The $15 Boycott: Will you be participating?

[Seli]

Originally Posted by mcl

Because Amazon is the one entity involved here that's not trying to take 50% more money out of our pockets.

Of course they are trying to do this. You might end up with slightly more stuff to show for it but Amazon is definitely trying to get as much of your money as they can get, even if this means they will in the long run destroy their suppliers (compare Walmart, or any big supermarket chain)

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

Boo friggin Hoo.

As technology improves, stuff gets cheaper for the same quality item. This happens because of *gasp* competition in the marketplace and the need for innovation.

You cannot take the cost of producing a widget today, and say those costs will hold constant tomorrow. They won't.

Instead of clinging to an outdated model, Macmillian should be investing in infrastructure to reduce production costs. That would enable them to undercut their competitors, and yet make a larger profit. Hey, competition at work instead of bellyaching about how they can't adapt to the new-fangled whatchamacallit dagnabbit KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

Since most of the costs involved are labor costs - reducing them means paying people less.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by mcl

Sorry, but one does not get to give authors and publishers a pass for only thinking of the short-term gains, and then insist that consumers must focus on the long-term.

/Right now/, Amazon is the only one not trying to take more money out of our pockets. Just like /right now/, Macmillan is raising prices, and /right now/, several outspoken authors are all but demanding we go out and buy books to help feed them and others.

There're many double standards at play here: people let publishers and authors have short-term views, but expect consumers to operate only on the long view. Publishers and authors get to be concerned about money in their pocket, but consumers are evil if they dare speak up about extra money coming out of their pocket. Publishers are allowed to set their own prices, but Amazon is the Devil incarnate when they do it. And so on.

Consumers are more than willing to vote with their wallets and not buy things they believe cost too much.

I don't buy Macmillan ebooks because they cost more than I am normally willing to pay.

That doesn't make Amazon the good guys in this. What people seem to be missing is just because someone wants you to pay more money for something does not make them automatically evil.

[mcl]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Since most of the costs involved are labor costs - reducing them means paying people less.

Authors are already being paid less, thanks to Macmillan's 5% payout reduction last year.

Authors will be paid less on the agency model, because 20% of 50% of HB list is typically higher than 20% of 70% of $12.99-$14.99.

And if publishers have to shed some bloat in their offices (non-author), so be it. I'm sure the assistant assistant editor doesn't really NEED the dedicated assistant to go get his coffee and dry-cleaning every morning.

[mcl]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Consumers are more than willing to vote with their wallets and not buy things they believe cost too much.

I don't buy Macmillan ebooks because they cost more than I am normally willing to pay.

That doesn't make Amazon the good guys in this. What people seem to be missing is just because someone wants you to pay more money for something does not make them automatically evil.

And what you're missing is that we /all/ care about the bottom line: authors, publishers, retailers, and consumers.

But what many tend to forget is that, without consumers, the rest of them don't /have/ a bottom line.

The only entity behaving in anyway that even remotely resembles a nodding acquaintence with this fact is Amazon. Regardless of the reality of the situation, the /perception/ is that Amazon is taking a consumer-friendly stance.

And frankly, perception is reality. If you think otherwise, ask a politician.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Since most of the costs involved are labor costs - reducing them means paying people less.

So be it. If those getting a smaller paycheck don't like it, they can get a second job, or a different job.

Why should Publishers and Authors be immune from the same economic forces that affect everybody else?

I seriously doubt that there is very little to improve upon with automation or efficiency in the process, however. They just need to look harder at their own processes and cut the fat.

EDIT: I should add that those people performing "labor" could benefit from increases in efficiency as well. If they can accomplish more in less time, they will get paid more. Efficient technologies such as decent text-to-speech, or an improved OCR algorithm, come to mind as exponentially useful technologies.

You only have to look as far as the music scene to see this. It used to be you couldn't even hope to produce your own media for distribution. Now, for a nominal amount of money, you can set up a recording studio in your garage and produce something sonically superior to previous decades recordings.

[montealan]

One item I have not seen mentioned in all this hullabaloo about pricing is BOMC2 (previously Zooba). This is an online book subscription service offered by Book of the Month Club. They offer most of their books at a flat rate of $9.95. This includes the price of the book, shipping, handling, taxes etc. They offer brand new, just published books for $9.95 in book club editions. So when publishers say they can't afford to offer ebooks for the same price, my feeling is that they are being a bit disingenuous. I would be very interested to hear how they could explain away this situation.

If I can get a newly published hardcover book for less than $10.00 why can't I get the same ebook for that price?

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by mcl

And if publishers have to shed some bloat in their offices (non-author), so be it. I'm sure the assistant assistant editor doesn't really NEED the dedicated assistant to go get his coffee and dry-cleaning every morning.

Ummmmmm, you really don't know the industry do you? You're adding several more layers than actually exist.

[mcl]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Ummmmmm, you really don't know the industry do you? You're adding several more layers than actually exist.

And you're apparently unacquainted with humorous hyperbole.

[GA Russell]

montealan, I looked at zooba when it first started, and thought that their selection was way too limited for me to get involved with.

If Macmillan offered for $9.99 (or even $7.99) eBooks of only those titles available from zooba, I don't think that it would diminish the outcry here.

[MrBlueSky]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Part of the reason hardcovers cost more than paperbacks is because they are released first.

I buy books for the content, not the container. If the paperback was released day and date with the hardcover at standard paperback prices it would cannibalize hardcover sales because people could get the same content for less.

The $15 price for ebooks is based on the idea that getting the content before the mass market paperback is released is worth a premium over the price of a mass market paperback.

It's more than I am often willing to pay - but it's $10 less than the standard price of a new hardcover, and $7 more than mass market. At the very least it sounds like a possible place to start, even if it doesn't work out.

A lot of the these complaints over price are beginning to sound really petty to me. It's like people are saying "Ebooks have no production costs so all we should pay for is the content and that's not worth very much either, so they need to be very cheap."

As someone who's written novels, I find that cheapening of the value of my time, effort, and creativity very disheartening.

In the meantime, I have a book I need to be ghostwriting, so I will try to bow out, but I doubt I'll be able to.

Just as you find the cheapening of the value of your time, effort and creativity very disheartening, I also find the money grubbing monopoly hoarders exploitation of MY time, MY effort and My bank balance absolutely disgusting.

Part of the experience of buying/reading a book is knowing the pleasure one of my friends is going to get from from the same book when I pass it on to them. To think that any DRM riddled, badly formatted and device crippled e-book is worth a even a quarter of a hardback priced physical edition simply because its a ‘first read release’ is sheer lunacy when the only thing you can do is trash it after finishing reading.

And of course, a part of deciding to buy a book does involve some consideration of the container its wrapped in — not just the content therein.

Arkham House luxury prints of H P Lovecraft for example, are beautiful objects in their own right, yet the contents are word for word exactly the same as their downmarket counterparts. The Library of Congress prints of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are super-bound on acid-free paper while the contents are no different to the 1940-1950’s pulps. Which versions represent better value is entirely in the eye of the purchaser — so persuade me again, what value does buying into DRM offer me?

[fugazied]

A ridiculous move by MacMillan and the majority of the hardcore e-book readers who follow the industry will reject them.

If Apple tries to sell ebooks at far beyond $9.99 I will be skipping them as well. In a free market if you push consumers around and price gouge like this, they move to other publishers/stores.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by MrBlueSky

Just as you find the cheapening of the value of your time, effort and creativity very disheartening, I also find the money grubbing monopoly hoarders exploitation of MY time, MY effort and My bank balance absolutely disgusting.

Part of the experience of buying/reading a book is knowing the pleasure one of my friends is going to get from from the same book when I pass it on to them. To think that any DRM riddled, badly formatted and device crippled e-book is worth a even a quarter of a hardback priced physical edition simply because its a ‘first read release’ is sheer lunacy when the only thing you can do is trash it after finishing reading.

And of course, a part of deciding to buy a book does involve some consideration of the container its wrapped in — not just the content therein.

Arkham House luxury prints of H P Lovecraft for example, are beautiful objects in their own right, yet the contents are word for word exactly the same as their downmarket counterparts. The Library of Congress prints of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are super-bound on acid-free paper while the contents are no different to the 1940-1950’s pulps. Which versions represent better value is entirely in the eye of the purchaser — so persuade me again, what value does buying into DRM offer me?

Haven't had time to read the *entire* thread, but don't believe this was about DRM at all. I agree with you about DRM-but it strikes me that this was about the pricing of *all* ebooks, not whether DRM-chained ebooks should be cheaper than non-DRM ebooks. FWIW I think that chaining an ebook via DRM is an attempt to ensure that it will be re-bought rather than being re-sold. (Actually more as, assuming the original buyer wants to keep it then DRM is an attempt to make him/her re-buy it when they change readers, even if it only forces this by locking the book into a specific format. Maybe when all readers support all formats this won't be true of some forms of DRM, but right now to the best of my knowledge, it's true of all DRM. Assuming stripping DRM is as illegal as the publishers claim, that is. A questionable assumption but one that we need to accept to justify DRM at all.)

So, back to my argument-if DRM is an attempt to ensure a book will be re-bought rather than re-sold, then the average number of re-buys should equal the average number of times a book is re-sold. I don't have any figures on this, but let's say it's three times. In that case, to be equitable, the price of a DRM-chained ebook should be one-third the price of a DRM-free ebook.

So we can agree that DRM-chained ebooks aren't worth $15. What about DRM-free ebooks? Those don't seem to represent the "exploitation of MY time, MY effort and My bank balance" by "money grubbing monopoly hoarders"-so are those worth $15? Or is your point that you don't think *any* ebook should sell for $15?

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by Barcey

For me it's not about the price is. I reject Macmillan setting the price that the retailers can sell the books for and when the price drops. I've just decided to stop feeding them.

Exactly the same here. I have purchased some ebooks at a price higher than $10, because the value for money was there for me. But the agency model -- dictating to Amazon and other retailers what the price must be -- is inconsistent with my principles. I won't support Macmillan nor any publisher that gets on board with them.

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Don't get me started on Macmillan. No library books? So if I can't afford a pbook, I'm just out of luck? I thought that is why we had libraries!

As someone who did not buy her first book until college (and no one else in the family bought books either) I find their version of class warfare abhorent. Obviously, Macmillan books were simply not available.

Well, this was just a stupid statement. I missed the qualifier - Macmillan doesn't sell EBOOKS to libraries. Not much class discrimination, unless people who can buy $300 ereaders are a protected class.