Help us find Sony store prices that are out of whack - Page 6

Leaping Gnome · 03-07-2007, 11:13 AM

The whole "price is set by the publisher" is a bunch of crap I think. If the publisher sets the prices then bookstores would all sell at the same prices. You think Amazon lets publishers control their prices? No, they buy copies at wholesale for price X and resell at price Y, all the publisher/wholesaler controls is price X. I can't believe it's not the same at Sony. You think Sony allows the publisher to control their profits? That the publisher walks into Sony and says I'll sell you a book for price X and you're only allowed to resell it for price Y? I can't see how that would work, Sony would agree to buy it for price X and resell it for whatever price they wanted. It's up to Sony to insure their profits, I can't see them handing that control over to a publisher.

I think the whole pricing thing especially where they try to charge hardback prices for books in paperback, simply goes back to technical competence. I don't think they have a way to easily, automatically update book prices. Looks at the UI for the store, look at the problems many of us have had with the books themselves from the store with graphics, prices different in the cart than displayed, scan problems, etc... I think the general level of competence that has been displayed in the client software and the store probably permeates through the backend systems as well. It will get you by, but it's by no means great with plenty of room for improvement. I don't think they are maliciously intentionally trying to overcharge $10+ for some books, I just don't think they know better or their systems aren't setup in such a way as to make it better. That's the only explanation I see.

NatCh · 03-07-2007, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mohit25

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

So, the price was the same at both Amazon and the ConnStore? Just trying to make sure I understood you is all ....

Sorry - it was 28 at Connect vs 23 for a hardcover at Amazon- have changed above

Ah, well that makes sense then! Yeah, totally obnoxious.

NatCh · 03-07-2007, 12:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leaping Gnome

The whole "price is set by the publisher" is a bunch of crap I think.

<snip>

It's up to Sony to insure their profits, I can't see them handing that control over to a publisher.

You're right, it is a bit ... oversimplified, at best, disingenuous, at worst. It's probably more accurate to say that the publisher controls what price they sell the product to Sony, and Sony adds some standard markup on top of it, both to cover whatever costs they have, and for their profit margin.

You're right that bookstore prices vary, but where they vary is actually on their own markup. They like to call it a discount, since the "real" price is there for the world to see on the cover that the publisher applied to the book, and they're charging you less than that, aren't they?

If I recall correctly (from 10 or 12 years ago), that printed-on cover price is a 40% markup from the wholesale price (somebody with more recent knowledge on the matter, please update me!), so when you 'save 10%' at Amazon, you're actually paying 90% of 140%, or 126% (a ~26% markup) of what Amazon paid the publisher for the book. They may, of course have volume discounts too, just to make things interesting.

As for why the ConnStore can't seem to get/keep the prices straightened out, updated, etc., I totally agree with you there, L.G. -- I don't see any question but that the ConnStore is in serious need of a few folks who have ... a better idea of how to set up and run such things.

AndiR · 03-20-2007, 12:05 PM

both by J Miller

Is it business books that seem to be more?

What do you think of the business book content on Connect?

AndiR

Bitgod · 03-22-2007, 01:29 AM

I was going to post about one of Connect's featured books, Manhunt, was $17, and I saw that Amazon had the paperback for $10 the other night. Just looked again tonight, it's $10.36 on Connect now. Must be the paperback version.

I'm glad I hadn't decided yet, I'll buy it now.

vampmiller · 04-06-2007, 08:45 AM

* The Road
* Cormac Mcarthy
* Sony - $14.95
* Amazon - $8.97

The pricing structure of Connect will be the downfall of the Reader. The traditional pricing structure of hardcover/paperback fails in the ebook marketplace and needs to be addressed. With music you get a CD. With a movie you get DVD. You are not forced to buy the content in one format for 12 months at more than double the price it will be in a new format later on. There will have to be some ebook pricing that stays the same and is competitive. I'm a Robert Parker reader and enraged at how long it takes the Connect store to finally realize one of the novels has been released in paperback so they'll switch prices on the store. It has, for some of his books, taken a month or so. Way too long.

I'm surprised I haven't seen media reviews of the reader point this out this issue.

NatCh · 04-06-2007, 09:21 AM

Quote:

I'm surprised I haven't seen media reviews of the reader point this out this issue.

It takes too much time to notice such an issue, vampmiller -- the media is too busy bashing the Reader for not being a PDA to notice anything like a real issue with the ConnStore.

Do I understand you to say that you saw a Robert Parker book's price drop (a month or two after ) when it went from hard to paper back? Has it stayed there?

That would actually be good news, because the ConnStore has had problems with prices popping back to their original hardback levels after changing (briefly) to the "paperback" ones. If they're sticking, that's an improvement, and if ConnStore is catching and lowering the prices on their own, even if they're slow about it, that's an improvement too, as it means they must have (or be in the process of) actually worked out a process to handle that.

ConnStore still has issues (and I don't mean comic books!), but they do seem to be making some improvements.

One thing you said I think may have been less than fully considered:

Quote:

With music you get a CD. With a movie you get DVD. You are not forced to buy the content in one format for 12 months at more than double the price it will be in a new format later on.

That's completely true, of course, but that is precisely what happens with books -- I go in and buy the latest hardback for ~$25 and 12~16 months later, I see it in paperback for $7 -- almost 1/4th the price.

Others see it differently, but I don't mind paying a bit of a premium to get a book (even an e-book) earlier, I don't think that a factor of four is acceptable for an e-book, because the publishing cost isn't any different for them like it is with hard/paper backs.

I think the pubs are needing a bit of time to work through these things, though, they've been doing things mostly the same way for over a hundred years, it's all too much for them to grasp at once -- especially when they're (most of them) doing their dead level best to not think it through.

They'll come around eventually, I think. The example of music industry's travails seems to be instructive to them.

vampmiller · 04-06-2007, 11:06 AM

Hey Natch,

yeah, once the paperback Parker is finally available, the price stabilizes. I've not seen this jumping price phenomenon but it would peeve me to be on the receiving end of it.

The problem with the whole hardcover/paperback/ebook pricing structure is not just with the publishers. When Apple created iTunes, they really took the reins and lead the music industry in how pricing needs to happen and I don't think Sony is doing this with ebooks. If Apple had their own reader and utilized their iTunes store, I can't help think that things would run more smoothly and better for the customer.

But I do love my reader. I am in Japan right now where English books aren't so easy to come by. I was stoked to be able to bring 150 novels with me in my carry-on and to download a few more while I'm here.

But the pricing issue's a stickler. Hey, Robert Parker, if you're reading this - when you're done with your next novel, email me an rtf version and I'll paypal you $10. Works better for both of us.

Here's a price difference in Connect's favor:

The Terror
Dan Simmons
Connect: $14.39
Amazon: $17.15 (with additional shipping cost)
No paperback in sight yet! Download now before someone realizes!

NatCh · 04-06-2007, 11:25 AM

If you're looking for other sources, I can suggest Bean's Webscriptions site. If you like the sort of thing they publish, then it's a treasure trove. They have a "Free Library" so you can try out a number of their offerings gratis -- the better to get you hooked, of course.

I'm assuming you already know about Project Gutenberg, and their public domain offerings, but you may not know that ManyBooks.net offers a Sony Reader formatted version of most of the PG holdings, which is very nice.

And that doesn't mention the effort going on here at MR to do 'deluxe editions' of public domain stuff for the Reader.

I agree that it'd be a different ballgame if Steve Jobs were in it, but the music industry is markedly different from the pub industry -- most music has been in the consumers' hands digitally for years, which means they were already at the table. That's just not the case for books, so the pubs have to be convinced that they need to come to the table in the first place, as such a heavy handed approach would just not work -- something about flies and vinegar comes to mind, for some reason.

Anyway, the pubs still largely have physical control of what we'd like to have digitally, so they can exert more pressure on pricing than the music folks could, who lost that control a long time ago (before they realized they wanted it).

One example from Baen: most of their individual books (excepting advanced reader copies), are $6 or less, but one book they have available (Off Armageddon Reef) which is actually a Tor publishing book is $18 (hardback's $26.95, I think) -- clearly there is a limit to how much Baen could convince Tor to lower their price, or that book would also be ~$6.

The book and music and video markets only compare to each other just so far, before the similarities evaporate. However, we've seen a lot more digital movement in the book industry in the last five years or so than in ... well, than in about a century.

Certainly that's a good thing, and something we want to encourage.

dhbailey · 04-07-2007, 08:05 AM

The other thing to keep in mind is that for many (most?) books, publishers only negotiate for first-publication rights for a single continent. That does not include movie rights, it does not include serialization rights, it does not include e-publication, it doesn't include anything other than the right to publish a dead-tree book version of the work. That's why hard-back and paper-back version of the same book are often put out by different publisers.

Early on, book agents learned how to split all the various potentials for a book so that they negotiate each aspect seperately (and earn their 10% for each negotiation). The music world, however, was ramrodded by the record labels who coerced their young and naive artists (many of whom didn't have any agent to assist in the negotiation of recording contracts) into signing over all their rights to the record label, so the record label didn't need any further negotiation to bring out digital versions of the recordings, and they control all publication rights for many classic rock and jazz and pop songs, so it's a lot easier for them to get to e-distribution.

One can only hope that if people such as the members of this list keep bombarding the publishers with e-mails (most publishers are at least technically savvy enough to have e-mails and web-sites and do their book production digitally these days so it shouldn't be too much longer before they open the floodgates of ebooks) to convince them that there is a legitimate marketplace out here so they will begin to include epublication rights in their negotiations.

So whenever a book you want to read on the Reader isn't available, send an e-mail to both the publisher and the author (if you can find an e-mail address for them -- often this can be gotten from the publisher's web-site) to show them that there is already a marketplace for epublication but that also we're willing to pay and that the marketplace is growing!

vampmiller · 04-08-2007, 09:31 AM

First, apologies to readers because this thread is diverging. Moderators, feel free to move the last few posts and slap my wrists.

dhbailey... I think that's a great idea to let publishers know we want ebooks. It must be hard for their to gauge interest when there are so few ereaders around. When I'm back from vacation and have time (contradiction in terms unless you've been on vacation) I'll hunt around for a list of addresses for people to send their requests to.

At this point, I ONLY buy deadwood books is the ebook is unavailable. I love the size and ease of my reader, and the fact that it sits open so easily on the table leaving both hands free for lunch. I really hope this technology takes off. I can't wait to see the next iteration.

AndiR · 04-11-2007, 12:34 PM

Roma By Steven Saylor Three Dollars more and its a "featured product"!

:-( AndiR

Amadeus · 04-17-2007, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NatCh

The fact is that, for good or ill, the pubs do have something to say about pricing: you pay their price or you don't get their product.

The problem is that publishers are motivated by ratings. As long as ebook sales don't contribute to ratings publishers are not going to be keen to make sales that way for mainstream titles, where they are effectively losing a possible paper sale for every ebook sale made.

Tom Swift · 05-22-2007, 05:16 PM

W.E.B. Griffen - The Hunters - Sony Connect - $21.56
W.E.B. Griffen - The Hunters - Amazon US - $17.79

NatCh · 06-05-2007, 08:52 PM

This is more one they got right, but it's newsworthy for the title (and the implications).

Off Armageddon Reef Connect store: $12.80 -- not a bad price, except that Amazon has the hardback on sale for $5.19 for some unexplained reason. It may even be a glitch.

The reason I find it interesting is that TOR is letting them sell it for $12.80, when Baen's Webscriptions has it for $18.00 -- this from a publisher that's been somewhat leery of e-books at all. it also suggests that TOR feels that the DRM warrants something of a price drop ... though not very much of one.

03-07-2007, 11:13 AM	#76
Leaping Gnome Evangelist Posts: 490 Karma: 1641 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Louisville Device: Sony Reader PRS-500	The whole "price is set by the publisher" is a bunch of crap I think. If the publisher sets the prices then bookstores would all sell at the same prices. You think Amazon lets publishers control their prices? No, they buy copies at wholesale for price X and resell at price Y, all the publisher/wholesaler controls is price X. I can't believe it's not the same at Sony. You think Sony allows the publisher to control their profits? That the publisher walks into Sony and says I'll sell you a book for price X and you're only allowed to resell it for price Y? I can't see how that would work, Sony would agree to buy it for price X and resell it for whatever price they wanted. It's up to Sony to insure their profits, I can't see them handing that control over to a publisher. I think the whole pricing thing especially where they try to charge hardback prices for books in paperback, simply goes back to technical competence. I don't think they have a way to easily, automatically update book prices. Looks at the UI for the store, look at the problems many of us have had with the books themselves from the store with graphics, prices different in the cart than displayed, scan problems, etc... I think the general level of competence that has been displayed in the client software and the store probably permeates through the backend systems as well. It will get you by, but it's by no means great with plenty of room for improvement. I don't think they are maliciously intentionally trying to overcharge $10+ for some books, I just don't think they know better or their systems aren't setup in such a way as to make it better. That's the only explanation I see. Last edited by Leaping Gnome; 03-07-2007 at 11:20 AM.

03-20-2007, 12:05 PM	#79
AndiR Rather interested Posts: 104 Karma: 677 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Maidenhead Device: Kindle, Sony Ereader, Ipad & iPhone	QBQ and Flipping the switch - 3 USD more than Amazon both by J Miller Is it business books that seem to be more? What do you think of the business book content on Connect? AndiR

04-06-2007, 11:06 AM	#83
vampmiller Enthusiast Posts: 47 Karma: 6173 Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Seattle Device: kobo aura, kindle voyager.	Hey Natch, yeah, once the paperback Parker is finally available, the price stabilizes. I've not seen this jumping price phenomenon but it would peeve me to be on the receiving end of it. The problem with the whole hardcover/paperback/ebook pricing structure is not just with the publishers. When Apple created iTunes, they really took the reins and lead the music industry in how pricing needs to happen and I don't think Sony is doing this with ebooks. If Apple had their own reader and utilized their iTunes store, I can't help think that things would run more smoothly and better for the customer. But I do love my reader. I am in Japan right now where English books aren't so easy to come by. I was stoked to be able to bring 150 novels with me in my carry-on and to download a few more while I'm here. But the pricing issue's a stickler. Hey, Robert Parker, if you're reading this - when you're done with your next novel, email me an rtf version and I'll paypal you $10. Works better for both of us. Here's a price difference in Connect's favor: The Terror Dan Simmons Connect: $14.39 Amazon: $17.15 (with additional shipping cost) No paperback in sight yet! Download now before someone realizes! Last edited by vampmiller; 04-06-2007 at 11:09 AM.

04-11-2007, 12:34 PM	#87
AndiR Rather interested Posts: 104 Karma: 677 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Maidenhead Device: Kindle, Sony Ereader, Ipad & iPhone	Roma 17.36 USD on Amazon and 20.76 on DisCONNECT Roma By Steven Saylor Three Dollars more and its a "featured product"! :-( AndiR

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03-22-2007, 01:29 AM	#80
Bitgod Enthusiast Posts: 36 Karma: 10 Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Sacramento Device: iPad / PRS-600 / iPhone 3G	I was going to post about one of Connect's featured books, Manhunt, was $17, and I saw that Amazon had the paperback for $10 the other night. Just looked again tonight, it's $10.36 on Connect now. Must be the paperback version. I'm glad I hadn't decided yet, I'll buy it now.

04-06-2007, 08:45 AM	#81
vampmiller Enthusiast Posts: 47 Karma: 6173 Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Seattle Device: kobo aura, kindle voyager.	* The Road * Cormac Mcarthy * Sony - $14.95 * Amazon - $8.97 The pricing structure of Connect will be the downfall of the Reader. The traditional pricing structure of hardcover/paperback fails in the ebook marketplace and needs to be addressed. With music you get a CD. With a movie you get DVD. You are not forced to buy the content in one format for 12 months at more than double the price it will be in a new format later on. There will have to be some ebook pricing that stays the same and is competitive. I'm a Robert Parker reader and enraged at how long it takes the Connect store to finally realize one of the novels has been released in paperback so they'll switch prices on the store. It has, for some of his books, taken a month or so. Way too long. I'm surprised I haven't seen media reviews of the reader point this out this issue.

04-06-2007, 11:25 AM	#84
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	If you're looking for other sources, I can suggest Bean's Webscriptions site. If you like the sort of thing they publish, then it's a treasure trove. They have a "Free Library" so you can try out a number of their offerings gratis -- the better to get you hooked, of course. I'm assuming you already know about Project Gutenberg, and their public domain offerings, but you may not know that ManyBooks.net offers a Sony Reader formatted version of most of the PG holdings, which is very nice. And that doesn't mention the effort going on here at MR to do 'deluxe editions' of public domain stuff for the Reader. I agree that it'd be a different ballgame if Steve Jobs were in it, but the music industry is markedly different from the pub industry -- most music has been in the consumers' hands digitally for years, which means they were already at the table. That's just not the case for books, so the pubs have to be convinced that they need to come to the table in the first place, as such a heavy handed approach would just not work -- something about flies and vinegar comes to mind, for some reason. Anyway, the pubs still largely have physical control of what we'd like to have digitally, so they can exert more pressure on pricing than the music folks could, who lost that control a long time ago (before they realized they wanted it). One example from Baen: most of their individual books (excepting advanced reader copies), are $6 or less, but one book they have available (Off Armageddon Reef) which is actually a Tor publishing book is $18 (hardback's $26.95, I think) -- clearly there is a limit to how much Baen could convince Tor to lower their price, or that book would also be ~$6. The book and music and video markets only compare to each other just so far, before the similarities evaporate. However, we've seen a lot more digital movement in the book industry in the last five years or so than in ... well, than in about a century. Certainly that's a good thing, and something we want to encourage.

04-07-2007, 08:05 AM	#85
dhbailey Guru Posts: 604 Karma: 733 Join Date: Mar 2007 Device: HP iPAQ211 / PRS 500, 700 and 505	The other thing to keep in mind is that for many (most?) books, publishers only negotiate for first-publication rights for a single continent. That does not include movie rights, it does not include serialization rights, it does not include e-publication, it doesn't include anything other than the right to publish a dead-tree book version of the work. That's why hard-back and paper-back version of the same book are often put out by different publisers. Early on, book agents learned how to split all the various potentials for a book so that they negotiate each aspect seperately (and earn their 10% for each negotiation). The music world, however, was ramrodded by the record labels who coerced their young and naive artists (many of whom didn't have any agent to assist in the negotiation of recording contracts) into signing over all their rights to the record label, so the record label didn't need any further negotiation to bring out digital versions of the recordings, and they control all publication rights for many classic rock and jazz and pop songs, so it's a lot easier for them to get to e-distribution. One can only hope that if people such as the members of this list keep bombarding the publishers with e-mails (most publishers are at least technically savvy enough to have e-mails and web-sites and do their book production digitally these days so it shouldn't be too much longer before they open the floodgates of ebooks) to convince them that there is a legitimate marketplace out here so they will begin to include epublication rights in their negotiations. So whenever a book you want to read on the Reader isn't available, send an e-mail to both the publisher and the author (if you can find an e-mail address for them -- often this can be gotten from the publisher's web-site) to show them that there is already a marketplace for epublication but that also we're willing to pay and that the marketplace is growing!

04-08-2007, 09:31 AM	#86
vampmiller Enthusiast Posts: 47 Karma: 6173 Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Seattle Device: kobo aura, kindle voyager.	First, apologies to readers because this thread is diverging. Moderators, feel free to move the last few posts and slap my wrists. dhbailey... I think that's a great idea to let publishers know we want ebooks. It must be hard for their to gauge interest when there are so few ereaders around. When I'm back from vacation and have time (contradiction in terms unless you've been on vacation) I'll hunt around for a list of addresses for people to send their requests to. At this point, I ONLY buy deadwood books is the ebook is unavailable. I love the size and ease of my reader, and the fact that it sits open so easily on the table leaving both hands free for lunch. I really hope this technology takes off. I can't wait to see the next iteration.

05-22-2007, 05:16 PM	#89
Tom Swift Addict Posts: 250 Karma: 1232346 Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Macau Device: Kindle Oasis (plus lots of older devices)	W.E.B. Griffen - The Hunters - Sony Connect - $21.56 W.E.B. Griffen - The Hunters - Amazon US - $17.79

06-05-2007, 08:52 PM	#90
NatCh Gizmologist Posts: 11,615 Karma: 929550 Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Republic of Texas Embassy at Jackson, TN Device: Pocketbook Touch HD3	This is more one they got right, but it's newsworthy for the title (and the implications). Off Armageddon Reef Connect store: $12.80 -- not a bad price, except that Amazon has the hardback on sale for $5.19 for some unexplained reason. It may even be a glitch. The reason I find it interesting is that TOR is letting them sell it for $12.80, when Baen's Webscriptions has it for $18.00 -- this from a publisher that's been somewhat leery of e-books at all. it also suggests that TOR feels that the DRM warrants something of a price drop ... though not very much of one.

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