Quote:
Originally Posted by Liviu_5
Right now most publishers are afraid of e-books, they know it's a big potential market, but they look at music and saw what happened.
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What happened to the music market was their own fault. They had something that was actually working. And then they changed it and we have what we have now.
Let's go back to when Napster first came out. Napster shared MP3 files made from CDs (mostly) and the RIAA saw this as a bad thing. But in reality, it was a very good thing. CD sales were up 6-8% from what they were before Napster. Because a lot of people would download a track (or tracks) or a CD and decide they liked the music and want to go out and purchase the CD or a CD from the same artist. It was a way for people to preview a CD or an artist before spending money. It turned out that most people who bought CDs after downloading from Napster were overall more happy with their purchase because of the previewing that was done before hand. They even found music available they didn't know was available. Now steps in the big bad RIAA. "No you cannot do this, it's piracy and it's hurting out sales." But it was helping their sales overall. More so then it was losing them. And the big bad RIAA decided to make up for all this phantom loss bu RAISING THE PRICES for CDs. We don't get any more value. We just get shafted at the register. I remember purchasing CDs for about $10 each. Now we are lucky if CDs are $12 on sale. A lot of people have to decide where their money goes. They cannot afford to buy all the CDs they want at $14.99 (12.99 on sale) a pop. Especially if they are unsure of the music on the CD.
An example, Gnarles Barkely's CD. I had heard his hit song
Crazy on his debut CD. I admit to having downloaded his CD. After listening to it, I then decided that
Crazy was the only song on the CD I liked. The rest I would not want to listen again. If I had paid $12.99 + 5% sales tax I would have been mighty pissed. It's that way with a lot of CDs. One hit song and the rest (or most) are not that good.
One other issue there is with CDs and this is a HUGE issue. The expanded, or anniversary CD. You know, the one with the extra material that you didn't get when you purchased the CD the first time around. And the RIAA thinks it's ok to charge you for something you already purchased just to get this extra material. Sometimes books do this too. For example Stephen King's
The Stand is the way he wanted it in the first place.
Books don't tend to have that problem. If you like a given author, generally, you will (in most cases) like other works from that author. But the price structure for books is getting out of hand. We have ...
1. Hardcovers which are seriously overpriced
2. Trade paperbacks again expensive
3. This newish taller thinner format that's also expensive (to get more money then they would for a trade paperback)
4. The regular trade paperback priced about $7.99 (US)
It seems that this newish taller paperback format that offers us nothing but grief is becoming more popular because they can charge prices in between the TPB and the HC. And thus make more profit. a HC might very well cost more to print then a TPB. But, the ebook version of the HC or TPB costs EXACTLY the same to make. So why then do the publishers price the ebook (if the HC is out) at a ridiculously high price? If they took the ebook while it was in HC and price it fairly. More people would purchase the ebook. Take a new books priced at $29.95. At a discount of 30% that comes to $20.97. Now we have this HC at $20.97. The ebook if it was priced at say $10.00 we might purchase it considering we'd be saving close to $11.00. Then when it goes to paperback format (doesn't matter which one) was to be dropped to $5.99 we's purchase it as it would be cheaper then the paper edition still. But, I occasionally get discount coupon in email from Borders. The last one was for %20 off. Now, if I take that coupon and purchase a book costing $7.99 then the price drops to $6.39. Now mind you that is awfully close to the $5.99 price I cited. So lets drop the ebook price to $5.00. Then you'd have a lot more sales then you do now.
When you add in the cost of the hardware to be able to read ebooks on the go instead of stuck at a computer at a fixed location or having to lug around a laptop, you make ebooks a lot more cost ineffective. If I was able to purchase ebooks at the discount I cited above, eventually, I'd break even and eventually come ahead. That would make me a happy customer. I just purchased a paperback book at a grand total of $6.71 including taxes and the 20% off voucher I used. The ebook is not yet out. But when it is out, it will most likely be priced at $6.99. Now, why would I want the ebook at $6.99 when I can gt the paper edition for less? That is what is killing ebooks. People see that this and aren't going to purchase the ebook when the paper copy is cheaper. I would like the ebook to read on my Sony Reader. But I'm not paying more for it then the paper edition.
So all in all, take heed publishers. If you want ebooks to succeed, do not take your business plan from the RIAA.