DOJ suing Apple over ebooks.

[plib]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Are you saying that Amazon is a nonprofit company? Are you saying, aside from the fact that it has not made a profit, Amazon has no intention of ever making a profit? I suspect its shareholders would be distressed to learn that.

So would the SEC. Because according to Amazon's latest 10-K they have both made a profit and generated positive cash flow for the last five years.

[RDaneel54]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I've never moticed any either.

Ouch.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by tompe

No, they are not the same. E-book are much better. They take no space, you can search them, you can comment in the book and let your friends see the comment and so on.

I find it very strange that people have a strong opinion about what the price should be based on the value to them. I do not understand why people think so strongly that the ebook should be cheaper.

I also do not understand why the ebook market is so different from the paper book market. What is the difference that makes it impossible to use the model with selling books at a higher price in the beginning and later lowering the price?

Just to recap.

Some people don't care about the price as long as they can afford it. They have other things to worry about.

Some people think the prices should be windowed to maximize profit and they are happy to check back every couple weeks until the price drops to their price point.

Some people accept windowing for physical products because they understand the economics of supply and demand or the efficiencies of mass production but recognize that these don't apply to digital media. These people think windowing is stupid.

Some people just want it now, they have more entertainment then they know what to do with so if someone doesn't want to sell the product to them now at a "fair price" they can go blow.

Some people automatically compare the costs and recognize that ebooks don't have the enormous distribution costs, brick & mortar costs, retail staff costs, return costs etc... and expect them to always be cheaper the physical books.

Some people think ebooks have more value to them because they don't take up space and have benefits like search ability and the ability to change fonts so they're OK if they cost more.

Some people think that ebooks can't be resold so they have less value.

Some people think that ebooks are just rentals, can't be passed to their family and friends and will be incompatible with future hardware so should cost less.

Did I miss any?
---------------------------------

Pricing is about understanding all of the above and setting a price that satisfies the most people and drives away the least. Amazon did a good job of this and they were be rewarded by the marketplace.

If you think that the price has to be x and everyone else just has to learn to accept it then you should be running a BPH (into the ground).

[JonathanH]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Some people think that ebooks can't be resold so they have less value.

Some people think that ebooks are just rentals, can't be passed to their family and friends and will be incompatible with future hardware so should cost less.

Interesting tangent on this - Google Books just released a new set of policies for the different countries they sell in. I noticed that in the UK, and in the UK *only*, they specifically say that Google Books may pass on your ebooks to your heirs when you die.

Every other country, you're out of luck.

Edit: My mistake, there's at least two other European countries where they will also do this (I don't speak all the languages, so there could be more ). They haven't yet released in those countries, and the email is talking about confidentiality, but "wow, must be an EU law" would be a good guess... Also, anyone else with a Google Partner account will have received the email and can go figure it out for themselves.

[plib]

Originally Posted by rhadin

As regards the customer. It has not been clearly settled sho actually is the customer. In Amazon's case, the consumer is the customer -- after all, that is the purpose of retail businesses, to purchase product at wholesale from a manufacturer and resell it at retail to the consumer. In the case of the BPHs, their customer has always been the retailer, not the consumer. That may be changing in today's Internet world, but even today, most, if not nearly all, of the sales the BPHs make are wholesale sales, not retail sales, so their customer is still the retailer, not the consumer.

I think the word I'm looking for here is disingenuous.

What happens to all those sales the BPH makes to the retailer if they don't sell to the consumer? What generates all those returns and bundles of ripped off paperback covers? How are they going to account for them in their financial records? Are they still sales?

If you think that the retailers are the BPH's customers then why are they able to return the "sales" if they're not bought by the retailers customers in turn? That's not part of the BPH sales chain is it? And the consumer doesn't affect the end calculation of what the net sales to the retailers are, do they?

And none of this happened before the Internet world arrived, did it?

Yup, disingenuous. The BPH's customers have always been the consumer. The retailers are just the middlemen.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by kennyc

This is clearly evident in their actions. This conclusion is supported by other transitions to digital media. This conclusion is supported by the new publishers which are emerging in the ebook publishing world that are not tied to the traditional print distribution model.

This is worth repeating.
To many of the "publisher supporters" here and in the mainstream media, publishers = BPH.
Which is *wrong*.

The conspirators are but a fraction of the industry and the choice for consumers is *not* between perpetual BPH hegemony and a slush-pile marketplace solely of self-published "unedited crap".
There is a strong middle ground of small and mid-size publishers that are adjusting to the new ebook reality. There are publishers that treat authors as partners, not serfs; there are publishers that offer actual editing, proofing, and marketing services without demanding the author give up 88% of the revenues. There are publishers that work to maximize the revenue that authors can get from their work and aren't offended when a retailer offers up an extra $1 per sale bonus to authors that use social media to promote their audiobook. (Apparently because they fear it can be used to crosscheck royalty payments. Hmm. )

http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/does-...nd-publishers/

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/lb...%E2%80%99.html

But Katz said there was also an issue of trust around ensuring an author’s income reached its potential: “As a writer, you entrust your intermediaries with a panoply of rights that can be exploited around the world. If they don’t do that, they are letting authors down. It’s a matter of moral trust—you would expect those rights to go exactly where they need to go.” He added: “All that really matters is the author and the reader.”

Fellow-speaker George Lossius, c.e.o. of Publishing Technology, warned the industry that business models would remain in regular flux henceforward. “It’s impossible to predict the future,” he said. “We need to stop trying to do it and wondering who will win, and get used to the fact that in the future, business models won’t last 10 years.”

The BPHs would have us believe that their giant multinational conglomerates are the *only* way to get quality books published to get us to overlook their depredations and out-right crimes. They want to wrap themselves in the flag of "publishing" to create a false dichotomy and obscure the reality that there are other choices.

There *are* other business models open to publishers.
There *are* other publishers that can and will survive without conspiracies and glasshouse towers and golden-parachute execs.
Publishing as an industry *can* and will survive without the BPHs and their criminal ways.

The quicker the industry learns to look past the oligarchs' smokescreen the quicker we can get back to the serious business of reading.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by tompe

No, they are not the same. E-book are much better. They take no space, you can search them, you can comment in the book and let your friends see the comment and so on.

I can't comment and let my friends see my comments. Shared commenting is an Amazon feature, and maybe other platforms--and they're welcome to charge extra for it. But it's not a feature I care about, and not one I'm willing to switch platforms to get.

I find it very strange that people have a strong opinion about what the price should be based on the value to them. I do not understand why people think so strongly that the ebook should be cheaper.

Because ebooks are lacking a number of features that make pbacks worth buying. (To me, of course. I'm not saying what features other people should value; I buy products based on their value to me.)

I also do not understand why the ebook market is so different from the paper book market.

Lack of legitimate resale/transferability is one of the major reasons.

What is the difference that makes it impossible to use the model with selling books at a higher price in the beginning and later lowering the price?

Nothing... but publishers don't. Or rather, most text-book publishers don't; several of the digital comics publishers at drivethrucomics start at $2.99 and drop the price to $1.99 after a while. They also often have the first couple of issues free.

[plib]

Originally Posted by rhadin

That's a statement based on wishes not fact. Amazon should be able to sell its Kindle for $19.99 and make a profit. That statement has as much validity as saying that a publisher plus the author plus the retailer can all make money selling no book for more than $9.99. A bold statement unsupported by any factual basis.

I know that a lot of ebookers make the statement but repeating it a million times doesn't make it true. It MAY be true, but no one has yet PROVEN it is true. All of us base our pricing statements on pure conjecture. I admit I do not know that a Random House cannot be profitable selling all of its books at no more than $9.99, but I do know that when I was the head of a small publishing company in the early 1990s, we couldn't.

I suspect that Amazon, and most consumers, don't care whether you can be profitable at $9.99. If that's all they are prepared to pay for your books you'll either find a way to be profitable, or go out of business.

I get the impression that publishing has been a cost driven industry for some time, and fairly heavily protected for a good part of that time in terms of price maintenance. I don't think it can be any longer. Internet selling, Amazon in particular maybe, but all internet selling is very much consumer and price driven. There are a multitude of sites with instant price comparisons, there are discount coupon threads on this board. A business model that says "you have to pay x, because our costs are y" is very difficult to sustain in that environment. And just about impossible when there is a cheaper alternative.

It's "Adapt or Die" time.

[plib]

Originally Posted by rhadin

No, kenny, looking at Amazon's top 100 is no guarantee that the indie book is a quality book. All it means is that it sold well. I could have sold well for a lot of reasons, for example, explicit sex scenes. The quality that Harry, I, and others look for are such things as correctly using your and you're, not having a sentence repeat itself 18 times, better dialogue than "D'uh", not writing anecdote when you mean antidote, etc. Being on Amazon's top 100 list does not address these quality issues.

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?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I've never moticed any either.

So do s/moticed/noticed/ and answer the question instead. What professionally published books are you talking about that have grammar errors and errors of similar type?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Pricing is about understanding all of the above and setting a price that satisfies the most people and drives away the least. Amazon did a good job of this and they were be rewarded by the marketplace.

Well, yes, adsI tried to argue, a fair price is just a personal taste or opinion. The strange thing is that people seems to think there is a correct fair price and tries to argue that price here.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HarryT

If by "elitist literary sense" you mean "written using correct spelling, grammar and punctuation" then I agree that this is something that the majority of independent authors lack.

Spot-on. I have a high tolerance for SPAG errors, and I can get overwhelmed by them.

The majority of BPH-published authors have no great command over commas-vs-semicolons and erratic spelling; the editors take care of those details. The majority of self-published authors have, at best, "creative" approaches to grammar. Eggcorns are common. And while many of them tell good stories anyway, many are also afflicted with wandering plotlines and flat characters and lack of a cohesive ending.

I love the self-publishing explosion, but I don't blame anyone for not wanting to pick through the random quality levels available to try to find the good stuff. There's some incredible, high-quality works being released--but those are definitely not the majority of what's available.

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Please the BPH throw together their ebooks and there are just as many errors & poor quality as any self published work and for far more money. If they did a better job of quality control with their ebooks, I might have less objections.

I strongly disagree. BPH-released books don't have miscapitalized words and missing punctuation in the descriptions. Those are both from the current first page of free books at Smashwords; it's not at all a rare set of errors. No BPH would allow the first page of a story to be cluttered with ampersands and numbers. They don't allow the second paragraph to be a 314-word wall of text. Oh look--advertising thinly disguised as a book, apparently written by someone whose native language is not English. ("It is fast and easily to search")

I *love* the self-publishing explosion... but I don't try to hide the problems with it. We have lot more wannabe authors (and scam artists taking advantage of a new platform) than we have curators and reviewers able to say what's worth reading.

And I don't mean "by high standards of award-winning literature." I mean that most people don't enjoy wading through page after page of choppy dialogue with grammar that makes the meanings unclear, ellipses with four or seven or fifteen dots, and random capitalization of words the author thought were important--while leaving "I" uncapitalized a lot because "the character identifying himself has low self-esteem."

I am thrilled these books all exist and are open for consideration and that people who love a particular topic can find amazing books that would never get through a publisher because they're too niche-focused. (I *love* that book. Have printed out six copies & given them to friends, who love it. But if you weren't a tabletop RPG'er in the 80's, it's probably not very interesting.)

[plib]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, yes, adsI tried to argue, a fair price is just a personal taste or opinion. The strange thing is that people seems to think there is a correct fair price and tries to argue that price here.

In financial terms the generally accepted definition of a fair price is "what a willing buyer is prepared to pay a willing seller, while operating at arm's length".

In terms of setting prices on non-essential items paid for out of disposable income I think that equation is pretty heavily weighted on the side of the buyer.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by plib

In terms of setting prices on non-essential items paid for out of disposable income I think that equation is pretty heavily weighted on the side of the buyer.

This forum, however, illustrates that there's a sizeable proportion of books buyers for whom price is not particularly a consideration. And if the people who are actually buying books are OK with the prices, the publisher probably has little to worry about. People who are not buying books don't really enter into the picture.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I've never moticed any either.

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 ...