[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

I'm going to vote with my wallet. These people just lost a customer, and I'll be contacting the authors aligned with this outfit about that fact also.

this is very good and very representative of the new ereader I would think. here we see someone virtually brand new to the boards and having sorted it out immediately. I've been saying this for awhile, and I think it needs to proceed

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Alternatively, these publishers could look at a successful existing solution over at Webscriptions and Baen. The get their die-hard fan tax by selling eARCs (electronic Advance Reader Copies) for $15 to $25; then sell the finished eBook at $6 about two weeks before the hardcover hits the shelf. But by clever disintermediation, they (and their authors) net nearly as much money on each eBook as they would in hardcover (more than trade-paper, but a bit less than HC). And, they get a fair number of double -- or even triple -- sales to fans who purchase ebook and hardcover (and sometimes eArc as well). Cutting out layers of distribution for eBooks is perfectly feasible, and saves money for everyone -- except the distributors, of course. But they add no value in eBook sales.

I won't even mention the cleverness of monthly bundles, and the free library, and snippetting and... oops.

Xenophon

maybe the other publishing houses need to take a business seminar from Baen

Originally Posted by ficbot

I wonder if anybody here would be interested in some sort of organized letter-writing campaign? Here is what I am thinking, we write a bank of form letters for publisher, author and agent. Every time you want to buy a book and do not because of availability, you send off the appropriate letter letting these people know that their actions have cost them a profit. If they get enough of these letters (this is the utility of the form letter, they start to see a few of the same ones and they realize more than one person is having this problem and that these people are organizing!) then perhaps authors can pressure agents who can pressure publishers and so forth. This decision to delay the ebook is directly affecting the people who are most likely to actually BUY a title int he first place, and everyone on the chain needs to know this will affect them personally. What do you think?

I'm in. right now I would venture to guess that this is the biggest collective ereading block out there. I would think we should have some weight

Originally Posted by tmgplc

Another brilliant corporate idea . . . just keep giving me reasons to just find a pirated copy. It sucks enough to pay for the ebook and then make sure it will actually work on your preferred device, but to delay the release will just drive people to piracy. Of course you have a choice whether to steal a book or not, but Under The Dome is on the net in a pirated version. How many of those people would have just paid for the ebook if it was available?

I find it hard to have any sympathy for the publishers when they continue to create their own worst nightmare (music, movies, and now books). My only reason for not just jumping on the piracy bandwagon is that I believe the author should be compensated for their work.

I have both as well. I want King as an author to get his money. I want other authors to get their money. but my inclination to do this is going to trickle away the more publishers dig in their heels and become mules

Originally Posted by Daithi

The big publishers pulling this are stupidheads. To explain why, a little background --

A typical hardcover price is $26 and Amazon will typically receive a discount of 55% off the cover price. This is a discount of $14.30 on a $26 book, so each book costs Amazon $11.70. If Amazon sells the book for $13.00 they get to keep $1.30. If they sell the book for $9.99 then they lose $1.71. Currently Amazon is eating the cost on a lot of ebooks in order to build marketshare.

Why the publishers are stupidheads --

The publishers are making a killing on ebooks. The margin on ebooks is far higher than it is on hardcovers. An ebook doesn't have printing, warehousing, inventory, shipping, and returns costs. So the publisher gets paid $11.70 regardless of the type of book sold, but the cost of producing an ebook is much lower than a hardcover. Therefore, you would think, the publisher would want to sell as many ebooks as possible. If anything, they should release the hardcovers four months after releasing the ebooks. If you get paid $11.70 regardless, but it costs $5.00 to produce an ebook but $8.00 to produce a hardcover then you would be a stupidhead to focus on hardcover sales.

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thank you for breaking this down. continually seeing the argument that there isn't that much of a difference between e and p book publishing expenses is infuriating at best.
karma