Dune Messiah ($25 vs $8)

[wallcraft]

Frank Herbert's Dune Messiah is finally available as an e-book, but at a crazy price. It lists for $24.95 but is typically being sold for about $20. This is for a book first published in 1975. It is only $7.99 for the Kindle, which is the same price as the paperback.

I think there is a large potential audience for backlist science fiction from "major" authors. There are lots of SF books I have bought previously in paper that I would buy again as e-books at the right price. As an example, Baen is now selling many classic Pournelle titles (e.g. $5 for Mote in Gods Eye). I suppose the closest Pournelle title to Dune in popularity would be Footfall, which isn't currently available as an e-book but I can't imagine it would list for $25 if it was available.

I wonder if this is this is case of Frank Herbert's estate getting hardback level royalties for an e-book or Ace/Pengiun ripping off consumers (or both). In either case, Amazon is again leading the way to rational e-book prices. I just wish they would sell a MobiPocket version at a similar price.

[AnemicOak]

Screwy prices are pretty typical for Penguin unfortunately. They often "forget" to lower the list price on newer titles when a mass market print version comes out, keeping a price based on the original HC release. The price usually sticks on eReader, LIT & PDF releases since they offer those directly. Interestingly enough the Mobi versions usually get their prices dropped since they're distro'd through Mobi. So you'll see a lot of stuff that at first glance appears to only be available in Mobi format when it is indeed available in all the popular formats. It's just that when they don't drop the price places like Fictionwise keep selling the price dropped Mobi version, but stop selling the other formats until/unless Penguin drops the price on them as well. It's to bad since Penguin has so many labels with popular stuff. I know there's one book I want that's been in MMPB for a year & I can get it for about $7 as a Mobi book, but the LIT will run you $20 if you can find a retailer selling it. Fictionwise dropped it & won't carry it until Penguin gets a clue. Mobile Read needs to set up chats with the ebook departments of some of these publishers so we can ask questions & point things out to them (not that I'm sure it'd help).



In this particular case I'm assuming (& pretty sure I'm right) that they're basing the ebook price on the new Hardcover edition that was released on Tuesday with a list price of $24.95

They've done this with other ebooks of older titles that they've put out at the same time as a new HC or TPB release even though there is a MMPB release and has been for years.

[Cthulhu]

Regarding backlists, publishers need to read about the long tail

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html

With hope, the old business model with adapt to embrace the new digital model, and that means bringing the price of literary content more in-line with reality.

Personally, all ways loathed going to a used bookstore, finding a book for which I ardently searched, and ended paying $4.00 for a book that cost $0.78 when first published.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Regarding backlists, publishers need to read about the long tail

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html

With hope, the old business model with adapt to embrace the new digital model, and that means bringing the price of literary content more in-line with reality.

Personally, all ways loathed going to a used bookstore, finding a book for which I ardently searched, and ended paying $4.00 for a book that cost $0.78 when first published.

The analogue of this in publishing is the midlist.

An editor friend worked for a publisher that was part of a media conglomerate. He once told a story about getting a visit from someone on the film side of the company, who pointed at the midlist stuff and asked "Why did you publish that? Why not just publish the bestsellers?"

Well, there was a publishing house that tried to do that. Lyle Stuart used that model. They published a dozen books a year, mostly of the "unauthorized biography' and celebrity scandal type, printed large numbers, promoted the hell out of them, and crossed fingers that a few would be best sellers and cover the losses on the rest. They got away with it for years, but eventually hit a bad patch with no bestsellers and had to fold.

Every publisher wants best sellers, but midlist provides the bread and butter. Sometimes the pressure for a best seller gets too intense. The well respected head of Little, Brown was fired a while back because of it. She was under pressure from her boss to publish more best sellers and increase profitability. She resisted because Little, Brown was known as a literary house, and she saw what she was being asked to do as lowering their standards and pandering to a different audience. (My impression was her boss didn't really want to fire her, but he was under pressure from senior management, whose idea of revenues and profits came from films. No way a book publisher can make that kind of money, but try telling that to senior management.)

Pricing is only part of the issue. The bigger question is how you reach that niche market and profitably address it. There are an assortment of fixed costs in publishing a book that you'll have regardless of whether you do a paper edition, and therefore some lower limits on the size the market needs to be to support doing a book.

The internet can provide tools to do it, but it's no guarantor of success. It simply makes it possible when it didn't used to be.
______
Dennis

[Cthulhu]

Dennis:

Am reminded of some discussions I had here a while back regarding the purpose and efficacy of the publisher. Obviously, printing and physically distributing a text is not the only cost, so the issue of pricing is murky.

It would be great if you could encourage some of your publishing pals to contribute or peruse these fora. That might give them more evidence of the (possibly) changing landscape of bookselling.

I know that I would feel better about ranting if I knew that someone was listening, and was willing to interact. Feel that the notion of transparency could help publishers out here; would prefer collaboration over contention.

Must be honest, that I never before was much of a book buyer, for all my bibliophilic posturing. Partly because of my tastes, location, and temperament, I mostly frequently the public library or used bookstores. When I started buying more first-run texts, railed and balked at $25.00 for a hardcover fiction book. Tried to allay this cost by starting a communal lending library, or something akin to book crossing http://www.bookcrossing.com , but with friends.

$5.00 is a good price for books, and I would go as high as $10.00 for a text I absolutely craved.

Hey! How about a referral program? If I send my friend a link from a publisher's website that results in a purchase, I get a kickback via paypal or account with the publisher?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

Am reminded of some discussions I had here a while back regarding the purpose and efficacy of the publisher. Obviously, printing and physically distributing a text is not the only cost, so the issue of pricing is murky.

Very much so. I think some folks have unrealistic view of just how low books can be priced.

Whether you publish a book electronically or in paper, you have an assortment of costs: the cost to acquire the title in the first place, the cost to edit it, the cost of providing a cover design and art, the cost of creating the final marked up version from which printing plates are made or electronic editions generated, any marketing that is done, plus a share of the allocated overhead of the company that publishes it. Ebooks save on costs of paper, printing, warehousing and distribution, but the book will still cost to produce, and will impose a minimum figure at which it can be priced, simply to cover the costs.

It would be great if you could encourage some of your publishing pals to contribute or peruse these fora. That might give them more evidence of the (possibly) changing landscape of bookselling.

I can try. The problem is that they all have jobs and lives, so finding the time to hang out in places like this is the challenge. (The Senior Editor at Tor I just dropped a note to about their electronic editions is a single Mom with a kid starting to think about college. Guess how much free time she has?)

I know that I would feel better about ranting if I knew that someone was listening, and was willing to interact. Feel that the notion of transparency could help publishers out here; would prefer collaboration over contention.

So would we all.

The model at this point is probably Baen's Bar, a set of electronic forums on their web site (and also available as newsgroups). The late Jim Baen used to hang out there and interact with the readers. Toni Weisskopf, who took over as Publisher after Jim's death, has her own forum, and many of Baen's authors do as well.

I have cautious hopes that other publishers might get the idea, but it will require corporate culture changes that will come slow and hard.

Must be honest, that I never before was much of a book buyer, for all my bibliophilic posturing. Partly because of my tastes, location, and temperament, I mostly frequently the public library or used bookstores. When I started buying more first-run texts, railed and balked at $25.00 for a hardcover fiction book. Tried to allay this cost by starting a communal lending library, or something akin to book crossing http://www.bookcrossing.com , but with friends.

$5.00 is a good price for books, and I would go as high as $10.00 for a text I absolutely craved.

Hey! How about a referral program? If I send my friend a link from a publisher's website that results in a purchase, I get a kickback via paypal or account with the publisher?

That might be promising.

I frequent used book stores, but that's because a good bit of what I want isn't in print, and a used book store is where I might find it.

My local bookseller actually lives in Ohio - he deals at a lot of the SF conventions I attend and help to run, so I normally come home with a substantial stack. (My SO is a very fast reader, capable of going through a book a day. I settle for having time to do one or two a week.) I do buy hardcovers, but I'm not fussy about edition: I have an assortment of SF Book Club copies because I simply wanted a durable reading copy, and didn't insist on a trade edition.
______
Dennis

[Cthulhu]

When I first joined, there was a member who very aggressively argued that there is no value imparted by a publisher, and that digital rights software completely robs a digital text of value.

I could never understand that petulant and--in my opinion--incorrect stance.

Proofreaders, editors, et al, have a role and it can be important. Just like producers or A & R people in music, some talent must be developed.

My point is that I want more of the backlog released in a digital format. Preferably, sell it for $10.00 or so. Am not keen to pay $25.00 for an ebook because I hate doing it for a physical book. $15.00 is a high premium for their property occupying space in my domicile.

To clarify, by first-run I meant a nice, new hardcover copy, not necessarily pristine antique texts.

Think that I will have to bite the bullet and fire some emails into the ether at various publisher's websites, hoping that they reach the inbox that will do the most good.

[SpiderMatt]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

Frank Herbert's Dune Messiah is finally available as an e-book, but at a crazy price. It lists for $24.95 but is typically being sold for about $20. This is for a book first published in 1975. It is only $7.99 for the Kindle, which is the same price as the paperback... Amazon is again leading the way to rational e-book prices.

Leading the way? Maybe. They're certainly not there yet, though. An ebook should never cost the same as a pbook version. If a publisher can sell the pbook for $7.99 and make enough profit, then profit can be made with an ebook at a cheaper price. If I ever have to choose between buying an ebook or a pbook with the same pricetag, I'm going with the pbook because I can make my own ebook out of that in addition to having a new book for my library.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Cthulhu

When I first joined, there was a member who very aggressively argued that there is no value imparted by a publisher, and that digital rights software completely robs a digital text of value.

I could never understand that petulant and--in my opinion--incorrect stance.

I concur, though I see them as separate contentions.

First and foremost, a publisher is a filter. Publisher make their living selling books, and have an interest in acquiring books that will sell. I've encountered folks claiming that publishers add no value, but most have been folks who haven't been able to get published. It was sour grapes, pure and simple. In a few cases they had a legitimate beef about good work being passed over, but there's a good reason most of it got rejected. (Talk to anyone who has read slush...)

I poked around years back in various on-line forums devoted to writing, with folks who would post samples asking for criticism. It was quickly apparent that they didn't want actual criticism: they wanted to be told how great their stuff was. Folks like me who tried to offer practical advice on the assumption that folks in the forum might want to sell what they wrote, and offered suggestions on how to sell it, were not greeted with favor.

Writing is intertwined with ego, and is perilous to self-image. You need persistence and a thick skin to become a selling writer. The late SF writer Harry C. Stubbs (Hal Clement) was on a panel at a con a few years before he died, where the topic was how you knew when you made the grade and your stuff would sell. Other folks on the topic made pious pronouncements about how they knew they'd turned that magic corner. Then Hal said "I still don't know! I get rejected all the time!" The other panelists then hemmed and hawed and admitted they were perhaps a bit optimistic in their statements, and did still have a level of uncertainty. After all, if Hal Clement, a Grand Master of SFWA, could freely admit to still collecting rejection slips... (And that was Harry. There wasn't a pretentious bone in his body. It wouldn't occur to him to not admit to still getting rejected.)

Many years ago, SF writer Norman Spinrad opined that there should be enough magazines produced that everyone could get published. My thought then was "That's very nice, Norman, but who would read it?" Now, with the Internet and self-publishing setups like Lulu.com, everybody can get published, but I still ask the same question.

If you write, I assume you want people to read what you write, and you might even like to get paid for writing. That requires reaching an audience who will like your stuff well enough to buy it, and helping to make it good enough to buy and reaching that audience is what a publisher does. You can argue that many do it badly and have a point, but it's still what they do. The smart houses know what they do well and stick to it. One editor friend described rejecting books she personally loved, because she knew her house didn't know how to sell that kind of work. Back to the agent it went, with a suggestion or two about possible better homes.

As a case in point, Baen Books does mid-level action/adventure SF and Fantasy. They know that market, they're good at it, and they stick to what they are good at. People buy Baen Books in part because they know what they are getting, and the fact that Baen published it means it will be a good example of that sort of book.

On similar lines, I once made a Tor editor happy by stating I would buy a first novel by a new author because Tor published it, and I'd learned to trust their taste.

Proofreaders, editors, et al, have a role and it can be important. Just like producers or A & R people in music, some talent must be developed.

Correct. And publishers provide marketing and distribution, giving your book a better chance of actually being seen by the folks who might want to buy and read it.

As for DRM, I see it as at best a necessary evil, and want to see it go away for practical and philosophical reasons.

The practical reason is simple: I want to get electronic content once, and read it on whatever device I happen to have. DRM may get in the way. What if my DRM protected copy is locked to a particular device, and I lose or break that device? I may still have file backed up elsewhere, but I can't read it.

I sidestep the issue. I don't buy DRM protected content. Most of what I have these days is in HTML format, which I can read directly in a browser on desktop or laptop, and convert readily to a form I can read on my PDA. I'm also accumulating stuff in Mobipocket format, mostly due to the efforts of folks here, who have been producing finely crafted electronic editions of classic material.

The philosophical reason is an objection to the mindset underlying use of DRM. People who use DRM seem to operate from an assumption that the market is mostly composed of thieves, who will happily copy and share unprotected work, and the only was to make any money on electronic content is to lock it down so that can't be done.

Perhaps I'm an optimist with a too rosy view of my fellow human beings, but I don't agree. There will certainly be people who will copy and share, and never care about compensation to the folks who created the work, let alone those who issued it in electronic form. But I think enough of the market is honest and honorable that DRM is not a necessity. Produce the right content, price it properly, and make it easy to buy, and you can sell stuff and make money. I always want to ask someone pressing for use of DRM "Why do you assume the market will rip you off if you don't use DRM? Is it because it's what you would do in their place, and you assume everyone else is a no-good so-and-so, just like you?"

If I'm stuck with DRM, Mobipocket's is probably the least odious. You can register up to five devices to read Mobi content, and they have a version of their reader for just about everything but Mac OS/X, so you likely can read it on whatever you happen to have.

My point is that I want more of the backlog released in a digital format. Preferably, sell it for $10.00 or so. Am not keen to pay $25.00 for an ebook because I hate doing it for a physical book. $15.00 is a high premium for their property occupying space in my domicile.

You and everybody else. I think we'll see that happening, but it will be a slow process. First, the backlist needs to be in a form that can be issued electronically, and in some cases the original electronic manuscripts from which the printers prepared plates may no longer exist, and will need to be recreated.

To clarify, by first-run I meant a nice, new hardcover copy, not necessarily pristine antique texts.

Agreed. Facsimile editions are a special niche.

Think that I will have to bite the bullet and fire some emails into the ether at various publisher's websites, hoping that they reach the inbox that will do the most good.

That's the tricky part. Navigating the corporate hierarchy and knowing who you need to reach is a challenge.
______
Dennis

[Greg Anos]

The problem with midlist (and particularly backlist) books is you can't make a lot of money (gross) off of them. So they get ignored (or overpriced) in the e-book world (such as it is). If you can't increase the gross, maybe you can cut the costs.


One unique cost of e-books is digitzation. It costs money to have somebody scan and proof a paper book. Many older books only exist as
paper, so this must be done. But what is you could get it done for free?

Don't laugh. There are a lot of pirated scanned e-books. This shows that there are people who will scan a book they like. Suppose a publisher offered the following deal....


Author X has been out of print for 20 years. Publisher Y holds the rights. They stick a list of all the backlist authors and titles they hold the rights to on a web site, and offer the following deal. If you, a reader, scan and edit a book on the list and provide the finished file back to the publisher, you get a credit on the e-book - Book X has been scanned and edited by reader Z. A nice association for the reader doing the work, and it cost the publisher zip. If the publisher is feeling really generous, they might offer the reader/scanner a cent a download (possibly as a credit to buy more books from Publisher Y).

Look at the beauty of the system. Publisher Y gets loads of (relatively expensive) scanning done for free or at least with no upfront costs. All Publisher Y has to do is publish a list of Authors/Titles to scan. Yes, Publisher Y has to make room on a server for the backlist books, but that is probably less that a megabyte a book. Less that 1/10 cent a year, including electricity. (Of course, it assumes that Publisher Y already sells some e-books to start with, and this is just piggy-backing off the existing servers. (If this causes extra server traffic, you should be so lucky, because that means customers are looking at (and probably buying) your e-books. Ching!) Plus, this is such a simple job, Publisher Y can have their college intern(s) do it (cheap labor).

Now a publisher won't make boatloads of money this way, BUT, it's free money. And as an extra no-cost bonus, if you keep the price down (say $4 an e-book) you cut the moral legs out from under the pirates. (No more I can't buy the e-book so I have to pirate it.)

P.S. There is one expense I did leave out, which is figuring out who to pay for these backlist titles. But if that's too expensive, maybe the pirates are right.

P.P.S. Look how much money Warner has made off of old (backlist) movies selling the cheap on DVD.

[JSWolf]

The thing is with out of print pBooks is that if they were put out as eBooks, then any sale would result in profit where there would have been none since there is no pBook to be purchased. So I do think a price of $4.00 for an out-of-print book would be fine.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The thing is with out of print pBooks is that if they were put out as eBooks, then any sale would result in profit where there would have been none since there is no pBook to be purchased. So I do think a price of $4.00 for an out-of-print book would be fine.

Depends on the costs of getting it into ebook form and offering it, and the perceived potential sales.

For current titles, where (we hope) the masters for the print and ebook editions are prepared at the same time and archived, an ebook sale of a backlist title that is OOP in paper is gravy, because the ecopy exists. In other cases, it's not so simple.

And ebooks and print-on-demand are forcing redefinition of what is meant by "out of print". When a book is OOP, the writer can ask that the rights be reverted. With ebooks and POD, that became very murky. Current contracts are tending to stipulate some combination of OOP in paper plus X low level of POD/ebook sales as an indicator that the publisher has lost interest and rights should revert.

So bottom line, the publisher may not necessarily have the rights to that OOP title any longer.
______
Dennis

[Cthulhu]

Jon:

That's *exactly* the point of the long tail! Once a work is out there, selling it is all profit, for the production costs have been amortised long ago.

However, I see Ralph & Dennis's point wrt out of print books. I like the model of OCR work for street cred/wuffie. That would be exquisite.

A few weeks back, helping a friend paint, I mentioned that nowadays, people share as much content as we ever did. The rub is, with digital content, I still have a copy of the book/movie/track after I pass it on to a friend. We all did something similar with mix tapes, TV shows on videotape, whatever. Now, we make a perfect copy and retain a perfect copy.
In cases like this, do not intend to defraud authors and distributors, but to share the joy that content brings.
While we painted his shed, I also railed against the "commercial" that admonishes us to not steal this movie. Way to alienate your customer with the implication that we are thieves.

@ Spider Matt: At this stage in my life, am looking to mimise my belongings. As I am married and never have my boss over for dinner, there is no one to impress with my paper trophies stacked upon the shelves. I understand that some people feel otherwise, but I like reading the text and having it disapparate.

[Greg Anos]

I see you point about O.P. books reverting. I still this the idea is usable, just with a different twist. This seems like a job for for various writer's associations (Science Fiction Writer's Association, Mystery Writer's Guild, ect.) One of their chartered purposes is to help improve the economic lot of writers, and getting them money for books that otherwise would earn no money for anybody would be a Good Thing. You could also include such writers who own their own e-book rights and want to minimize their internet overhead (voluntarily, of course!) It would also be good for the customers (readers) as well.

I just trying to be part of the answer, instead of part of the problem.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

I see you point about O.P. books reverting. I still this the idea is usable, just with a different twist. This seems like a job for for various writer's associations (Science Fiction Writer's Association, Mystery Writer's Guild, ect.) One of their chartered purposes is to help improve the economic lot of writers, and getting them money for books that otherwise would earn no money for anybody would be a Good Thing. You could also include such writers who own their own e-book rights and want to minimize their internet overhead (voluntarily, of course!) It would also be good for the customers (readers) as well.

I just trying to be part of the answer, instead of part of the problem.

I think the idea has considerable merit. It will just be a bit more complicated than we might hope to actually do it.

One sticking point is the question of proofreading. If I were a publisher, I might well be pleased if someone was willing to scan a hardcopy of something for which an electronic copy didn't exist, and provide me with OCR output of the scans. But I wouldn't assume their proofreading was sufficient: I'd have people who did it for a living proof the copy against a hardcopy of the original publication. That would add to my costs, but I'd consider it necessary. (I've done a fair bit of OCR. It never gets it exactly right, and proofreading and correction is a must.)

Consider the work HarryT has been putting in, proofreading his copies of Charles Dickens originally sourced from Project Gutenberg. Some of the etexts are riddled with errors. PG has gotten much better since Distributed Proofreaders has been providing the corrected source texts. They do, in general, a very good job. But there's a lot of stuff on PG from before DP took over that leaves a bit to be desired.

So it would be from something like this.
______
Dennis