Since I linked to Good ereads above, I figure I might as well link to Laura Resnick's riposte:
http://lauraresnickauthor.wordpress....d-oh-nooooooo/
A lot of her column eloquently restates what some of us have been saying above, but this point is worth pointing out:
Quote:
rather than being about the “value” of books, literature, or authors, the $10-$14 price range that publishers are setting for a lot of their ebook releases is an example of their overhead problems (compare Hachette’s overhead to the overhead of indie bestsellers like Joe Konrath, Hugh Howey, or Barbara Freethy, and the problem is self-explanatory) and problems in their business model, which was built around the print format. In particular, traditional publishing has been focused on the hardcover, whose market and pricing they’ve been trying to protect in the digital era. Meanwhile, they’re facing a new market full of competitors who are not operating with the twin drawbacks of high overhead and a business model built on a declining format.
And what consumers increasingly see are books priced $10-$14 for no good reason from the reader’s perspective, since the reader is interested in paying for content, not overhead. The format for those higher priced books is the same as books in the “sweet spot” of $4-$8, to which readers have been gravitating in their purchasing choices.
Moreover, an ebook that was $12.99 last year is $7.99 this year. Why? Because the hardcover was released last year and the mmpb is released this year, and the pricing of the ebook–the exact same ebook as before–is being tied to both those formats. So if you bought that exact same ebook last year, you’d have paid almost 40% more for it than this year. Why? Well, from the consumer’s point of view, for no good reason (i.e. overhead and the cost of other formats).
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The big sticking point isn't really price at all; it is *operating costs*.
Overhead.
Those manhattan glass towers and smart MBA execs making millions a year don't come for free.
And indie publishers can outsource their editing and formatting (just as the big boys) to veteran pros and can produce a product just as slick and clean as the traditionalists (in ebooks, often better; they're not trying to pass off unproofed OCR'ed computer output as an ebook) and still sell at the market sweetspot because they don't need millions in revenue just to break even.
Indie publishing, as a business, has low entry costs ($3000-5000 gets you full pro service, $5000-7000 gets you Author Solutions) and very low overhead and recurring costs. Breakeven, at the low-end $2.99 can come with sales of 3000 units, a *tenth* of what I hear is the minimum at which a BPH will keep a midlister, and at $4.99 those same 3000 units will out-earn the typical mid-lister advance ($3000, these days.)
Those are not hard numbers to meet for professional writers.
The ramp-up newcomers? Well, those either come with lower expectations or quickly go away.
I still hold that one of the best indicator of (likely) story quality for an unknown author (trad-pub or indie) is depth of catalog and "time of service".
In the end, the djinn is out of the bottle.
Indie publishing--alone, in co-ops, or through tiny corporations--is here to stay.
The economics are simply too good for authors and readers for either to pretend otherwise.
Once upon a time, writing *and* publishing were both small businesses, even "cottage industry". Then publishing went corporate and (for good reasons *for the times*) went on a gigantism kick that still is still ongoing. But the same scale that made sense in the days of bestseller pbooks and giant retail chain is a serious handicap in the online and digital worlds. And that is the world we now live in.
The giants will likely find ways to adjust their business to the new realities but those adjustmentt are going to leave big gaping holes in marketplace coverage that will readiy support a horde of quality indie publishers. "Anybody Press" as the fabled Mr Shatkin calls it.
http://www.idealog.com/blog/anybody-...ooks-at-least/
Of course, he only sees this as an ebook issue. It isn't.
The "second wave" of Indie publishing is already starting to build up; that one will be built atop broadly distributed, affordable Trade Paperbacks and Indie retailers (as well as the online pbook vendors).
The "third wave" targetting hardcovers is still a few years away, though. But the economics and logistics of the 21st century are writ in large flashing neon letters for those willing to read the tea leaves.
The cottage industry of Indie Publishing is here to stay; FUD campaigns are not going to change the hard reality of the numbers.
The only choices left are adapt to minimize the impact or grumble powerlessly.
Unfortunately, the kids' frisbees are always going to land on your lawn.
(Murphy's Law guarantees it.)
I think the former will bring less heartburn.