Rising cost of ebooks

[c861556]

The physical aspects of book production accounting for only 15% of the total cost does sound awfully suspicious. Also, the author and the editor I get. But the designer, marketers, publicists, distributors, and resellers? How big of a percentage can the designer possibly get? And isn't distribution a physical aspect? I thought we already discussed that part. As for marketers and publicists, that's your own fault for surrounding yourself with parasitic middlemen. If they take away your profits and force you to hike prices, here's one simple solution: don't hire them.

[raider]

Honestly, I think that if publishers start charging the same prices for ebooks as for physical books, it will lead to one of two things:

1. People will stop buying ebooks and just buy physical ones (not likely)
2. People will start pirating (Arr!)

[ChaoZ]

Originally Posted by c861556

The physical aspects of book production accounting for only 15% of the total cost does sound awfully suspicious. Also, the author and the editor I get. But the designer, marketers, publicists, distributors, and resellers? How big of a percentage can the designer possibly get? And isn't distribution a physical aspect? I thought we already discussed that part. As for marketers and publicists, that's your own fault for surrounding yourself with parasitic middlemen. If they take away your profits and force you to hike prices, here's one simple solution: don't hire them.

Well, I think you're taking it too far.

For the physical product, typesetting/page layout can be time consuming, but yields a very nice result. I'm waiting for these elements of typography to translate to the ebook world, but I fear they may not.

Physical or not, marketing is needed to push the product (although I hardly see any marketing for books these days, beyond the author's own efforts. I guess there needs to be people on the publisher side to arrange book signings etc.)

[BVLarson]

As has been said, they will kill themselves with that strategy. They are pricing Indies into the game further every day. If you just look at the Amazon bestseller lists, most categories have a few 0.99 center Indies on the first page, often the top books are bargains. Price does matter!
-BVL

[Will2010]

Originally Posted by haroldgh

Yep. And if you sell your book through a storefront like amazon, barnes and noble, etc, they take care of all that stuff for you. That's what their cut is for.

It's just all BS, and it's going to kill the publishing houses. They're freaking out flailing around trying to protect themselves and doing exactly the wrong thing.

It's analagous to the music industry and MP3s, but even more so. A MP3 file is 5-6MB for a couple minutes of music. You may listen to that song dozens or hundreds of times over the years. It has ongoing utility. A book is 500KB, and you're likely to read it once. Books are both tiny and incredibly consumable.

+1

I'm also intrigued by this quote from the Wired link, especially the part I placed in bold:

Other outlets are already proving they can sell books for less. Apple recently opened the door for authors to sell their work directly to readers through its iBooks store. Apple takes its standard 30 percent cut, leaving an unheard-of 70 percent for the author. (Amazon offers a cut-out-the-middleman option as well but gives as little as 35 percent to the author.) Sure, the quality of the product might suffer, but with a juicy margin like that, it’s not hard to imagine well-known writers going rogue.

I like to ponder a well-known author, say Stephen King, experimenting with digital self-publishing and distributing. Following your very apt analogy with the music industry (and of course the movie industry has traveled this path too), I am reminded of Radiohead's very successful experiment in self-producing, distributing, and selling its first post-recording studio contract album "In Rainbows" digitally via the internet (they followed that with selling physical CDs and LPs as well). Not only did it do well with no recording industry middleman markup, but Radiohead, the artists, allowed their fans, the consumers, to choose their own price, including free as an option! It was at once a giant finger to the recording industry, a victory for musicians everywhere, and a successful experiment and blueprint for how to self-publish (it helped that Radiohead was already hugely successful and popular with a built in fan base, but the point remains).

You are right that the publishing houses are moving in exactly the wrong direction. It is foolish to resist the digitizing of their content. It is inevitable that e-books will grow in popularity and ubiquity. The conveniences they offer are overwhelming once readers get over the sentimental attachment to physical incarnations of books. Publishing houses will adapt or die, just as the music recording industry is doing.

As consumers of books, we have a stake in this game as well, of course. It is in everyone's best interests to see that the ultimate content creators, authors, have a way to earn a living commensurate with the one the lucky ones can make now. Unless you are in the book publishing business, you don't really care if traditional book publishing houses remain when all is said and done. What you care about is ensuring the writer retains control over her work and can be compensated fairly for distributing it to readers. Traditional publishing houses are unnecessary for that to happen. This likely means power is shifting away from publishing houses and brick and mortar book stores and to writers (and perhaps their editors too) and digital content distributors like Amazon and Apple. Once the dust settles -- and eventually it will -- this will likely be a good thing. The world is becoming flatter, in the Thomas L. Friedman sense.

[Will2010]

Originally Posted by BVLarson

As has been said, they will kill themselves with that strategy. They are pricing Indies into the game further every day. If you just look at the Amazon bestseller lists, most categories have a few 0.99 center Indies on the first page, often the top books are bargains. Price does matter!
-BVL

Thanks for your insider insights. I just went to your Amazon page and bought Spyware, Kindle edition in appreciation. I will read it after I'm finished reading the four books I'm currently reading (I tend to read several at once) and review it at Amazon.

Thanks for your "how-to" guides on your author's site homepage. It's cool of you to share your experiences and lessons learned for others. It must be interesting and fulfilling to be charting some of this unfamiliar territory in book publishing. You're a pioneer. I wish you the best of luck, and may you find success beyond what you can imagine.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

I've noticed the publisher wants 19.99 for his new series ebook set to start a week from tomorrow. At that price he can keep it.

I'm considering buying the hardback when its released with its usual 30% off and making sure I lend it to as many as I can to read for free, in protest!!!

Yep, priced even higher than the hardback!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by raider

.... it will lead to one of two things:

1. People will stop buying ebooks and just buy physical ones (not likely)
....

Which is what they want in order to protect their status quo.

[J. Strnad]

She is either lying or woefully incompetent.

programmers to adapt each title for Android, iPhone, Kindle, and all the other formats

Oh, puh-leeze!

[Coleccionista]

How typical for the media industry that their costs are always rising.

I wonder how could be that thousands of books are available on the net , scanned, formatted, converted to a myriad of formats and distributed ilegally for free yet not a single one of these pirates used to press, duplicate, store and distribute physical books.

It makes you think that maybe, just maybe, digital distribution is dirt cheap so any teenager with a scanner and time can put out a perfectly good edition of the latest bestseller.
Maybe these pirates should be appointed as managers of the digital distribution branch in editorials given that they already showed they can get their job done with a 0.01% of the budget

[Jacina]

You'll have to admit that pirated copies can have some serious variations in quality. There's some that are nice to read, and others that are unreadable. (not that I'd know... *cough*)

This is mostly due to how much time the pirate actually took to fix and layout his scan

So she has a point, however, once you have a digitized book that has all the text problems fixed, its easy to convert it to different formats.

[joblack]

The solution is easy:

Don't by overprized e-books.

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by ChaoZ

For the physical product, typesetting/page layout can be time consuming, but yields a very nice result. I'm waiting for these elements of typography to translate to the ebook world, but I fear they may not.

I hope they get there one day - right now perhaps it takes too long to render the page on the fly but I certainly cry when I compare the print-ready with proper kerning, hyphentation, scene breaks etc to the rendered ePub/mobi output. I feel like I've lost much of the readability and beauty of the written text.


Paul.

[mattbiernat]

Originally Posted by Coleccionista

How typical for the media industry that their costs are always rising.

I wonder how could be that thousands of books are available on the net , scanned, formatted, converted to a myriad of formats and distributed ilegally for free yet not a single one of these pirates used to press, duplicate, store and distribute physical books.

It makes you think that maybe, just maybe, digital distribution is dirt cheap so any teenager with a scanner and time can put out a perfectly good edition of the latest bestseller.
Maybe these pirates should be appointed as managers of the digital distribution branch in editorials given that they already showed they can get their job done with a 0.01% of the budget

+1, man you couldn't have said it beter

[robins777]

Originally Posted by BVLarson

As has been said, they will kill themselves with that strategy. They are pricing Indies into the game further every day. If you just look at the Amazon bestseller lists, most categories have a few 0.99 center Indies on the first page, often the top books are bargains. Price does matter!
-BVL

Agreed, price matters, BVLarson makes a good point. I always start with samples where possible (as have just done with Blood of Gold). After reading these I have bought several recently and non have disapointed me. I have found some good Indie authors this way and will now watch out for other books by the same people in future.