Rising cost of ebooks

[TomF]

Originally Posted by Skydog

Unfortunately, buying the hardback is exactly what the publisher (in this case, Penguin) wants you to do. Not me. Instead of a sale from a reasonably priced ebook they will receive no sale at all from me.

I recently returned an e-book to Amazon that Penguin published. I got 1/3 of the way through the book and finally couldn't stand the misspellings, poor punctuation, and bad formatting. It was clearly a less-than-perfect scan job and was obviously not edited after the conversion. What made it worse was that I had downloaded a sample and the problems weren't in the downloaded sample. I bought the book using the "Buy this book" link and apparently missed that the book also cost $13.99! I decided that for $13.99 I wasn't going to accept anything less than perfect and the digital version was far from that.

I notified Amazon about the poor digital copy and complained about the ridiculous price. They refunded my money. I also contacted Penguin complaining about both the formatting and the price. I got back what appeared to be a standard reply and they only addressed the price issue. I would have felt better if they said that they would look at the formatting.

No more Penguin books for me!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by TomF

I recently returned an e-book to Amazon that Penguin published. I got 1/3 of the way through the book and finally couldn't stand the misspellings, poor punctuation, and bad formatting. It was clearly a less-than-perfect scan job and was obviously not edited after the conversion. What made it worse was that I had downloaded a sample and the problems weren't in the downloaded sample. I bought the book using the "Buy this book" link and apparently missed that the book also cost $13.99! I decided that for $13.99 I wasn't going to accept anything less than perfect and the digital version was far from that.

I notified Amazon about the poor digital copy and complained about the ridiculous price. They refunded my money. I also contacted Penguin complaining about both the formatting and the price. I got back what appeared to be a standard reply and they only addressed the price issue. I would have felt better if they said that they would look at the formatting.

No more Penguin books for me!

[SensualPoet]

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-of-Giants...5109678&sr=1-1

You wusses complaining about Ken Follett's Fall of Giants being $19.99 when the hard cover is $19.40. The price to Canadians via Amazon.com Kindle store is $28.80 (US funds). You folks are getting a bargain!

But wait! There's more! If you order in the next five minutes, for an additional $37.56 (US funds), we'll include a 1996 survey of Ken Follett's work, the 200 pg book from Greenwood Press.

http://www.amazon.com/Ken-Follett-Cr...5109524&sr=1-9



All of this, I think, stems from this still being a nascent industry that is disruptive to a long established industry, and is in a growth phase, and where the consumer is also new and generally uninformed. All this means the e-book/e-reader e-ecosystem is likely to be much transformed in 18 months or so. And, bravo to that!

[GA Russell]

Here's a fresh example. Three weeks ago I joined the Doubleday Book Club. In joining I bought five books for $2.94 each (20 cents plus $2.74 shipping).

One of the books I bought was Star Island by Carl Hiaasen, which was #6 that week on the NY Times best seller list.

Inkmesh says that its lowest eBook price is $9.99 at five stores.

http://inkmesh.com/ebooks/star-islan...y+Carl+Hiaasen

Now I understand that book clubs offer low prices. But if you are so concerned about maintaining the integrity of the MSRP of a new book, why do you let the book clubs have it in the first place?

[TomF]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

One of the books I bought was Star Island by Carl Hiaasen, which was #6 that week on the NY Times best seller list.

Kind of ironic. The book that I talked about returning because of the really bad formatting and punctuation four posts above was Carl Hiaasen's Double Whammy, his second book and originally published 22 years ago. I had read Skinny Dip, one of his later novels, and saw that Star Island has been in the top ten Kindle books, and wanted to go back and start with his earlier stuff. It's too bad that Penguin is so greedy and they've priced his first two novels ridiculously high.

ETA: Even more ridiculous is the fact that the paperback is $7.99 and the Kindle book is $13.99.

[J. Strnad]

I'm asking how much does it cost per eBook to add DRM.

I'm wondering about hidden costs, such as increased customer service over DRM issues, and those elusive "lost sales" because people don't want to be locked in to a single device.

About Book Clubs: Remember that those book club come-ons are considered "promotional copies" by the publisher and don't pay the authors any royalty.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

About Book Clubs: Remember that those book club come-ons are considered "promotional copies" by the publisher and don't pay the authors any royalty.

Jan, that's not something I can worry about. The publisher has the rights to the book, and I pay 100% of what the publisher is willing to accept.

The author made his deal. If he doesn't get paid for my copy of the book, that's not my problem.

[raider]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

She is either lying or woefully incompetent.

programmers to adapt each title for Android, iPhone, Kindle, and all the other formats

Oh, puh-leeze!

I fully agree with you! It takes me less than 30 seconds to convert a book from HTML to EPUB, MOBI, LIT, etc. in Calibre. This article is a joke - I love "tech" reporters who think they know what they're talking about and dont have their facts straight and just start BSing.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by drofgnal

I've noticed the publisher wants 19.99 for his new series ebook set to start a week from tomorrow. At that price he can keep it.

I'm considering buying the hardback when its released with its usual 30% off and making sure I lend it to as many as I can to read for free, in protest!!!

Are the 19.99 $'s ? At Amazon US the price is $13.74 and the hardcover is $19.40.

[ChaoZ]

I really hope some of the more established writers decide to go direct with their stuff. Not saying they should bypass an editor or layout artsts, but I would love to see more money going into the writer's hands than the old inefficient publishing systems.

[haroldgh]

Seems to me it's inevitable. Books aren't like music, television, or movies, with production costing millions of dollars. There are no expensive studios, sets, actors, lighting, or ancillary media licensing. There's no craft services. Books are created by one person and edited by another, then they're ready to sell.

Distributing heavy pieces of paper across the world and getting placement in thousands of disparate brick and mortar stores is a daunting problem, close to impossible for an author on his own. This alone justified publishing houses' existence. It no longer applies.

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by haroldgh

There are no expensive studios, sets, actors, lighting, or ancillary media licensing. There's no craft services. Books are created by one person and edited by another, then they're ready to sell.

That's not quite a full enough breakdown; For a good book from front to back you need a fair number of people. The writer is of course the most important as they're the one who makes the content, however you do still need editors, proof readers, beta readers, illustrators for the base book and then in this day and age you also now need web developers, graphic artists (for the web content), video editors and voice actors.

To sell a book, even "just" an ebook these days you need so much more than just to be able to slap it together and put it on a shelf, waiting to bait a passerby. There's too many competing people on the market now to do a half-job of it.

So in summary, I agree it's not a million-dollar job to get a book out there but it's still anything from $30,000~$100,000.


Paul.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Does anyone know how much DRM adds to the cost of an eBook?

I understand that Adobe Content Server has a per transaction license fee associated with it. I read that it's a fixed fee but varies with transaction volume. I checked the Adobe site and they don't publish what the fees are so you'd have to contact their sales department to find out. People that do know probably aren't allowed to tell you.

My speculation is that this fee is why B&N and Apple went with their own DRM on ePub. They already have developed/purchased their own DRM so why should they pay Adobe? It just makes their cost higher then Amazon. Even if it's a penny a transaction there's nothing stopping Adobe from raising it in the future and they would have to pay it or piss of their customers.

[The Old Man]

Does the publisher put some sort of restriction on how soon a public library can start distributing an ebook? I wonder if my library will have Fall of Giants anytime soon?

[abookreader]

Folllet's Fall of Giants is now $9.99 for Canadian Kindlers. In other words, if you have a Canadian Address active on the Manage My Kindle page the price will be $9.99. It is still $19.99 with a US Address and around $14 for United Kingdom.

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-of-Giants...5597612&sr=1-3


I am 4th on the waiting list at our Library Overdrive system. It says release day September 28th. I'm hoping the 3 people in front of me won't keep it 21 days each but at this point I'm so grumpy about that $19.99 US price that I won't buy it.