Amazon says 'will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms'

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by random50

DRM costs do not have to be covered.

Personally I think DRM is the stupidest thing since cajun barbeque sushi. It's a waste of time and effort and the best thing it can do is disappear.

However, it is a fact of the industry that DRM is currently required for at least certain books at certain sales venues. It may be at the behest of the author, the publisher, or even the sales venue. Regardless of my opinion, it does exist, it is applied to ebooks and someone has to pay for it.

If you dislike it, don't buy books with it. But it is a part of the production cost and as such it's perfectly reasonable to expect that it be passed on to those customers who are willing to pay for books with DRM.

Of course we could just make the people who buy paper editions cover that cost, too; along with all the other costs involved in creating a book.

[guyanonymous]

Well said. I especially liked the words "Regardless of my opinion, it does exist..." Applies to so much in life.

[angelad]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Personally I think DRM is the stupidest thing since cajun barbeque sushi. It's a waste of time and effort and the best thing it can do is disappear.

However, it is a fact of the industry that DRM is currently required for at least certain books at certain sales venues. It may be at the behest of the author, the publisher, or even the sales venue. Regardless of my opinion, it does exist, it is applied to ebooks and someone has to pay for it.

If you dislike it, don't buy books with it. But it is a part of the production cost and as such it's perfectly reasonable to expect that it be passed on to those customers who are willing to pay for books with DRM.

Of course we could just make the people who buy paper editions cover that cost, too; along with all the other costs involved in creating a book.

Yea, DRM is bad.

But I think its a matter of time before they come up with something "better" to replace it. They must know that no one approves of it.

[random50]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Personally I think DRM is the stupidest thing since cajun barbeque sushi. It's a waste of time and effort and the best thing it can do is disappear.

However, it is a fact of the industry that DRM is currently required for at least certain books at certain sales venues. It may be at the behest of the author, the publisher, or even the sales venue. Regardless of my opinion, it does exist, it is applied to ebooks and someone has to pay for it.

You were talking about why market testing ebook only versions are not viable because of the upfront costs. DRM is an optional cost. Since we are talking about a potential new release model, it's irrelevant that somebody in the chain believes it's necessary in the conventional model.

I think it's an interesting and very viable idea. The problem with self-published books lies with readers having to sort the wheat from the chaff. A publisher lending its support to a title would be an obvious way to mitigate this problem, and something that requires very little adapatation to their business since I would think the vast majority of titles that get self-published passed through the vetting process of at least one publisher first anyway. The upfront costs of publishing an ebook are very heavily discretionary. It's completely up to them how much money they put into, say, editing, promotion and, yes, DRM. Authors of such titles can be offered contracts based more heavily on sales than upfront payments.

As I see it, this greatly increases the number of titles they can publish. It helps solve a problem in a way which is potentially profitable for them. If the "wheat from the chaff" problem is solved by other means (and I'm sure it will be eventually), they may find themselves in the position of having uncomfortably little to offer versus self-publication.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

If you dislike it, don't buy books with it. But it is a part of the production cost and as such it's perfectly reasonable to expect that it be passed on to those customers who are willing to pay for books with DRM.

Either -

Right, since it lowers the functionality of the books, it's quite reasonable for the prices of the books to be lower.

Or

Wrong, it's not the customer's responsibility to generate a profit for the publisher, that their their own responsibility.

Pick

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Either -

Right, since it lowers the functionality of the books, it's quite reasonable for the prices of the books to be lower.

Or

Wrong, it's not the customer's responsibility to generate a profit for the publisher, that their their own responsibility.

Pick

I'd like to slightly restate your first point, and say that since DRM reduces the usability of the book (I think that's a better term than functionality) it's quite reasonable for people to consider the value of the book to be lower.

Value doesn't have to correlate with price, things just work better when they do.

Yes it's the publisher's responsibility to generate a profit, that's why they include a share of ALL costs in the price of a product. It's then up to the potential buyer to decide whether the product is worth the price.

DRM costs should be included in the price because a business that doesn't cover the all the costs of production in the price of its products will go out of business. Buyers are then free to decide whether to buy the product or not depending on how well the price matches their idea of its value.

Just because DRM'd books are worth less to many buyers, myself included, does not mean it doesn't get factored in when setting the price.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Just because DRM'd books are worth less to many buyers, myself included, does not mean it doesn't get factored in when setting the price.

I don't know how often paper books change hands during the course of their lifetimes, but I get the feeling that it's more often than once. Through the fact that you're supposedly now agreeing to a "licence" when you buy (note: it doesn't say lease on any ebook store I've come across, so common sense/law suggests that this might not hold up in court, if you ignore that the judiciary seems to be somewhat predisposed towards guaranteeing the "rights" of businesses to make profits.) a book, we've all suddenly lost the right to resell books we're done with. While I'm quite aware of the fact that it would be very hard to ensure that people aren't selling the same digital file over and over again without deleting it themselves, I don't quite agree that this resale worth shouldn't be factored in at all when deciding how to price an ebook. Yet this seems to be the practice.
(I would add here that, while I sincerely hope that we aren't currently paying more for paper books because the publishers feel they have a right to be compensated for the fact that not everyone will be buying books straight from them, I'm almost afraid that they are doing so anyway.)

[greencat]

Book publishers seem destined to make the same mistakes as the movie and music industry. Make your digital product as expensive (or even more so) and more restricted than your real world product - and you encourage piracy.

I'm not saying it's fair - but all of the reasons that make digital great for publishers (virtually free storage and distribution) means its perceived value is virtually nil too. Especially when there's lots of free and excellent quality competition. And unlike music and the movies - there is plenty of superb out-of-copyright material available digitally which you could spend a lifetime reading.

Fair or not - the average price of ebooks is close to zero and getting closer all of the time. Hardly surprising when the average second hand book price is probably under a dollar. Raising prices and making it harder to pass favourite books around friends is hardly going to endear me to any publisher. I don't need to read your latest bestseller - there are plenty of other calls on my time.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by greencat

I'm not saying it's fair - but all of the reasons that make digital great for publishers (virtually free storage and distribution) means its perceived value is virtually nil too. Especially when there's lots of free and excellent quality competition. And unlike music and the movies - there is plenty of superb out-of-copyright material available digitally which you could spend a lifetime reading.

Fair or not - the average price of ebooks is close to zero and getting closer all of the time. Hardly surprising when the average second hand book price is probably under a dollar. Raising prices and making it harder to pass favourite books around friends is hardly going to endear me to any publisher. I don't need to read your latest bestseller - there are plenty of other calls on my time.

I don't know where you're buying second hand books - but most used bookstores I go to charge at least $4 or so for a used paperback.

As for savings, publishers don't pay distribution costs, distributors do. Distributors also do most of the warehousing. So why should publishers be the ones who take the cut when it's the people downstream of them who see the savings?

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

...
As for savings, publishers don't pay distribution costs, distributors do. Distributors also do most of the warehousing. So why should publishers be the ones who take the cut when it's the people downstream of them who see the savings?

The list price of a physical book includes these costs, that's why they have to be removed. It's the wholesale price that is being used by most people as the comparison and the printing costs need to be removed from that price and not the list price. We don't know the wholesale price so we assume that when Amazon sells a hard cover book for $14 the wholesale price must be around $12. Remove $2 for the printing costs and you're down to $10.

Now you have to remove the cost of returned stock and managing the inventory reporting from the brick and mortar stores. Also the publishers risk is much lower overall and their costs are much easier to predict, therefore less value.

[Kolenka]

Originally Posted by angelad

Yea, DRM is bad.

But I think its a matter of time before they come up with something "better" to replace it. They must know that no one approves of it.

Define "better". As long as the guy who owns the rights wants to retain control over the work after the sale (and prevent random copying), then it's DRM. You can make "better" DRM, but in the end it is still DRM, and will be built on the same flaws as the existing DRM.

So what do you do? Do you remove the DRM, or make better DRM? Replacing DRM with "something better" is still DRM, since it is managing the rights of digital content through some sort of encryption. DVDs are DRM'd... but since they are tied to a physical disc, nobody notices or cares for the most part (especially when the encryption has been broken for the better part of a decade now). It's as we move into the world of downloadable books, music and movies that DRM becomes the thorn in people's sides.

[guyanonymous]

I don't think the music industry was strong-armed into giving up DRM. I think they finally accepted that they would make more money without it - it lost it's value to them (it was useless because it could be so easily removed). It comes down to $ and nothing else. Why spend money on something that doesn't work.

[greencat]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I don't know where you're buying second hand books - but most used bookstores I go to charge at least $4 or so for a used paperback.

Perhaps it's different in the US. My local charity shops do 4 books for a quid or 30p each. They do have more expensive ones too though.

Also every year the local village hall throws open its doors and everyone turns up with their read/no longer wanted books and anyone can take as many books as they like for free. I turned up with around 50 last year - and took away about that many (new - they would have cost me around 500 quid).

OK I'm kinda willing to believe that the price of a book doesn't include distribution costs (I guess distributors must do it out of the goodness of their hearts) but that doesn't explain why ebooks are sometimes more expensive than their realworld counterparts.

[DawnFalcon]

Gah, where are you? My local ones do them for 99p or £1.99

[guyanonymous]

Here in BC, Canada, the shops that sell them for $1 or 2 are vanishing, at least in my experience.

I'm now used to seeing $4-6 for a used pocketbook on the shelf.

I'd like to recommend for anyone on Vancouver Island - the excellent Literacy Nanaimo bookstore though! Very fair prices and a fun eclectic selection - and the profits go to their own literacy programs for Adults.