Ebook prices

[jbcohen]

My book buying rules, and these are hard rules that I will never break:

1) No books over $8, paperback or electronic doesn't matter;
2) Electronic can not cost more then the printed editions; I will never buy an electronic when it costs more then the printed one;

Don't care who wrote it or how good or bad I simply will not abandon these rules.

This is where I differ with Becca Ann - doesn't matter before or after agency pricing, favorite authors or not makes little difference, no books over $8. I am not interested in paying more for books, however I will gladly pay less and amazon allows me to do exactly that,

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

My book buying rules, and these are hard rules that I will never break:

1) No books over $8, paperback or electronic doesn't matter;

My cap is $6 for fiction ebooks. I'll pay substantially more for nonfiction. (Current highest price was $30; I don't really expect to pay more than that for an ebook, but it's possible that Riley will have something I'm willing to pay more for.)

I'm willing to pay more for reference works that I'll keep using.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

My book buying rules, and these are hard rules that I will never break:

1) No books over $8, paperback or electronic doesn't matter;
2) Electronic can not cost more then the printed editions; I will never buy an electronic when it costs more then the printed one;

Don't care who wrote it or how good or bad I simply will not abandon these rules.

This is where I differ with Becca Ann - doesn't matter before or after agency pricing, favorite authors or not makes little difference, no books over $8. I am not interested in paying more for books, however I will gladly pay less and amazon allows me to do exactly that,

Does that include shipping?

[stonetools]

Hey, there should be a sticky for " people who want to complain about agency pricing" . Every three days or so , someone pops up with pretty much the exact same statement.

Mike Shatzkin says the following:

A cost-driven print book commercial model has created a legacy business which has made consumers willing to pay $25-30 for what is for many an 8-10 hour immersive reading experience. Millions of readers conditioned this way find paying around half that price to be a great bargain. The entire mechanism by which those printed books have been selected and delivered — the aggregation and curation of the major publishers’ offerings — is depended upon by the consumers who spend all that money.

No doubt, over time this will change. The print book infrastructure, which has inventory and supply chain costs that are responsible for the pricing conventions that have developed, will not last forever. Almost certainly, books will get cheaper and cheaper. But writers will also make less money when there is less to divide, not more. All writers, whether they’re among the fortunate ones that have a publisher pushing them or whether they’re trying to do it themselves, should be grateful that publishers are doing their damnedest to maintain prices and the perception of value for writers’ work. If that segment of consumers that complains about prices finds fault with agency pricing and the publishers’ insistence that the digital discount from the highest print price be limited to about 50% at the moment, that’s understandable.

LINK

I think it comes down to just that. For the average consumer, the current price model (14.99 for the e-book version of a new release, 12.99 for a new release that becomes a bestseller) is a great deal . They think of that as half price- all for something that they can buy in their pajamas, without burning $3.50 per gallon gas to go to the B&M store. Sure, DRM blah, blah, blah, but for the average consumer, that stuff doesn't register.

While the average consumer thinks that these are good prices, that's what the publishers will charge. Indie authors can earn themselves a place at the table by competing on price ( and earn brownie points with the tech community by loudly proclaiming their opposition to big publisher "price fixing"). But the price for ebooks will be what the market can bear , not what techies THINK the "right price" should be.

Eventually, the prices of books will drift down over time as the print book infrastructure goes away.But that will be in 5/10 years. For right now, it is what it is.

[kennyc]

It's never going to change if we sweep it under the rug. I'd suggest that every time it comes up to email the evil members of the agency regime.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Publishers who believe that backlist ebooks are competing with new-printing pbooks are delusional. They're competing with penny-plus-shipping Amazon used books, with Bookmooch.com, and with local yard sales. Publishers never got royalties from those sales; it shouldn't surprise them or affect their bottom line when those would-be buyers turn to torrents and file-exchange sites for a copy that's within their price range. The publishers still have the same level of profit: zero.

They have an opportunity to get profit from those readers--by competing with used book prices, not new ones. Otherwise, they can continue to fail to get income from 3/4 of the readers of any particular book.

I think you hit the nail on the head from the consumer point of view. Anyone who is willing to read either paper (used or new) or electronic is going to pick the best price available, and that won't be electronic in most cases.

I think the problem is that these 30/40/50 year old books don't exist in digital form and it's no cheaper to scan/proofread/typeset a 50 year old book than it is to do the same work for a newer book. A new book at least exists in a digital format already. (I assume so anyway - do publishers still accept type-written manuscripts?)

Of course, in a lot of cases pubishers could just torrent those older books and cut out some of the work. I'd find an amusing bit of irony in that.

Eventually the market and the scanning/proofing technology will meet and we'll be seeing dead-author bundles for reasonable prices. I hope.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Mike Shatzkin says the following:

LINK

They only make less money if the number of sales doesn't substantially increase. If they're making $.50 per book, and sell 50,000 copies, they wind up with a lot more than if they're making $2 per book but only sell 8,000 copies.

Publishers are oblivious to a *huge* section of the market: the people who never bought new books. The entire used bookstore economy is invisible to them; they've got no idea what those people are willing to pay for ebooks, no idea how many potential customers have never been on their pie charts.

A lot of those people are willing to buy ebooks--at the prices they'd pay for used pbooks. Those aren't losses; they're customers who otherwise don't exist. And whether those people stick to paper, or ebook freebies, or download from the darknet (and potentially become "criminals") isn't relevant to publishers--they are people who aren't buying now, who would be if someone were selling on their terms.

Of course, the Agency 6 don't need to shift their practices for those customers. They can limit themselves to the pool of customers they understand, at the price range they're comfortable offering. Hundreds of other publishers and millions of individual authors are *leaping* for the chance to sell to them at a price they're happy to pay.

I think it comes down to just that. For the average consumer, the current price model (14.99 for the e-book version of a new release, 12.99 for a new release that becomes a bestseller) is a great deal.

I think "average buyer of hardcover books" and "average consumer" are not at all the same groups. With ebooks, publishers have the opportunity to reach markets that were previously closed to them, because book prices couldn't drop below a certain production-etc cost level, and that market segment couldn't afford that.

But the price for ebooks will be what the market can bear, not what techies THINK the "right price" should be.

"What the market can bear" and "what the market we had 10 years ago could bear" are two different categories.

Eventually, the prices of books will drift down over time as the print book infrastructure goes away.But that will be in 5/10 years. For right now, it is what it is.

You're thinking of 5-10 years as a vague "eventually?" In the legacy publishing world, that's tomorrow. There are books being contracted for right now with intent to publish in 3-5 years.

I don't even think the current agency-pricing system & price range is unprofitable. I think it's unsustainable in the face of competition, because publishers who use it won't be content with the meager, slow profits it brings compared to more flexible strategies.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by GlennD

I think the problem is that these 30/40/50 year old books don't exist in digital form and it's no cheaper to scan/proofread/typeset a 50 year old book than it is to do the same work for a newer book. A new book at least exists in a digital format already. (I assume so anyway - do publishers still accept type-written manuscripts?)

No, but it's only the last 5-10 years that they've been *keeping* the digital versions after the main print run is done. Anything written before 2000, you can assume the print-ready version was deleted as soon as the book went out of print.

Storage space cost a lot more back then, and there were probably potential liability issues, and if the book was popular enough to reprint, it'd need to be reformatted anyway. (Storage wasn't too expensive if they thought to manage it. But you had to know that you'd want those files in 15 years to do that. And they'd be in, what, early Pagemaker format? Quark Xpress? Some awful proprietary postscript settings?) They no doubt mostly went through Microsoft Word at some point... but those versions weren't the final print-ready version, so they got deleted as soon as the proofreading on the ARC was done.

Otherwise, though--yes. There's more awareness of profit potential for books from the 80's & 90's than books from the 50's, and they're the same amount of work to convert.

What we're *really* missing is the nonfiction books; the market for those is much smaller, so they're not being converted much at all. The digital revolution is very much biased in favor of entertainment and against time-sensitive facts & opinions.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

They only make less money if the number of sales doesn't substantially increase. If they're making $.50 per book, and sell 50,000 copies, they wind up with a lot more than if they're making $2 per book but only sell 8,000 copies.

Why do you think they will sell 50000 copies of all books sold for $0.50? The number sold of most old books that is re-published are much lower than that. And books is not a product with perfect plasticity.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why do you think they will sell 50000 copies of all books sold for $0.50? The number sold of most old books that is re-published are much lower than that. And books is not a product with perfect plasticity.

It's partly because, unlike physical books, the product exists where the demand is. Ultimately, books should never again go 'out of print' - they'd always be available to consumers in a digital store and generating income for their authors (or their authors' heirs). Bookstores don't need to guess at how many copies of a particular book to buy - there's always enough digital copies to meet demand.

Naturally not every book is going to sell 50000 copies. But I'd be interested to see a market in 50 years where the demand isn't just based on the hype a particular book generates. If I were to walk into a B&M bookstore with at least one copy of every book ever printed, the last thing I'd be looking for is the latest Clancy or Dan Brown.

[GlennD]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

What we're *really* missing is the nonfiction books; the market for those is much smaller, so they're not being converted much at all. The digital revolution is very much biased in favor of entertainment and against time-sensitive facts & opinions.

I hadn't even thought of nonfiction....shows how much I read for entertainment.

A lot of nonfiction has the added complexity of diagrams scattered throughout the text or sections of photographs, if you were to include those in the digital copies. I can see your point - I doubt anyone is jumping to convert those before the mass market fiction.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by tompe

Why do you think they will sell 50000 copies of all books sold for $0.50? The number sold of most old books that is re-published are much lower than that. And books is not a product with perfect plasticity.

Not sold for .50, but with .50 author royalty. (Which is books sold at 1.50 or so through Amazon; books sold at 2.99--one-quarter or less of standard new ebook prices--pay the author a dollar or so.)

Many self-publishing authors have managed to sell 50,000 ebooks. Some have managed to sell a million or more.

20,000+ sales in one year--from a newbie with no other titles in print.

100,000 copies in a year, split between two authors.

42,000 copies in one month, also split; they've also acquired a publishing contract from Harper Collins.

1100 ebooks a day--more per day than Random House did in 6 months. He doesn't say he's broken 50k, but somehow, I don't think his sales are all going to happen in the space of two months.

I can't find the blog post I saw last week, about a woman with a hope to sell 50k ebooks in a year--without actively attempting to seek sales until December. She's got the book in a few places for sale; it's just also available on several free sites like Feedbooks & Manybooks. It's August, and she's got ~34,000 sales so far, and 50k by the end of the year looks very feasible.

I don't believe any author that a major publisher would sign on, couldn't sell 50,000 copies of that book on their own.

That doesn't mean self-pub would absolutely be best for them; maybe they hate managing business. Maybe their internet access is sporadic at best. Maybe they really, *really* want to be in print with that logo on the spine. Maybe the publisher will arrange book signings, and even if the author has to pay for transportation, they *love* book signings & meeting fans. Maybe the advance is sweet, and they don't care that they're signing away 75% of the cover price for the life of the book.

But any book that one of the Agency Six would print, should be able to sell 50k copies independently. Authors should sort out the maths themselves, and decide which platform is better for their careers.

[allinhi/]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

It should be fairly obvious that this forum is on a somewhat different level (up or down, your pick) than the general public at large, and as such is perhaps not as attuned to snatching up the latest pop author releases. There is money here, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing members with multiple eReaders and thousand-book libraries.

But many of us are also surprisingly cost-conscience. Perhaps that's due to the world economic instability, perhaps it's simply the sheer number of books read. Advertising by the big publishing houses is arguably less effective here than it is in the entry way at the brick and mortar stores. Personally, I seldom if ever buy the latest hardback release, and don't often buy first season releases at all. I am not an impulse buyer, so I'm less affected by the big, colorful ads than most readers, judging from the number and size of the ads I see. My last impulse buy was a paperback, Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes which I picked up by chance on the new arrival shelf, and it cost me about three eBooks.

Walk into any used pBook store and you'll find shelves full of used copies of yesterday's popular $15 paperbacks and $30 hardbacks for $3 each if that's your passion. Those books are almost always as relevant today as they were 5 years ago.

My point is that the money is available today for readers to pay high prices for tomorrow's used book bargain. The goal of big publishers is to take that money away from the impulse buyer. Advertising is often intentionally deceptive. Stop and think of the number of new releases you bought because of rave advertising, only to find the book worth a 2 or 3-star rating. It doesn't matter what the format might be, pBook or eBook. If they can sell it to enough people, the prices will remain as high as the market will allow. Only general market pressures will change it, not complaints from a sub-market of avid readers.

If you view the majority of book purchases in the same light as other entertainment purchases, music, movies, etc. The pricing structure does not make sense. Does anyone pay full price for a dvd of starwars, probably one of the reasons new formats like blueray are promoted so hard. Given DRM, we could be making the case we are really renting and should be paying even less. I do agree that books age more slowly, encouraging more reasonable lending / transfer rights and resisting marketing pressure to buy latest releases is the best response.

[ucfgrad93]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

My book buying rules, and these are hard rules that I will never break:

1) No books over $8, paperback or electronic doesn't matter;
2) Electronic can not cost more then the printed editions; I will never buy an electronic when it costs more then the printed one;

Don't care who wrote it or how good or bad I simply will not abandon these rules.

This is where I differ with Becca Ann - doesn't matter before or after agency pricing, favorite authors or not makes little difference, no books over $8. I am not interested in paying more for books, however I will gladly pay less and amazon allows me to do exactly that,

For me, I try to not go over $10 for an ebook. I put it on my wish list or simply wait for it to come down.

[stonetools]

Publishers are oblivious to a *huge* section of the market: the people who never bought new books. The entire used bookstore economy is invisible to them; they've got no idea what those people are willing to pay for ebooks, no idea how many potential customers have never been on their pie charts.

A lot of those people are willing to buy ebooks--at the prices they'd pay for used pbooks. Those aren't losses; they're customers who otherwise don't exist. And whether those people stick to paper, or ebook freebies, or download from the darknet (and potentially become "criminals") isn't relevant to publishers--they are people who aren't buying now, who would be if someone were selling on their terms.

Major publishers (and the authors) aren't oblivious to that market: they just don't want it. It isn't worth it to them to sell to that market. That's OK: indie writers and publishers can cater to those consumers, who are willing to pay low prices for dodgier content. Such customers are the same ones who are willing to buy automobiles from Lemon Eddie's Used Cars or who will buy iPads, sight unseen , from the back of someone's car. Similarly they are happy to wade through Smashwords in the hope of buying a good book cheap.
I think, EM , you are right to distinguish between customers for used books and customers for new books. Where you are wrong is insisting that sellers of new books should compete for those customers by selling at new book prices. That makes about as much sense as saying that new car dealers should compete for used car customers by offering new cars at used car prices. Economically, the math just does not add up.

You should understand that publishers are selling, for example, every copy of GRRM's latest that they can print at $18.81 hard cover and every e-book they can download at $14.99. They have been selling every copy of Unbroken in both formats at those "unsustainable " prices all year long. Maybe they aren't as clueless about prices as you think, because there is zero evidence that they are losing customers selling at those prices.