ebooks...the price ascent to 'Everest'....

[basschick]

couple things here -

first, the big 6 publishers are currently in agreement on what to charge for certain ebooks, so there's no competition involved.

Originally Posted by Laridae

Let's hope that competition among providers keeps 'em honest. Otherwise, as already pointed out, there's always free library books available.

second, writers except for the really BIG writers get a miserable pittance for their efforts. and it's sometimes a difficult and long-term situation for the writers to get paid, too. check this out - it may give you a different view https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ht=Tao+of+Pooh

Originally Posted by Laridae

Writers and publishers are entitled to a reasonable reward for their efforts. But if they try to extort extra then people will find a way around. Most users are honest and law-abiding but their conscience doesn't bother them too much if they feel they are being ripped off!

[Victoria]

Originally Posted by Latch

We've discussed this at length in various topics over the past year. I've ranted before about the greed of the publishing industry, just like the RIAA and MPAA, and how they will usher in the Napsterization of ebooks if they aren't careful.....Give people a fair price and they will buy to support their authors.

I partly agree. But I don't think its an issue of the publishing industry being greedy. I think they are scared, and are trying to set prices that compensate for the effects of digitalization. Most locally owned bookstores in my city (pop of 300,000) have closed or are closing - as did all of the good music stores a few years ago.

Amazon and Apple are a few steps away from wiping out the publishing industry - as the middle man - by contracting with authors directly. And if JK Rolling actually does what she promised - Amazon, Kobo, etc will get caught out as the middle man - with big authors like her selling directly to their public. So we've entered a new world, and no one is sure how it will turn out yet.

I do agree that the best protection is to find the right price point for ebooks - where authors will get a fair share, and the value added by publishers, editors, etc, will also be compensated. I worry that if we can't work it out, only the mega giants like Patterson, and Rolling will be left standing, and there will be little incentive for the others to apply their trade (writers, editors, etc.)

Anyway, I don't work in the trade and don't have any inside information, but those are just my observations as I watch one small bookstore after another close. I can't believe that isn't hurting publishers, big time.

[Laridae]

Originally Posted by basschick

first, the big 6 publishers are currently in agreement on what to charge for certain ebooks, so there's no competition involved.

Really? But isn't that Price Fixing?

Colour me naive, but in my country that's Illegal!

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Laridae

Really? But isn't that Price Fixing?

Colour me naive, but in my country that's Illegal!

Then try to sue them. In my town the gas stations are all price fixed. One goes up, the others go up within 2 hours - to the exact same price. Coincidentally most buy the same gas - I literally seen a gas tanker pull out of one gas station riding to the next ...

And then they price fix the gas price between towns. A different city just 10 miles away with the same chain of gas station has a different price, because all gas stations in that town have the same price (give or take a penny).

That should be illegal.

And how come is it that gas magically gets more expensive over the weekend or holidays?

If my fuzzy memory serves me correct, in Germany a gas station is not allowed to raise the price of gas faster and wait longer to lower the price if changes need to be made.

[Laridae]

Originally Posted by basschick

writers except for the really BIG writers get a miserable pittance for their efforts. and it's sometimes a difficult and long-term situation for the writers to get paid, too. check this out - it may give you a different view https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ht=Tao+of+Pooh

I'm sorry. I clicked on that but it was a long thread dating back to 2008. If your point was against Public Libraries then I would make these 2 points in their defence:

1) They are funded by public taxes to promote public literacy, which ranks right up there with motherhood and apple pie, no?

2) I believe Libraries must re-buy their books (or DRM licences thereof) every 14 to 28 reads so there is a recurring income stream for the writers and publishers

[Laridae]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Then try to sue them. In my town the gas stations are all price fixed. ..............

That should be illegal.

And how come is it that gas magically gets more expensive over the weekend or holidays?

If my fuzzy memory serves me correct, in Germany a gas station is not allowed to raise the price of gas faster and wait longer to lower the price if changes need to be made.

We individuals shouldn't have to sue them. That's why we, as consumers, elect governments to protect our interests.

(Sheesh! There I go being naive again!)

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by Victoria

And if JK Rolling actually does what she promised - Amazon, Kobo, etc will get caught out as the middle man - with big authors like her selling directly to their public. So we've entered a new world, and no one is sure how it will turn out yet.

There's one big hiccup though with writers selling direct to readers - the delivery mechanism is painful. This is one area where Amazon has done things very well. Until we have a consistent, vendor-neutral system to deliver new content to eReaders that doesn't involve people having to side-load then selling Writer->reader directly is going turn off a lot of potential readers.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Laridae

2) I believe Libraries must re-buy their books (or DRM licences thereof) every 14 to 28 reads so there is a recurring income stream for the writers and publishers

HarperCollins ebooks are licensed for 26 check-outs only, and must be repurchased. This has caused a number of libraries to just stop getting HarperCollins ebooks; libraries aren't in the habit of renting the materials they loan out.

Random House ebooks are licensed for as many uses as the library can get out of them.

Macmillan and Simon & Schuster don't make their ebooks available to libraries.

Penguin and Hachette no longer distribute new releases through Overdrive, although their existing backlist is still available, and possibly will grow over time.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Laridae

We individuals shouldn't have to sue them. That's why we, as consumers, elect governments to protect our interests.

(Sheesh! There I go being naive again!)

You could ask as part of their consumers for a class action lawsuit and include everybody,

OR you could wait for the government to pass a new law that will make it illegal to set the price of ebooks cheaper than the pbook as to, aehm, protect the union of lumber jacks that are clearly needed to make paper for the pbooks ....

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

There's one big hiccup though with writers selling direct to readers - the delivery mechanism is painful. This is one area where Amazon has done things very well. Until we have a consistent, vendor-neutral system to deliver new content to eReaders that doesn't involve people having to side-load then selling Writer->reader directly is going turn off a lot of potential readers.

I believe the opposite is true. If you take away the ability to side-load the book, then it has to be put onto the device directly. Not all reading devices CAN download though. Try to sell with DRM, and you just ask for angry customers. Most ereaders that have a browser allow downloading - there is your way to get it directly on the ereader. As long as you let them copy it and use on each and every reading device/computer/phone/tablet they might have. Don't want multiple devices? Not even DRM is that restrictive as to have one copy one device, but multiple devices registered to the account ...

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

I believe the opposite is true. If you take away the ability to side-load the book, then it has to be put onto the device directly.

I'm not saying to remove the side-load option, rather I'm saying that the Amazon Whisper net system really nailed it in terms of making it very easy for people to avoid all potential complications of getting their book to read. If an author wants to go at it entirely alone doing writer->reader sales, then they'll need to be equally as simple for maximum satisfaction and minimum "support calls".

For those who know how, sure, go ahead and side-load, I'm simply suggesting there needs to also be a path-of-least-resistance for purchasing and reading books. For many of us it is not a problem at all side-loading, we know it like the back of our hands - however there are even more people out there who aren't as inclined.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

..however there are even more people out there who aren't as inclined.

Do you actually think that they would even look for your webpage? Or are those more likely to buy a Kindle, see the Amazon store with sooooo many books that you can conveniently put on the device through Whispernet for free (after you paid for it)?


You as writer could not afford the data rates of basically a whole cell-phone network, worldwide that is.

You cannot have Amazon convenience and independence from Amazon at the same time.

Plus whispernet is nor really free - you pay for it as customer. Where does the money go? Definately not to the publisher/writer, but mostly to Amazon - or they would not take such a big percentage out of the sale, even making you get nothing if "they see fit".

[MrPLD]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Do you actually think that they would even look for your webpage? ....
".

We already have the network (the internet), what we don't have is a consistent standard to deliver and load eBooks to the devices. Even if we did have the magical standard (email would work fairly well in reality), it's still slightly cumbersome (but less so) to do writer->reader direct sales because the reader still has to provide some once-off data.

Of course most people will just stick with using Amazon / B&N etc, though for people like J.K.Rowling, they do have the name-power to get away with making people go to their website directly - though one wonders if the 30% gain in income really matters.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

We already have the network (the internet), what we don't have is a consistent standard to deliver and load eBooks to the devices. Even if we did have the magical standard (email would work fairly well in reality), it's still slightly cumbersome (but less so) to do writer->reader direct sales because the reader still has to provide some once-off data.

Of course most people will just stick with using Amazon / B&N etc, though for people like J.K.Rowling, they do have the name-power to get away with making people go to their website directly - though one wonders if the 30% gain in income really matters.

Oh I misunderstood. For a while I thought writer->reader means "writers webpage"->"ereader device" instead of content provider (self published writer) to end consumer (humanoid reader) bypassing all middle-men.

And to my astonishment (thank you google) J.K.Rowling does have a webpage that she might sell ebooks from once it is out of beta. I personally will never ever go there from the looks of it. I rather just keep my books, the movies, and the "copies" in ebook form.

[DHR]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

We already have the network (the internet), what we don't have is a consistent standard to deliver and load eBooks to the devices.

Of course we have a standard. In fact lots of them. As long as you don't need to support DRM, HTTP is the obvious transmission protocol. In fact, even if you do have DRM, HTTP is fine.

I just tried a Project Gutenberg epub book from the Kobo Vox web browser -- download failed. Same story for Baen Free Library. Surely some kind of stupidity on the Kobo end. No trouble with my Firefox on Linux browser though (only tried Gutenberg).

Is there a way to simply download Gutenberg stuff with the Vox? Some of Gutenberg is available through the Kobo store, but I don't like to be forced to use it.