The End Didn't Come

[aagstn]

Ebooks haven't gone away for me, but I rarely buy them anymore. Granted I have a huge backlog from all the money I spent for years at Fictionwise before the Agency pricing came in and forced them to remove those publishers, but outside of those I only read books I check out from the library digitally and the free books given away on occasion from Amazon and B&N. Agency pricing has turned me from someone that spent a couple hundred a year on ebooks to someone that spends almost nothing.

Granted I seem to be the exception if sales haven't suffered, but I definitely won't spend money at the high prices being charged by publishers now. Guess I should thank the agencies for driving me back to the local library system for my books.

My wife on the other hand has hardly noticed. She is a big reader of independent publishers and most of them are still at Fictionwise and the books can still be bought at very affordable prices.

[J. Strnad]

I love agency pricing. It helps me, an unknown, compete, and there are still books a'plenty out there to buy for 0.99, 1.99, 2.99, etc. Agency books that I'm interested in...for the most part, I'll get on the waiting list at the library and buy other books in the meantime.

[remcdonald]

I pay because I want to read books and even if I think they are overpriced they are still cheaper than buying new hardcovers and for me more convenient than storing more paperbacks if they are the same price. That doesn't mean I have cut back my ebook purchases because of prices I have done so. The prices actually don't bother me that much, I just wish they allowed individual companies to offer promos and deals if they wanted to. I think a bit of healthy competition would be awesome.

[replica145]

I know its all been said before a hundred times but...

I don't mind paying a hefty fee for a new book. Once Random House jumped into the fray though the prices started to seem outrageous for me. It's hard to find a popular 7.99 or 9.99 book now, when it used to be the norm.

The thing that irks me is that publisher are making money hand over fist off ereaders. They don't have to ship or manufacture ebooks and charge more for them. It's a little outdated now but check out this spread from Newsweek. It costs them 50 cents to make an ebook. Thats a pretty steep mark up.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswee...s-e-books.html

[Ken Maltby]

Hmm... I am just about to finish up with all but the current "Song of Ice and Fire"
novels, so I will be faced with buying the new one "A Dance With Dragons".
http://inkmesh.com/search/?qs=A+Danc....+Martin&ct=eb

As you can see the current Agency pricing is at $14.99 and the earlier titles in the series
are at $9. Now I could wait until this new one joins the price of the others or spend the
extra $5 to get it now. Totally my choice. It might not be that long either, the latest
Dresden novel "Ghost Story" is at $13 already. Even so, I doubt that I will wait more
than a couple of minutes after I have finished this one. Then it will be a matter of less
than ten minutes to have the new book purchased, downloaded, disinfected, placed in
its proper folder of my library, and have my SD card updated to include the book.

Now that the publishing houses are setting the retail price for their ebooks, they will be
trying to price their products to be competitive on the retail level. They will be looking
at the same factors (as far as pricing is concerned) that the were there for all the
ebooksellers in the past. The main thing being the interest their product might have for
the book buying public.

As odd as this may sound in this forum; "People don't HAVE TO buy novels!", they can
survive without them. (Quality of life issues aside.)

There is no pricing that would get me to buy a book with the "I Can't Believe It's Not
Butter" guy on the cover.

There are way too many new authors and older releases of established authors that I
need never pay the new release price for a book that I don't have every reason to
believe will be what I want to read.

One result of this is that there are only a few new releases that I would have any
interest in, to start with. Most of what is being peddled I have no interest in anyway.
Now there are plenty of old products that match my interests, but it is not easy to find
the ones I am willing to pay very much for, (this is were the quality of scanned books
comes in). Still, this pool of earlier works offers plenty of lower cost ebooks, more than
enough to tide me over between the release of the few current releases that will interest
me.

Luck;
Ken

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Shatzkin thinks agency pricing is good for writers:



LINK

The points quoted seem to make arguments for why the agency model is good for publishers, not why it is (purportedly) good for writers.

[howyoudoin]

Originally Posted by remcdonald

I pay because I want to read books and even if I think they are overpriced they are still cheaper than buying new hardcovers and for me more convenient than storing more paperbacks if they are the same price. That doesn't mean I have cut back my ebook purchases because of prices I have done so. The prices actually don't bother me that much, I just wish they allowed individual companies to offer promos and deals if they wanted to. I think a bit of healthy competition would be awesome.

You've already paid for the convenience of ease of storage and carriage when you purchased your e-reader. There is absolutely no basis for the publishers to expect the purchaser to pay twice over for that convenience by paying same price for a book format that is actually cheaper to produce.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Competition has ended. What's your point? That people seem willing to pay the high Agency price? Price-fixing that the consumer accepts is still price-fixing.

But price-fixing doesn't necessarily imply unfair pricing. I buy a lot of eBooks - probably an average of over 10 a month, and generally pay £4-£5 at Amazon. Those are almost all agency publishers, but if the printed book has a list price of £7.99 (pretty much the standard UK paperback price these days) I'm happy to pay £4-5 for the eBook.

[carld]

Agency pricing won't really be a factor until the ebook market matures. For every buyer disenchanted with the price-fix-six's high prices there are two more lined up and ready to buy. Once that pool of new and enthusiastic buyers dries up I think the sale of agency priced books will decline.

[HappyMartin]

Most books I buy seem to come in around $5 to $6 on average which is about the price of a second hand paperback in South Africa.

I do get a bit annoyed with the consistently poor editing on ebooks but not as annoyed as the regular discovery of dried snot and bits of old food I used to find in second hand books

[EowynCarter]

Well, even at 15$, Dance with dragon have a good money / reading time ratio.

p-books had fixed price in France for as long as I remember. So i can't say fixed price bother me.

As said above, you don't *need* e-books. If you disagree with the price, you still have the choice not to buy.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by replica145

I know its all been said before a hundred times but...

I don't mind paying a hefty fee for a new book. Once Random House jumped into the fray though the prices started to seem outrageous for me. It's hard to find a popular 7.99 or 9.99 book now, when it used to be the norm.

The thing that irks me is that publisher are making money hand over fist off ereaders. They don't have to ship or manufacture ebooks and charge more for them. It's a little outdated now but check out this spread from Newsweek. It costs them 50 cents to make an ebook. Thats a pretty steep mark up.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newswee...s-e-books.html

Nice graphics... putting together a lovely little display doesn't make the content fact... I'd be interested to see where they managed to get those figures from...

I say cost of production is pbook $9.637 vs ebook $1.0735 or was it $7.35, never mind, I've posted it on the net so it must be true... you don't need to know any factual sources or want proof unless the claim isn't in line with your own beliefs... and Dilbert says research shows that 89.73% of statistics are made up but since 73.26% of people don't care or don't understand the numbers and 26.24% of people haven't noticed...

[abookreader]

The end for who? You mean a publisher hasn't gone out of business yet? Nope.

They sure do continue to like to talk their doom and gloom about their fiscal health and declining sales though.

[bwaldron]

The end may not have come, but there is no way to measure lost sales.

I have not purchased a single ebook priced above $10.

[replica145]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Nice graphics... putting together a lovely little display doesn't make the content fact... I'd be interested to see where they managed to get those figures from...

I say cost of production is pbook $9.637 vs ebook $1.0735 or was it $7.35, never mind, I've posted it on the net so it must be true... you don't need to know any factual sources or want proof unless the claim isn't in line with your own beliefs... and Dilbert says research shows that 89.73% of statistics are made up but since 73.26% of people don't care or don't understand the numbers and 26.24% of people haven't noticed...

Regardless of how accurate it is, it doesn't change the basics. There is no printing, shipping, distributing. They charge more for the product. It's not a far stretch to know their profits go way up from such methods. They do less work for more money.