DOJ suing Apple over ebooks.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I think the likelihood is that the BPHs will simply cut back on expenses. Its a lot easier to save money by simplying cutting staff and by reducing advances to authors.

Much easier to save money by not publishing at all!
Considering authors an "expense" rather than "the core source of the business" is one of the issues that's gotten BPHs into their current problems.

Also you don't develop new authors ( risky and expensive)

They don't develop new authors now--they want instant blockbuster authors. Their business model doesn't fit with today's publishing world, and they're trying to change the world instead of the model.

I note that St Martin’s Press is making the same mistake with Amanda Hocking. If I didn’t follow her twitter feed, I would have had no idea that the first book in her Trylle series came out in January. In fact, the marketing is so poor on her books that I didn’t realize that the second book came out last week until I went to Amazon to double-check the spelling of Trylle.

With the public failure of Morrison’s traditional books (which got more press than the initial sale had), and the upcoming mishandling of other indie writers books, traditional publishing will soon jump off the non-existent gravy train.

and you don't greenlight expensive non-fiction projects (same).

Not without an assured customer base. If they'd stop thinking of books as produce that expires three months from the release date, they could plan for long-term sales for books that have high initial costs. Since they're assuming that all the money invested in a book needs to be made back in less than a year (even for books that take 5 years to produce)... I won't be surprised to see a lot less fact-based nonfiction on the market in the future.

Except, of course, for those funded through Kickstarter & similar programs. People who find a demand *first* and then invest money, will be on much steadier ground.

I note that every single author you cited in an earlier post was an author of genre dfiction. That alone is a telling indicator of what a non-BPH world would look like.

Or it's an indicator that a lot of us here are genre fiction fans, and we quote what we know best. Doesn't mean there aren't equal numbers of non-genre examples; we just aren't familiar with them.

Part of the reason the indie craze is so centered on genre fic, is that publishers have often shoved genre fic to the sidelines. There's never been as much of it as genre fans wanted, and it often ran out of print quickly. Now, the market is glutted with genre fic because there is immense customer demand for it--and finally, the authors have a way to fill that demand.

If there's not swarms of literary fic being released on the indie marketplace, it's because there's limited demand for it. Customers are not lining up to throw money at lit-fic authors.

[cfrizz]

Outstanding post!!! Thank you. Some people are so busy getting bogged down in the details looking for flaws that they can't see the rest of the book.

Originally Posted by plib

That's not a quality book. That's just basic English. There are plenty of indie authors with a command of English.

A quality book is more than the mechanics, though they do have to be correct in the finished product. It's a book which touches nerve in its readers, or addresses important philosophical, historical or political issues, or becomes a thing of beauty because of the choice of its language not the mechanics of it. Or it's a well researched, well argued non-fiction treatise or biography, the sort of stuff stonetools likes. Most quality books, in fiction anyway, don't come from the education of the author - that's what editors and proofreaders are for, and they can be hired - it comes from the imagination, vision or insight of the author, and in general that tends to be God-given, not teacher given.

To my mind focusing on your vs. you're to define a quality book misses the point altogether. Though even on those grounds I'd be interested to know just how many of the Amazon top 100 you consider grammatically inadequate. I presume there was a basis for the claim?

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by kacir

let's see ...
A commercially published, highly acclaimed book, for which a big-name author got a Pulitzer price,
- with absolutely no punctuation,
- with missing quotes,
- with missing apostrophes,
- with dull, repetitive dialogues between the two sole protagonists of the book,
- with awkward, grammatically incorrect, confusing sentences ...

At first I thought you were talking about "The Road"...

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Part of the reason the indie craze is so centered on genre fic, is that publishers have often shoved genre fic to the sidelines. There's never been as much of it as genre fans wanted, and it often ran out of print quickly. Now, the market is glutted with genre fic because there is immense customer demand for it--and finally, the authors have a way to fill that demand.

What type of genre fiction ae you talking about. For science fiction just more and more is published by traditional publishers and I have not noticed any big problem with out of print books. And even if a book is out of print you can nearly always find it second hand. So I do not recognise your description at all. Similar for crime books.

[MovieBird]

Does anybody have any numbers for how BN is pricing differently from Amazon? I keep hearing that BN is going to die because it can't compete with Amazon, but I've not seen drastically different prices in the books I've recently looked at.

I'll admit, the book that started this was $45 more expensive on BN than Amazon.

"Blade Design and Analysis for Steam Turbines" $100 on BN and $55 on Amazon.

However, when I look at some basic fiction, stuff that's more likely to sell, the prices really aren't that different. Is there a website that tracks this stuff in aggregate?

"The Giver" $5.99 although I picked it up for $2.99 as a Nook deal vs. $4.70.

"The Plague" $2.99, could not find it in the Kindle store.

"On the Island" $2.99 & $2.99

"A Matter of Honor" $2.99 & $2.99.

I'll admit, super popular stuff like "The Hunger Games" ($8.99 vs. $5.00)appears to be drastically undercut at Amazon, but I'm more interested in prices across the line.


As an aside, does anyone know if BN drastically changes ePubs that are uploaded to them? I know they go through a "conversion" through PubIt, but does it actually change anything if the incoming file is an ePub? I really don't like the idea of Amazon's proprietary formats messing with the underlying structure of a book; I'm just weird where I want it to look pretty underneath the surface too.

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

Does anybody have any numbers for how BN is pricing differently from Amazon? I keep hearing that BN is going to die because it can't compete with Amazon, but I've not seen drastically different prices in the books I've recently looked at.

I'll admit, the book that started this was $45 more expensive on BN than Amazon.

"Blade Design and Analysis for Steam Turbines" $100 on BN and $55 on Amazon.

However, when I look at some basic fiction, stuff that's more likely to sell, the prices really aren't that different. Is there a website that tracks this stuff in aggregate?

"The Giver" $5.99 although I picked it up for $2.99 as a Nook deal vs. $4.70.

"The Plague" $2.99, could not find it in the Kindle store.

"On the Island" $2.99 & $2.99

"A Matter of Honor" $2.99 & $2.99.

I'll admit, super popular stuff like "The Hunger Games" ($8.99 vs. $5.00)appears to be drastically undercut at Amazon, but I'm more interested in prices across the line.

Haven't you answered your own question? Of the 5 examples in your post where they both carried an ebook, Amazon has a lower price for 3 and the 2 where the price is the same are a DRM free indie ebook and an Agency ebook with the price set by the publisher. Since Amazon tends to price match they will almost always have the same or a lower price. For instance, I purchased one of your examples, The Giver, last month from Amazon for $0.25 when they price matched the Google Play promotion.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by Synamon

Haven't you answered your own question? Of the 5 examples in your post where they both carried an ebook, Amazon has a lower price for 3 and the 2 where the price is the same are a DRM free indie ebook and an Agency ebook with the price set by the publisher. Since Amazon tends to price match they will almost always have the same or a lower price. For instance, I purchased one of your examples, The Giver, last month from Amazon for $0.25 when they price matched the Google Play promotion.

No, I've not answered my own question, because those are just anecdotal. I was looking for something a bit more rigorous than me just pulling titles out of my hat.

By the way, it was 6 examples, one of which I couldn't find in the Amazon store. And one of the lower priced fiction books, I had already picked up for cheaper than current list at BN.

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by joehunt

Well said. And perhaps the biggest irony of all is that their hostility has completely backfired: many readers are refusing to pay inflated prices and are embracing independent authors

Ah, but don't you understand? the low prices asked by indy authors is *devaluing* ebooks! (/scarcasm)

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by tompe

(@568) Really, I have actually not noticed any such books. Do you have any titles?

don't even try to look at a Lora Leigh title. Her last BHP mmpb was terrible - (or at least the last one I know of... released about a year ago this summer) there were whole scenes that were missing, and she had to include them on her website (a reputable publisher with good editors would not have released the book, or recalled it when such huge gaps were discovered). Her grammar and spelling were likewise atrocious.

fortunately, I don't read Lora Leigh, but the book was infamous for this in Romancelandia.

eta: for more information about these infamous books, see:

http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/b...ins-and-errors

http://forums.rtbookreviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=24552

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake

You know, I pity the guy who had to proofread THAT. However did he know if he'd got it right?

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

As an aside, does anyone know if BN drastically changes ePubs that are uploaded to them? I know they go through a "conversion" through PubIt, but does it actually change anything if the incoming file is an ePub? I really don't like the idea of Amazon's proprietary formats messing with the underlying structure of a book; I'm just weird where I want it to look pretty underneath the surface too.

I helped a friend test her epub for nook (puff for friend: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/comr...er&store=ebook -- really good collection of short stories, mostly previously published, and reasonably priced) and my impression is that very little is changed. However, my friend did make sure that, for example, links to the Kindle store that converted in from her mobi version were removed and replaced with links to the nook store, etc. before finalizing and uploading.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

Does anybody have any numbers for how BN is pricing differently from Amazon? I keep hearing that BN is going to die because it can't compete with Amazon, but I've not seen drastically different prices in the books I've recently looked at.

I'll admit, the book that started this was $45 more expensive on BN than Amazon.

"Blade Design and Analysis for Steam Turbines" $100 on BN and $55 on Amazon.

However, when I look at some basic fiction, stuff that's more likely to sell, the prices really aren't that different. Is there a website that tracks this stuff in aggregate?

"The Giver" $5.99 although I picked it up for $2.99 as a Nook deal vs. $4.70.

"The Plague" $2.99, could not find it in the Kindle store.

"On the Island" $2.99 & $2.99

"A Matter of Honor" $2.99 & $2.99.

I'll admit, super popular stuff like "The Hunger Games" ($8.99 vs. $5.00)appears to be drastically undercut at Amazon, but I'm more interested in prices across the line.


As an aside, does anyone know if BN drastically changes ePubs that are uploaded to them? I know they go through a "conversion" through PubIt, but does it actually change anything if the incoming file is an ePub? I really don't like the idea of Amazon's proprietary formats messing with the underlying structure of a book; I'm just weird where I want it to look pretty underneath the surface too.

I couldn't figure out why Amazon wouldn't sell a significant book like Camus' The Plague. I downloaded a sample from BN...it was published by eBookEden.com. Strange...I thought that was a Knopf book. Knopf is now part of Random House. RH has the hardcover for sale and an electronic previewer for the book but didn't sell the ebook version. They have it under copyright, not eBookEden.com. Very odd. I started reading the sample from BN and it began as a preview of the book and some biographical information from Camus' life. It's a word-for-word copy of material from Wikipedia. All of it without attribution. Gosh, isn't there a fancy word for that, starts with a P. Oh yeah, plagiarism! Alleged plagiarism, of course.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

At first I thought you were talking about "The Road"...

Stop That!

[BuddyBoy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I do understand that it's a *massive* business shift, for companies with a great deal of inertia. However, it's not like this exploded out of the blue... ebooks have been around for decades, and commercially available for over 10 years. The BPHs have certainly had time to notice, "hey, there's this new marketing option suitable for our content that we're not really set up to deal with; how should we fix that?"

Instead, they've decided to go with, "this new marketing option could damage our meat-and-potatoes, the hardcover book sales. Let's keep it as limited as possible."

Which, ah, worked somewhat for several years... but it turns out there are plenty of people *not* making millions on hardcovers, who are willing to explore the new marketplace.

Brings to mind Kodak, which successfully invented one of the first digital cameras, but locked it away in terror when they considered what its introduction would do to their film business.

Say, how is Kodak fairing these days?

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by rhadin

I am one of those people who thinks that ebooks should be cheaper than hardcovers and no more than the paperback price. I don't care that you can search an ebook -- I've never done it; I don't care that you can annotate it -- I've never done it; I don't care that I can share annotations with friends -- I don't do that; I don't care that I can look up something on Wikipedia or Google with the touch of button -- I don't do it. These are meaningless "values" to me and thus have no price value.

I'd also argue that those are all functions of the e-reader, not the e-book.