Stars fall in Amazon protest about ebook prices

[Kris777]

Stars fall in Amazon protest about ebook prices

Readers give authors including Stephen King one-star reviews in concerted
campaign against price rises for Kindle digital editions
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010...mazon-protests

...

Authors found themselves in the firing line this week as fans furious at sudden rises in Amazon's Kindle prices protested by giving their books one-star reviews on the retailer's website.

Iain Banks, Stephen King, Maeve Binchy, Elizabeth Buchan and Michael McIntyre were among those authors whose books were given new, low-ranking reviews on the basis of their Kindle ebook price, as part of a concerted attempt by readers to voice their displeasure.


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Who will buy ebooks if price will be the same as for paper books?

[doreenjoy]

I still buy ebooks if the price is the same as the paper book. I'm paying for the entertainment of reading the book, not the paper.

[thinkpad]

The book will really have to interest me if I'm going to buy it for the same price as the paper-book. I'm not at all pleased with the publishers setting the prices. What happened to competition? All of a sudden Amazon is not allowed to set there own prices.

[jbcohen]

Can the kindle take ebooks from other estores such as borders which is capable of selling epub and PDF? Can you get ebooks from Kobobooks?

[Fabe]

Ultimately we are paying for the value of the content, not the cost of the packaging. There is no reason what-so-ever electronic books should cost less or more than a hard or paperback edition. It comes down to what the market will bear.

[Kris777]

Originally Posted by Fabe

Ultimately we are paying for the value of the content, not the cost of the packaging. There is no reason what-so-ever electronic books should cost less or more than a hard or paperback edition. It comes down to what the market will bear.

I cannot agree with it. What about cost of paper, printing, delivery, distribution? Publishers just want to get extra profit from ebooks...

[Leep]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

The book will really have to interest me if I'm going to buy it for the same price as the paper-book. I'm not at all pleased with the publishers setting the prices. What happened to competition? All of a sudden Amazon is not allowed to set there own prices.

Only if you decide to break the drm and convert to mobipocket format (other sellers epub format works well). Many take this option, to choose the least expensive bookseller for a given title.

cheers

[thinkpad]

I was under the impression that with the publisher deal there are no price differences. It's the publisher that sets the price and it must be adhered by all shops. In essence the price will be the same no-matter from which store you buy the book.

[Xanthe]

Originally Posted by Fabe

Ultimately we are paying for the value of the content, not the cost of the packaging. There is no reason what-so-ever electronic books should cost less or more than a hard or paperback edition. It comes down to what the market will bear.

That doesn't explain why paperbacks cost less than hardcover. If we are not paying for the cost of packaging, then they should cost the same, since the content is the same.

And, it appears from the protest, that the market will not bear the cost of print book prices for ebooks.

[thinkpad]

Read this Diesel article about the take on the agency model:
http://blog.diesel-ebooks.com/?p=704

I'm still having a hard time to see how the Agency model benefits the end customer. This is a hard sell that hasn't gone well for the publishers.

[jayne80]

Surely Amazon pay the publishers for the right to distribute these books, and I assume that this amount is agreed up front. Setting aside the hardback sales,which I get (I might not totally agree with it but I get it) and concentrating on paperback sales the Publisher/Author doesn't get any more money whether the book is sold for £3 or £13, so why should the publisher have the right to tell them what to sell the ebook for when they can't tell them what to sell the Pbook for: example
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
ebook price £6.49
pbook official price £7.99
pbook sold by Amazon £3.99

not that it matters to me I paid £2.76 when I first got my Kindle, I enjoyed it but the only reason I bought it was the price, I wouldn't have bought it at £6.49, I might have bought it secondhand, or not at all, publisher/author wouldn't have got any of my money then.

[Ken Irving]

Originally Posted by Kris777

Stars fall in Amazon protest about ebook prices

Authors found themselves in the firing line this week as fans furious at sudden rises in Amazon's Kindle prices protested by giving their books one-star reviews on the retailer's website.

Iain Banks, Stephen King, Maeve Binchy, Elizabeth Buchan and Michael McIntyre were among those authors whose books were given new, low-ranking reviews on the basis of their Kindle ebook price, as part of a concerted attempt by readers to voice their displeasure.

Here's the basic problem. When I pay for a digital edition, I neither own it nor control it in the way I do a copy of the print edition. A print book I can keep for the rest of my life, lend it to a slow-reading friend for six months (and then another friend, and another, until I run out of literate friends), sell it used at a yard sale, or sell it for a profit to a collector if it happens to be a first edition of a well-known book.

The digital edition (if I follow all the rules and laws that apply in my country) may be good for the life of the company I bought it from, the company that runs the rights server, or the device I must read it on - whichever comes first. I can lend it, once, for two weeks, to someone who has the same reading device I do, and I can't legally resell it to anyone for love or money. And the formatting of said ebook may be way south of that of the print book, due to garbled scans, lack of editing, etc., or so my experience so far tells me. So if the publisher selling it wants to price it the same as, or for more than, the print edition, I'm paying the same price and getting much, much - MUCH - less. And the publisher is getting much, much more, while probably at the same time (as we've seen in the U.S.) trying by hook or crook to trick most authors (except for the "cream" who have tough agents, large sales, and a fleet of lawyers) into accepting the same royalty for a digital book that they would be getting for the print edition, even though the publisher's costs on an ebook do not include typesetting, printing, binding, warehousing, spoilage, shipping, etc. The record of certain agency-model publishers in that last respect is pretty shoddy, as we can see from a series of recent confrontations with the Authors Guild.

So while Amazon and other ebook sellers don't necessarily have pure motives for wanting to put ebook prices at a level that will maximize their cash flow, and perhaps allow them to monopolize the digital market, the publishers are the ones with the truly unclean hands in situations like this. They shouldn't let Amazon fix the prices (as Apple did with iTunes), but they should understand that trying to fix prices at print levels under the pretext of protecting their print business and acting as white knights for the very people - their authors - they are screwing will just squeeze both themselves and their authors out of the e-market for sure, and possibly out of a segment of the print market as well.

________________________________________

A final thought:

"A churlish envious Cur was gotten into a manger, and there lay growling and snarling to keep the Provender. The Dog eat none himself, and yet rather ventur’d the starving his own Carcase than he would suffer any Thing to be the better for’t.

THE MORAL. Envy pretends to no other Happiness than what it derives from the Misery of other People, and will rather eat nothing itself than not to starve those that would." - Roger L'Estrange - 1692

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by thinkpadx

I'm still having a hard time to see how the Agency model benefits the end customer. This is a hard sell that hasn't gone well for the publishers.

Do you have backup for that comment? I've been hoping that it would hurt publishers enough for them to back down, but the only comment about decreased sales I've read was Amazon's to its UK customers, and that could have been rhetoric to get people incensed about the idea.

Other than that, I just keep seeing statements that ebook sales are increasing more and more each month.

[thinkpad]

Recently I've been buying most of my e-books from Baen and Smashwords. Amazon has gotten very little of my money.

[thinkpad]

Originally Posted by FizzyWater

Do you have backup for that comment? I've been hoping that it would hurt publishers enough for them to back down, but the only comment about decreased sales I've read was Amazon's to its UK customers, and that could have been rhetoric to get people incensed about the idea.

Other than that, I just keep seeing statements that ebook sales are increasing more and more each month.

No more backup than all the angry comments around the different Blogs. My guess is that the publishers will never back down. If they loose the sale on the e-book people will probably get the print-book so what do the publishers stand to loose? They didn't want the e-book to begin with and most of the big ones have been reluctant from the start to this whole e-book thing.