E-Books Are To Hardcovers As DVDs Are To Theatrical Releases

[lilac_jive]

Originally Posted by Abecedary

This sounds like business as usual for the book industry. The hardcover version has always come out a year or so before the paperback version specifically to maximize profit by selling to those who "need" to have it right away. Sounds like they're just lumping in ebooks with paperbacks on the priority scale.

Books don't paperback until a year after they are off the bestseller list. It's usually a year, but sometimes it can be longer (good example, the DaVinci Code). Just clarifying Which just points out even more they are trying to maximize profits.

[Ankh]

They are fighting the switch to digital content delivery at every step. It appears that they are not concerned about piracy, since digitalization of the pbooks is not--yet--delivering an exact replica. And just about paralyzed by Amazon/Kindle developments.

Shortsighted and outright dumb in the face of falling prices for both dual-side sheet-fed scanners and bandwidth. They can easily face the abyss, and overnight, should darknet switch to the distribution of raw scans.

No foresight and no attempt to control the transition. Pity.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Ankh

They can easily face the abyss, and overnight, should darknet switch to the distribution of raw scans.

This already happens for image-heavy books. Anything with lots of pictures has a good chance of being scanned directly to PDF with no OCR added. Or they're photographed with a digital camera, and either PDF'd from those images, or thrown into a zip file.

So far, there's not much of this, because not many people have access to good OCR programs. But between growing awareness of & access to conversion software, and more software & devices designed to read image-scan PDFs, and the ever-growing bandwidth limits, I suspect we'll see more and more raw scans of pbooks that aren't available as legit ebooks.

The badly-OCRd text versions will become less popular than the 20mb PDF of scans.

[Teyrnon]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Publishers need to start figuring out how much of the ebook market won't buy hardcovers at all, regardless of whether an ebook is available, and possibly won't buy paperbacks. Many of those customers are going to buy a handful of books every month, from whatever's available right now. Publishers need to pay attention to how many ebook sales they're losing to less-paranoid competitors.

I wonder how large that percentage of the market is myself. I'm interested in moving away from paper books entirely or at least as much as I can. I have no idea how many others are of a similar mind. Is it a large enough group for publishers to even notice much less be concerned with?

[RickyMaveety]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

"Publishers make a hefty margin of $2.15 per e-book -- 8X the 26 cents they get for a digital copy."

Did I miss something that would allow this sentence to make sense?

"releasing the digital copy of a book along with the print version is like releasing the DVD version of a movie the same day its out in theatres"

I was wondering the same thing myself. Does anyone know what the difference is between an e-book and a digital copy? Does the writer of the article know anything about which he is writing??

Even if you make the assumption that the second statement is true, who the hell cares??

Example, I no longer go to movie theaters. When I was a five minute walk from one, that was one thing, but now, I have to drive 45 minutes, where my choice of films to see will be extremely limited, and I have to put up with idiots talking during the film, or crying babies, and massively overinflated stale snacks. I'm not spending money on that experience. I grew up when fifty cents would get you a triple feature on a Saturday morning and enough snacks to keep you on a sugar high till the next Saturday.

Now, if the movie was available in a high quality download on the same day as it came out for say $20 .... I would go for that. The film makers wouldn't lose any money, the theater owners aren't losing a customer .... they lost me years ago.

As it is now, I wait until Netflix has it, and then I rent it. So, the movie industry gets a whole lot less of my money than it might have.

Same is true for books. I have virtually stopped buying p-books. If a book is not available in an affordable e-book format, then I am not reading it, no matter how big the buzz is, no matter whether Oprah loves it or not. So, if it is available sooner rather than later, the publishers don't need to wait as long for my contribution to their economy. If the book stays in p-book form, then they get exactly zip.

The rare exception is when I know the author and I buy the book directly from them (I never allow them to give me a book .... I happen to like contributing to the bank accounts of writers I know and consider friends).

That's all I have to say on this topic. The author of the article is a few bricks shy of a chimney.

[Teyrnon]

Originally Posted by RickyMaveety

I was wondering the same thing myself. Does anyone know what the difference is between an e-book and a digital copy? Does the writer of the article know anything about which he is writing??

I think that was a typing error. If you look at the article linked to in that paragraph it says the 26 cents is for a paper book.

[Jack Tingle]

One of the scary (for publishers) side notes to this topic is what happens to the business model if piracy gets even worse. If piracy is better accepted by the general public and there is no backlist, publishers (of any kind of media) have to change radically.

At that point, the publisher probably has to copy bamboo (or some similar model). Bamboo is very tasty. As a result, bamboo plants saturate the area by flowering all at once and then dying. This overloads the local eaters of bamboo, and then starves them to death, making it more likely that some of the bamboo reproduces. It works for coral spawn, too.

In a world where almost everyone pirates, a publisher would have to release the maximum amount of product into the maximum number of channels simultaneously at a high price in order to make any money. It wouldn't be pretty, no siree.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[Musicman]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Paper books do often have advertisements, usually discreet ads for other books.

Also, there's zero evidence that Amazon plans to actually place ads in books. There's a big difference between a patent application and actual practice.

So please, spare us the hysteria until the ads actually show up.

I guess time will tell - If there is a way to make at buck at the consumers expense then they will.

There is no hysteria - just fact (applied for patent) and speculation that it will be implemented.

My point is that the e-book is worth more to the consumer without DRM or Advertisements.

[ahammer]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I have said this many times (and probably sound like a broken record) I would be HAPPY to pay the SAME price for an eBook as the paper version.

RELEASE it as the SAME TIME as the hardcover and charge the SAME price for it.

How hard is that?

When the paperback comes out, reduce the price of the ebook to match the paperback price.

Once paperback sales fall off, release the price of the ebook once again to encourage more sales.

Once the paperback goes out of print, reduce the ebook price again since it will now be back catalog.

BOb

sould be a bit lower then the hardback.. even lower still if they add drm/adds.

[jenieliser]

Has anyone done a poll on MR to see who, at least among these readers, does/does not buy hardbacks and/or paperbacks? That would be interesting to see.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by jenieliser

Has anyone done a poll on MR to see who, at least among these readers, does/does not buy hardbacks and/or paperbacks? That would be interesting to see.

Personally, I used to buy a lot of hardbacks. I'm impatient. The only paper books I've bought since getting my Kindle 1 1/2 years ago are big tech books that don't do well on the 6" screen or were not available legally in digital format.