain that high moral tone forever....

You make it sound like it's our God-given right to have ebooks, and at a price we approve of. Hard to imagine a better way to make the more conservative publishers dig in their heels and say, "Screw 'em, they're all a bunch of pirates, anyway."

A more constructive approach might be to get people to write in to the publishers and say, "Hey, I really want to buy the latest Joe Gonzo in my [reader of choice] format! Why can't I find it? Or why is it priced so high?" Enough of those emails, and those who aren't already taking it seriously might start to. Don't expect results the next day, but keep after them.

You make it sound like it's our God-given right to have ebooks, and at a price we approve of. Hard to imagine a better way to make the more conservative publishers dig in their heels and say, "Screw 'em, they're all a bunch of pirates, anyway."

A more constructive approach might be to get people to write in to the publishers and say, "Hey, I really want to buy the latest Joe Gonzo in my [reader of choice] format! Why can't I find it? Or why is it priced so high?" Enough of those emails, and those who aren't already taking it seriously might start to. Don't expect results the next day, but keep after them.


That's the one thing I won't do, beg. In a capitalistic system, you make money by providing what the customer wants. You don't yawn behind your hand and tell the customer, "go away kid, you bother me". If they don't want to make money by selling me the product I want, I guaranteed they won't make money selling me something I refuse to buy because that's what they want to sell me. Between Project Gutenberg and used books, I don't have to buy a new book for the rest of my reading life, neither of which are pirating books. If they are so disconnected from the market, they deserve to Epic Fail.

I don't want this to happen, but not to the point of bowing and scraping and begging the publishing industry to please sell me what I want to buy...

That's the one thing I won't do, beg.

Jeffrey's not talking about begging. He's talking about exercising your right as a consumer to contact the publisher and say, "Hey! I'm a potential customer of yours, and what I want is an e-book version of X at a price that isn't a King's ransom." If enough people do that, with enough books, and back it up by buying them when they are available, publishers will take notice (or not, and perish, and good riddance).

Steve, Jeff; I apologize for being so cranky. It's just that in any other industry, a triple-digit year-over-year growth rate would be causing so much money and product development/production from companies trying to get in on the "next great thing" that it's hard to accept the "manana" (spanish for tommorrow - I don't know how to put on the tilde) attitude.

Jeffrey's not talking about begging. He's talking about exercising your right as a consumer to contact the publisher and say, "Hey! I'm a potential customer of yours, and what I want is an e-book version of X at a price that isn't a King's ransom." If enough people do that, with enough books, and back it up by buying them when they are available, publishers will take notice (or not, and perish, and good riddance).

I suspect that would be a waste of time. Any publisher who hasn't figured out by now that they should be selling ebooks is a dinosaur.

This is January 2009. The Kindle came out 13 months ago. Since then there have been quite a few news stories about the ebook sales increasing by a factor of 3 or more. Any publisher who hasn't realized the potential of ebooks is too dumb to learn.

P.S. This is why I have given up on TOR Books.

Steve, Jeff; I apologize for being so cranky. It's just that in any other industry, a triple-digit year-over-year growth rate would be causing so much money and product development/production from companies trying to get in on the "next great thing" that it's hard to accept the "manana" (spanish for tommorrow - I don't know how to put on the tilde) attitude.

What Steve said. And Ralph, I don't disagree really. But you also have to remember that while the percentage of the growth rate is high, it's still at this point multiplying relatively small numbers. We want attention for ebooks, but we're still a pretty tiny piece of the action.

And yet, in the last year, the publishing industry has started to take interest. I think prices will come down, especially as they see that the Baen model really works.

P.S. This is why I have given up on TOR Books.

Why? It's been reported repeatedly here that Tor is working to get their ebook store up and running. Are you mad because it's taking them longer than they thought?

Maybe that just illustrates the point that it's easier to say, "Put your ebooks up for sale," than it is to put a system in place to do it.

Ereads has been at this for years, and their system still isn't working smoothly. It's not for lack of trying. But it is, in part, because sales have not been high enough to allow them to expand their production capability.

Why? It's been reported repeatedly here that Tor is working to get their ebook store up and running. Are you mad because it's taking them longer than they thought?

Maybe that just illustrates the point that it's easier to say, "Put your ebooks up for sale," than it is to put a system in place to do it.

Ereads has been at this for years, and their system still isn't working smoothly. It's not for lack of trying. But it is, in part, because sales have not been high enough to allow them to expand their production capability.

Yes, actually. Why couldn't TOR have started selling ebooks last year? What about the year before? Or the one before that?

Most of the other publishers I want to buy from were already trying to sell ebooks 2 and 3 years ago. Why is it taking TOR so long to figure out what everyone else seems to know? Why did TOR screw around the last 3 years?

TOR has no system in place to release current ebooks at the same time as paper. They are the one major publisher that has no system, not a good one, not a bad one, but none at all. What makes you think the system will magically appear when the ebooks are on Webscription (Baen's website)? Why couldn't TOR have started creating the system last year, or the year before?


BTW, I'm not asking for cheap or DRM free. I just want to be able to _buy_ the ebooks. I have no confidence that TOR will accomplish that.

Yes, actually. Why couldn't TOR have started selling ebooks last year? What about the year before? Or the one before that?

Most of the other publishers I want to buy from were already trying to sell ebooks 2 and 3 years ago. Why is it taking TOR so long to figure out what everyone else seems to know? Why did TOR screw around the last 3 years?

TOR has no system in place to release current ebooks at the same time as paper. They are the one major publisher that has no system, not a good one, not a bad one, but none at all. What makes you think the system will magically appear when the ebooks are on Webscription (Baen's website)? Why couldn't TOR have started creating the system last year, or the year before?


BTW, I'm not asking for cheap or DRM free. I just want to be able to _buy_ the ebooks. I have no confidence that TOR will accomplish that.

I can't answer why Tor didn't start sooner on ebook sales, but it's clear they're serious about it now. I sat one evening working with the man who is overseeing the effort. I'm fairly certain that one obstacle to be overcome is that Tor is part of MacMillan USA, and their planned ebook store will be part of or coordinated with the MacMillan ebook store. (Or so I was told.) I never said anything about books magically appearing when they're tied into Baen webscription, though that is part of their plan--that Baen will be one of their distributors, or retailers. (And please note that even at Baen, things don't always move as efficiently as one might like.)

Obviously, I wish the Tor ebook project would move faster, because my own book is caught up in the delay. And if it's delayed much longer, I'll be pretty unhappy about it. So do I wish they were pushing harder? Yes. But do I believe they will get it going? Yes.

That said, I'll just note that more than one person at Tor expressed the feeling to me that the Mobileread community is sometimes...well, let's just say, less than constructive in supporting their efforts. (Note--the MR community has been great to me, and I share some of the frustration voiced here--but I'm telling you how MR is seen by some at Tor.)

(Why did I even get into this? If I'm smart, I'll leave this topic alone, because I'm not sure I'm contributing anything constructive to it.)

I can't answer why Tor didn't start sooner on ebook sales, but it's clear they're serious about it now. I sat one evening working with the man who is overseeing the effort. I'm fairly certain that one obstacle to be overcome is that Tor is part of MacMillan USA, and their planned ebook store will be part of or coordinated with the MacMillan ebook store. (Or so I was told.) I never said anything about books magically appearing when they're tied into Baen webscription, though that is part of their plan--that Baen will be one of their distributors, or retailers. (And please note that even at Baen, things don't always move as efficiently as one might like.)

Obviously, I wish the Tor ebook project would move faster, because my own book is caught up in the delay. And if it's delayed much longer, I'll be pretty unhappy about it. So do I wish they were pushing harder? Yes. But do I believe they will get it going? Yes.

That said, I'll just note that more than one person at Tor expressed the feeling to me that the Mobileread community is sometimes...well, let's just say, less than constructive in supporting their efforts. (Note--the MR community has been great to me, and I share some of the frustration voiced here--but I'm telling you how MR is seen by some at Tor.)

(Why did I even get into this? If I'm smart, I'll leave this topic alone, because I'm not sure I'm contributing anything constructive to it.)

The word magic is my own. I did not mean to imply you said that. I use it becuase I have been told several times that in the not too distant future Tor will sell ebooks. I look at their current abilities, and I see that Tor cannot produce ebooks. This lead me to the conclusion that the new system would appear by magic; there is no indication that Tor is putting it into operation right now.

And as for us being less than constructive in supporting their efforts, well, I have to ask: What efforts? All we can see is Tor mouthing platitudes about the future while continuing to fail in the present.

I'd be startled if the cost difference between paper and digital was more than 5% of the book's total cost to produce at this point in time, even for the large publishing houses.

Thats quite impossible, given that on paper books the retail chains also make money.

Thats quite impossible, given that on paper books the retail chains also make money.

The paper costs may only be 5%, and that seems about right, but the cost of p books is mostly distribution and shelf space. Retailers work out the cost per square meter they need to make to stay alive. Any product must pay its way. Where I live furniture retailers need around 80% markup to stay alive. The consequences of this are that niche products are limited and most of the cost of an item occurs at the retail level. Retail is very tricky and risky as we can see with the number of retailers failing at the moment.

Capitalism is not about working out a cost and then placing a reasonable (read small) profit on that. Capitalism is about getting as much money from the market as it will stand. Anyone saying anything else is just quoting capitalist propaganda in my opinion. To try to work out what something should cost based on its production costs is an attempt to apply the principles of a centrally controlled economy to capitalism and is destined to failure and disappointment.

Understand: copy editing and proofreading are not done on computer files. They are done on paper--yes, with red pencil, or sometimes blue pencil, or even black pencil. And those corrections go back to be entered by the typesetter.

So...unless the author enters all the final changes, which is many hours of unpaid work, there really is no clean source file for an ebook. Except the PDF or the typesetter's files, neither of which is a very good source for the ebook.


That's not really what I'm talking about - I'll happily admit to having no experience of the publishing industry. What I'm really trying to comment on is DaleDe's assertion that they have several different electronic versions floating around, and no idea which is which.

I.e. I'm not saying anything about whether or not they have an electronic version that is suitable source for an ebook, simply that if they really don't have any control over the digital information they do have then that is pretty poor for a modern business (which is something of which I do have experience).

If what they do have is not suitable source then that's a different problem, and I can understand why that might take a while to change, but even that is hardly rocket science.

My accoutancy comment was simply meant to mean that the accountancy department had better know which version of the accounts is the final one, or they're in deep trouble with the authorities!

/JB

(Why did I even get into this? If I'm smart, I'll leave this topic alone, because I'm not sure I'm contributing anything constructive to it.)

Not so: You contribute insider's knowledge, something most of us do not have. I, for one, have found the information provided by you to be insightful and valuable.

The only problem is that all of this talk does nothing to actually make things happen... we're all blowing smoke. In that respect, nothing any of us is saying here makes any difference, if the publishers aren't listening, nor care to act in response to our cries for help (or, in this case, cheap books).

On the other hand... independents (like myself) get useful information from this site, including word of what's going on "inside the castle" of publishing from people like yourself, which helps to guide our efforts to be successful on our own. In my case, it has been an immense help.

So don't feel like you're not contributing. Your knowledge, combined with ours, is what makes this site as great as it is. Keep it up, buddy.

I can't answer why Tor didn't start sooner on ebook sales, but it's clear they're serious about it now. I sat one evening working with the man who is overseeing the effort. I'm fairly certain that one obstacle to be overcome is that Tor is part of MacMillan USA, and their planned ebook store will be part of or coordinated with the MacMillan ebook store. (Or so I was told.) I never said anything about books magically appearing when they're tied into Baen webscription, though that is part of their plan--that Baen will be one of their distributors, or retailers. (And please note that even at Baen, things don't always move as efficiently as one might like.)

Obviously, I wish the Tor ebook project would move faster, because my own book is caught up in the delay. And if it's delayed much longer, I'll be pretty unhappy about it. So do I wish they were pushing harder? Yes. But do I believe they will get it going? Yes.

That said, I'll just note that more than one person at Tor expressed the feeling to me that the Mobileread community is sometimes...well, let's just say, less than constructive in supporting their efforts. (Note--the MR community has been great to me, and I share some of the frustration voiced here--but I'm telling you how MR is seen by some at Tor.)

(Why did I even get into this? If I'm smart, I'll leave this topic alone, because I'm not sure I'm contributing anything constructive to it.)


Jeff, what is particularly bothersome about the situtation is that the publishing industry has been willing for decades to provide big advances for books not yet written, and consider it normal business, but won't write themselves a big advance to put in the infrastructure to handle their business for the next century. Managements are paid to plan 5 to 20 years in advance, but publishers can't seem to plan 5 to 20 minutes in advance...And to me, small market size is no excuse. In a market growing triple digits, even a tiny market become very big, very fast. Ask any high-tech company...

That said, I'll just note that more than one person at Tor expressed the feeling to me that the Mobileread community is sometimes...well, let's just say, less than constructive in supporting their efforts. (Note--the MR community has been great to me, and I share some of the frustration voiced here--but I'm telling you how MR is seen by some at Tor.)


There is some ambiguity in your pronoun choice. It occurred to me this morning that "supporting their efforts" might refer to MobileRead, not Tor. If so, then that statement references one incident, and whoever told you that must have forgotten how badly Tor responded to that incident.

Okay, I almost missed the "less than constructive" thing. Anyone like to clarify that for the rest of us? Are we talking about members who like to brag about their DRM-cracking skills? Members who attack publishers over issues like DRM or high prices, or threaten to undermine their efforts through file sharing, piracy, etc?

While I realize that those things have certainly come up in the past, at the same time any business has to recognize a sign of unhappy and frustrated customers, and should be able to legitimately address that frustration, either with actions, or with honest information about their limitations that a customer can understand.

(I guess I shouldn't speculate, though, without the details...)

Steve, I sent you a pm.

Got it. What a dustup! Personally, I agree that Tor could have done a better job, PR-wise, in dealing with the misunderstanding... as a business, it is their responsibility to placate customers, or to blow them off, depending on whether or not they want their business in the future. Looks like some of Tor's people decided they'd rather blow them off. Distressing.

For the record, I, too, assumed that Tor was using Tor.com to signal an imminent release of an extensive e-book catalog of their titles, and was disappointed when no such catalog appeared after the giveaway period. If that makes me gullible, so be it.

But after a promotion like that, I still expect Tor e-books from them.

Understand: copy editing and proofreading are not done on computer files. They are done on paper--yes, with red pencil, or sometimes blue pencil, or even black pencil. And those corrections go back to be entered by the typesetter.

Perhaps this is true with some publishers, but all of the publishers with whom I work -- and these are mainly major publishers, for example, Elsevier, McGraw-Hill, Eye On Education, and Oxford -- copyediting is done electronically, not on paper. The last time I copyedtied a manuscript on paper was 20 years ago.

Proofreading is a mixed bag. Electronic proofreading has increased but a good portion of that is still done on paper.

One caveat: my experience is with nonfiction; it may be different with fiction.

Regarding Tor - whatever I saw until now from the people from them - editors and other employees and sadly even some though luckily only a minority of writers - is just arrogance and/or cluelessness.

I never paid that much attention to the big sf houses and editors since being so big they just publish a lot, do not have a particular identity the way Baen, Daw or Pyr have - but the recent Tor.com controversies and the "we will be ready soon with e-books" attitude soured me badly on a number of people associated with them.

They still publish some of my favorite books, but it's been a big disappointment to see this.

Regarding Tor - whatever I saw until now from the people from them - editors and other employees and sadly even some though luckily only a minority of writers - is just arrogance and/or cluelessness.

I never paid that much attention to the big sf houses and editors since being so big they just publish a lot, do not have a particular identity the way Baen, Daw or Pyr have - but the recent Tor.com controversies and the "we will be ready soon with e-books" attitude soured me badly on a number of people associated with them.

They still publish some of my favorite books, but it's been a big disappointment to see this.

Understood. Regarding that tempest over the Tor free ebook program last summer, I'll be the first to say they handled it badly. Very badly, from a PR point of view. So I can tell you, because I know (casually) some of the people involved, that while they really blew it totally in that exchange, I believe they are sincerely trying to put together a solid ebook program--and it's taking way longer than they imagined it would. Are they going about it the best way? I have no idea.

The basic misunderstanding about Tor.com probably didn't help, from a PR point of view. They never envisioned Tor.com as the public face of Tor Books. (How could they not think people would see it that way? you ask. And I answer, see, that just proves that even really smart people can really get it wrong. As if it needed to be proved.) They were trying to create a discussion and SF-lovers community that just happened to be hosted by the people at Tor. Guess they should have given it a different name.

Anyway. Regarding expectations and ebook programs (leave Tor aside), let me point again to ereads.com, which was one of the first major efforts to get out-of-print books back into print in ebook (and PoD) form. Ereads has been around for something like 8 or 9 years, and it's been an uphill struggle. I put a number of my books into the program, and some made it to market while others were trapped for years in a production logjam that only now is moving again. Have my books in that program (available on fictionwise and elsewhere, in multiformat non-DRM form) proven what a viable market this is? On the contrary, sales have been abysmal. I have yet to make a dime after expenses. Everyone here might think ebooks are great (I do, too), but publishers just getting into it might be forgiven for thinking this is a small niche market that has a ways to go before it'll be very profitable.

(Damn. I swore I wouldn't get sucked into this again.)

At a minimum Orbit is totally doing it right. They are doing $1 books, and they are the first in the series with other books published and in ebook form.

At a minimum Orbit is totally doing it right. They are doing $1 books, and they are the first in the series with other books published and in ebook form.

That does seem like a smart idea! I didn't know about that.

That does seem like a smart idea! I didn't know about that.

Oh yes it's excellent. Silly them though, I realized that Karen Miller was an author I reviewed back when I had a fantasy review site and she was only published in Australia and the UK (she sent me her books and they were fantabulous). I found out now she's got her books over here and she's started a new series. I was going to buy it, then I found out they are offering her first book for $1 in March. So I'm holding out, heh.

Here's the link:
http://www.onedollarorbit.com/

It looks like it's working too- The Way of the Shadows is the #1 seller on the ebookstore, and people are getting hooked and buying the later books.

Even though I am able to save a little by purchasing ebooks through various online sources than I would buying a paperback from my local bookseller, that wasn't the point of buying my first reader. I LOVE being able to have a number of books available to read no matter where I go! Saving a little money on ebooks just makes it possible for me to buy more books!!;)
kazThis is a very good point. But it has to be seen in context of the big picture and looked at from outside the niche markets that many of the contributors on this forum often discuss.

My interest is in the mainstream market because this is the market that will lift the ebook into the big league.
Most people are not, in my opinion, driven solely by price alone. They will be influenced greatly by convenience too. However, remember that in marketing as in many areas of life, perception is reality. Even though people may not be solely driven by price, they are highly influenced by the perception that they are getting ripped off. Look at how many people will drive five miles to another Shop to save 20 cents. As others here have pointed out, there are some sectors and some ebooks and some ebook sellers that provide fair value right now. But any survey of ebook sites from a mainstream reading point of view results, in my experience, in the conclusion that ebooks are being sold at the same price as p-books and often at HIGHER prices ! This is beyond bewildering . . .

At the moment ebook users are early adopters who have a very different profile than the mainstream users that will be using the ebook readers in 5-10 years time. As the market grows there will be, in my opinion, a wider dissatisfaction with the pricing, the inability to share with family, the inability to read their book on different platforms in their possession (PC, phone etc.).

I am disappointed that there is so little discussion here of the parallels with the music industry which is an excellent insight into the future of the ebook market.

The music industry kept their heads in the sand for a decade or more. They still appear mystified that people resent paying 20 dollars for many new CDs and to add insult to injury these CDs often come with no notes, no lyrics, no pictures of the band, ie NO ADDED VALUE. This practice drove people in their millions to share illegal' copies through file sharing apps etc etc. and it is only now that people like Amazon and Apple are learning that people WANT to buy legitimate product if the price is fair.

The same fate await the publishing industry. Illegal copies are already on the web. I know because I have seen and tested them. This is only a tiny taste of what will come soon if the music experience is duplicated.

It is bewildering that this industry appears to have no leaders, among the big players, willing or able to lift their head up and see the future. The future is ebook, plain and simple. There is no question of this. No, not 100% but a great majority of book reading in the near future.

The discussion of proof reading costs, text formatting cleanup costs etc is irrelevant. These are all costs that already exist for p-books. These are all costs that have already been absorbed for current publishings and back catalogues. The marginal cost of converting the electronic format that has already been put in place for paper publishing, to a format suitable for ebooks is tiny. As for future titles the model is well established for spreading what are essentially small costs over sales.

What we are left with is leadership, vision, investment, risk. The leadership and vision to make a measured investment to grow a market and a brand name against the risk of somehow being wrong.

The investment is partly the cost of file conversion and partly setting up ebook distribution outlets. This is all relatively cheap in comparison with existing publishing budget expenditure. The other investment is the potential leakage of earned margin from p-books to ebooks if those ebooks were priced at fair prices ($5 - $10) i.e. the risk that titles will sell 10,000 less p-books and 10,000 more ebooks at a time when the investment in those p-books is sunk.

However if the leadership has vision (and isn't that what they are paid the gazillions they are earning for!) they should be seeing that this is not an uncertain market. The ebook is here and it is going to dominate soon. SOON. The timeframe is now in the hands of the industry. The ones who take a leap now will be the winners and those who sit on their fat asses and puff up their pensions with not a care for the future of their shareholders or family owners will be the losers.

Saoir

Edit.

Sorry Dadio - you are right :-) I have only really been reading this thread and have not ventured around the rest of the forums. I have not seen much said about this in this thread so I made my comment. Apols.

I will spread my wings soon ...

Saoir