Quote:
Originally Posted by bfollowell
I'm sure you're right. Then again, most of the big five supported, in one way or another, Oyster Books and to some degree still support Scribd. So, who can say for certain what may happen.
I won't be holding my breath though.
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You shouldn't.
Cynanosis is very painful.
1- Oyster was paying near-sale rates. They went under.
2- Scribd trimmed their catalog to pull some of the most popular titles because they couldn't afford to keep paying what it cost to feature them.
3- Amazon does carry a small amount of tradpub titles in KU they pay more to feature. In Japan they are currently dealing with complaints from tradpubs for dropping titles that were too popular, just like Scribd. So it's clear that Amazon is not going to throw money away just to feature tradpub titles. There simply isn't enough money in a $10 subscription to support tradpub titles in any large volume. A handful of titles here and there, yes. Full catalogs? No way. Not now, not ever. Not without the BPHs giving up 80% of the revenue they currently demand. Amazon is not about to bleed themselves supporting books from companies that have spent the last 6 years looking for ways to hurt them.
4- The lack of BPH titles is not a defect in KU but rather a defining feature. Look to Amazon's promotional page for KU and they make it clear KU exists for "discovery", to promote Indie and small press books that get lost in the shadow of the higher profile titles from the BPHs. The same is true of the recently introduced Prime Reading: there's a few high profile tradpub titles but the bulk of the ebooks featured are highly-rated Indie and APub titles that Amazon pays a lump sum to feature instead of per-read payouts.
5- Looking at it from the other side, KU works for Indies because the typical full-read payouts for novels run in the $2-3 range which is about 80-90% of what a sale brings in, which is $2-3.50. Obviously, books that readers don't like payout a lot less but the tradeoff is the increased visibility of a channel where they can compete for reader attention without having to deal with the Pattersons, Kings, and Roberts' of the world. That is not a tradeoff that tradpub authors will support, as was made clear by the way so many went bat-guano crazy when they first heard about the KU payout system. The difference is the difference between Indies getting 70% of retail revenues and tradpub authors getting 17%. At best. (That would work out to maybe $0.35-0.50 per full read.) Even if the publishers were willing to accept per page read payouts, the authors and their agents wouldn't. Instant lawsuit guaranteed.
Add it all up and there is no chance any of the BPHs will put their full catalog into KU anytime soon. They're still making good money without it and their preference is to discourage ebook use, anyway, as they've made abundantly clear.
Not going to happen any time soon.
There's no "anything can happen" about it.
It's simple math: average subscribers read about four to five full titles per month which works out to $2-3 per full book payout. A fair deal for subscribers and a fair deal for Indies. Not a deal tradpub publishers can stomach, though. And they don't have to: they're still making good money without KU.