Boycott all books over 9.99!! - Page 6

lilac_jive · 02-15-2009, 11:10 AM

I really don't mind paying $11.99 for a new hardcover (what Sony charges for a new hardback). The thing that makes me nervous is amazon is taking a loss on those books. I don't mind paying an extra dollar or two to keep up a sustainable business model.

If I said this already, sorry, was too lazy to go through old posts.

dirtylc · 02-16-2009, 09:53 AM

Its seems that the digitization process is a whole lot less costly then actually publishing the book,meaning that everyone can win at a lower price point. The customer the publisher, the reader, the distributor, yet people her are like lemmings that want to have their wallets poached.

bwaldron · 02-16-2009, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dirtylc

yet people her are like lemmings that want to have their wallets poached.

Lemmings don't generally carry wallets, in my experience.

Resorting to insults is unlikely to get others to share your apparent outrage.

There are plenty of threads here where people express unhappiness with ebook pricing and/or DRM.

dirtylc · 02-16-2009, 10:20 AM

Here is her position in her words, absolutely brilliant:

Saturday, February 14, 2009
The (Publishing) House Is Burning, Part II

Yesterday we talked about James Shein's model for the phases of crisis. I quoted Dr. Shein telling fifty newspaper executives that he wasn't sure they could look at their industry with fresh eyes.

That comment has enormous implications for the print publishing industry.

The thing is that, just like the newspaper execs--even knowing their environment is under attack--the print publishing execs' own cognitive biases will work against them when it comes to reinventing themselves or their industry.

By cognitive biases, I mean the way people tend to respond when it comes to making decisions. Clinical psychology has identified a number of these biases. I am going to list the ones that I believe hold the potential to doom the publishing industry if its executives cannot rise above their instincts:

* Confirmation bias: the tendency to select information that supports the individual's preconceived notions and to avoid information that contradicts those existing beliefs
* Conservatism bias: the tendency to be conservative, to wait and see before making a change. A refusal to acknowledge both technical and social change even to one's detriment
* Illusion of Control: the tendency of people to believe they can control outcomes over which they have no control
* Status Quo bias: the tendency of people to want things to stay as they are, to not change

Earlier this week, a publishing executive for whom I have a lot of respect made the comment that it costs a publisher about $2.50-$3.00 less to publish an e-book than it does to publish a $27.99 physical book.

My first reaction was that this comment was made cynically--in the full knowledge that it was complete nonsense. If you accept that the materials, the printing and binding of a physical book cost $3, the exec's comment still fails to address the costs of warehousing, distributing, returning unsold stock and pulping those bound books.

However, I suspect the truth is that it is more a combination of two biases--confirmation bias and status quo bias. How else can you explain an industry where some execs actually thought anyone would buy an e-book priced $2 MORE than the mass market paperback? I know it sounds crazy, but one of the big six New York publishers actually set its pricing that way--and then lowered it to the price of the physical book a month later after readers complained vociferously.

Readers aren't stupid. They know that e-books don't cost as much as physical books to create. Look at all the e-publishing operations that have sprung up overnight on the Internet, with headquarters in someone's kitchen or den.

On Thursday, I referred my readers to an article by John Siracusa. Now is a good time to quote that article:

. . . most publishers dictated list prices for e-books that were based on the prices of the printed versions. When a book was available only as a hardcover, the list price of the e-book version was the hardcover list price. Later, when the book became available as a paperback, the e-book list price was reduced to match the paperback price. This, despite the fact that the e-book version remained unchanged during this time. Pricing based on cost and demand is all well and good, but it should be the cost and demand of the actual product for sale, not another product with entirely different costs and demand . . .

All of this is to say that the publishers effectively sabotaged the e-book market from day one. The DRM, the pricing, the general treatment as second-class citizens, it all added up to an insurmountable drag on a budding industry.

This makes absolutely no sense until you look at it not as a way to sell e-books, but rather, as a way to ensure that e-book sales do not eat into hardcover sales. That, in turn, makes even less sense, given the comparative profit margins of hardcover books and e-books, but, well, there you have it . . .

The thing is, the New York houses have forgotten the main reason for their hegemony in the publishing world: THEY OWNED THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. Writers seeking a large audience were forced to go to them and forced to accept the royalty terms they dictated.

Guess what, folks? That isn't the case any more. Digitization and the Internet is democratizing publishing in the exact same way that Gutenberg's press democratized reading nearly six hundred years ago.

It's not too late for the big publishers. They need to look at the services they offer and the things they do better than anyone else and capitalize on those strengths. Pretending nothing has changed is a guaranteed death sentence. Paying lip service to electronic publishing is a guaranteed death sentence. Failing to act and act quickly is a guaranteed death sentence.

Vacuums attract new players. Look at Amazon and the steps they've taken. They are concentrating on vertical integration, owning a piece of every part of the publishing chain of distribution from its publishing arm (BookSurge) to its distribution system (Amazon.com):

Publisher => Wholesaler/Distributor => Retail Outlet => Reader

New technology offers all kinds of opportunities. Look at the deal Lightning Source (a division of Ingram) cut with the people who developed the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). Unlike Amazon, Ingram is focussed on horizontal integration. Many EBMs placed in bookstores or libraries around the country would lead to a hugely decentralized market where there would be numerous distribution outlets.

I think there are going to be more and more unusual partnerships in publishing. Writers and agents and bookstores and publishers are going to begin to come together in new and creative ways.

We'll talk about this some more in my next post on Monday.

ProDigit · 02-16-2009, 10:27 AM

Boycott all books over $0,01!
Visit
MOBILE READ LIBRARY!

Wario · 02-16-2009, 10:40 AM

I don't mind paying $9.99 for a ebook. That means I pay around £7. Which is a good for me. I only hope that the pound don't fall against the dollar.

dirtylc · 02-16-2009, 01:32 PM

wario that is all right. There needs to be some reasonable profit to keep e books

coming. The beef that many of us have is that they are radically overpricing books many times either more then the hardback and/or paperbacks. This is unacceptable because with those two versions you actually own a physical copy.

DixieGal · 02-16-2009, 01:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dirtylc

Its seems that the digitization process is a whole lot less costly then actually publishing the book,meaning that everyone can win at a lower price point. The customer the publisher, the reader, the distributor, yet people her are like lemmings that want to have their wallets poached.

I prefer my wallet scrambled, not poached.

DixieGal · 02-16-2009, 02:02 PM

But seriously folks, it's time to quit poking the troll and let El Cheapo here find someplace else to grind his teeth up against. It's been fun, but troll baiting is not productive for MR and the high quality of the community here.

lilac_jive · 02-16-2009, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DixieGal

But seriously folks, it's time to quit poking the troll and let El Cheapo here find someplace else to grind his teeth up against. It's been fun, but troll baiting is not productive for MR and the high quality of the community here.

Word to that.

desertgrandma · 02-16-2009, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DixieGal

But seriously folks, it's time to quit poking the troll and let El Cheapo here find someplace else to grind his teeth up against. It's been fun, but troll baiting is not productive for MR and the high quality of the community here.

Thank you. There has been and identical post over on the Amazon discussion pages for ages........whine whine whine!

dirtylc · 02-16-2009, 04:22 PM

That's funny close to 1,000 people weighed in at the Amazon page and a majority of those posts were against some of the pricing that many people here are gullible enough to accept blindly. I am not opposed to the publishers/distributors making a profit but the digitization process is relatively cheap. Why do most of you refuse to get that? To those that get it thanks for your support and keep it coming maybe we can talk some sense into these folks.

desertgrandma · 02-16-2009, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dirtylc

That's funny close to 1,000 people weighed in at the Amazon page and a majority of those posts were against some of the pricing that many people here are gullible enough to accept blindly. I am not opposed to the publishers/distributors making a profit but the digitization process is relatively cheap. Why do most of you refuse to get that? To those that get it thanks for your support and keep it coming maybe we can talk some sense into these folks.

I doubt people are accepting the pricing 'blindly'. If we don't like it, we just don't buy it. Period.

If enough people did that, they would get the message soon enough, without a 'boycott'.

Thats the way the market works.

dirtylc · 02-16-2009, 08:02 PM

People will buy anything if they aren't educated about the actual underlying inequalities. It is simply my mission to let them know so they can avoid subsidizing criminal publishers.

desertgrandma · 02-16-2009, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dirtylc

People will buy anything if they aren't educated about the actual underlying inequalities. It is simply my mission to let them know so they can avoid subsidizing criminal publishers.

Excuse me. You are on "MobileRead"

The people who post on here are not stupid, and can make their own decisions on what to buy without you being their "nanny".

I would suggest the Amazon kindle discussion forums are a better place for your posts.

02-16-2009, 09:53 AM	#77
dirtylc Enthusiast Posts: 33 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Kindle 1 (the best one!)	well oh well Its seems that the digitization process is a whole lot less costly then actually publishing the book,meaning that everyone can win at a lower price point. The customer the publisher, the reader, the distributor, yet people her are like lemmings that want to have their wallets poached.

02-16-2009, 10:20 AM	#79
dirtylc Enthusiast Posts: 33 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Kindle 1 (the best one!)	Author Maya Reynolds is the best Here is her position in her words, absolutely brilliant: Saturday, February 14, 2009 The (Publishing) House Is Burning, Part II Yesterday we talked about James Shein's model for the phases of crisis. I quoted Dr. Shein telling fifty newspaper executives that he wasn't sure they could look at their industry with fresh eyes. That comment has enormous implications for the print publishing industry. The thing is that, just like the newspaper execs--even knowing their environment is under attack--the print publishing execs' own cognitive biases will work against them when it comes to reinventing themselves or their industry. By cognitive biases, I mean the way people tend to respond when it comes to making decisions. Clinical psychology has identified a number of these biases. I am going to list the ones that I believe hold the potential to doom the publishing industry if its executives cannot rise above their instincts: * Confirmation bias: the tendency to select information that supports the individual's preconceived notions and to avoid information that contradicts those existing beliefs * Conservatism bias: the tendency to be conservative, to wait and see before making a change. A refusal to acknowledge both technical and social change even to one's detriment * Illusion of Control: the tendency of people to believe they can control outcomes over which they have no control * Status Quo bias: the tendency of people to want things to stay as they are, to not change Earlier this week, a publishing executive for whom I have a lot of respect made the comment that it costs a publisher about $2.50-$3.00 less to publish an e-book than it does to publish a $27.99 physical book. My first reaction was that this comment was made cynically--in the full knowledge that it was complete nonsense. If you accept that the materials, the printing and binding of a physical book cost $3, the exec's comment still fails to address the costs of warehousing, distributing, returning unsold stock and pulping those bound books. However, I suspect the truth is that it is more a combination of two biases--confirmation bias and status quo bias. How else can you explain an industry where some execs actually thought anyone would buy an e-book priced $2 MORE than the mass market paperback? I know it sounds crazy, but one of the big six New York publishers actually set its pricing that way--and then lowered it to the price of the physical book a month later after readers complained vociferously. Readers aren't stupid. They know that e-books don't cost as much as physical books to create. Look at all the e-publishing operations that have sprung up overnight on the Internet, with headquarters in someone's kitchen or den. On Thursday, I referred my readers to an article by John Siracusa. Now is a good time to quote that article: . . . most publishers dictated list prices for e-books that were based on the prices of the printed versions. When a book was available only as a hardcover, the list price of the e-book version was the hardcover list price. Later, when the book became available as a paperback, the e-book list price was reduced to match the paperback price. This, despite the fact that the e-book version remained unchanged during this time. Pricing based on cost and demand is all well and good, but it should be the cost and demand of the actual product for sale, not another product with entirely different costs and demand . . . All of this is to say that the publishers effectively sabotaged the e-book market from day one. The DRM, the pricing, the general treatment as second-class citizens, it all added up to an insurmountable drag on a budding industry. This makes absolutely no sense until you look at it not as a way to sell e-books, but rather, as a way to ensure that e-book sales do not eat into hardcover sales. That, in turn, makes even less sense, given the comparative profit margins of hardcover books and e-books, but, well, there you have it . . . The thing is, the New York houses have forgotten the main reason for their hegemony in the publishing world: THEY OWNED THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. Writers seeking a large audience were forced to go to them and forced to accept the royalty terms they dictated. Guess what, folks? That isn't the case any more. Digitization and the Internet is democratizing publishing in the exact same way that Gutenberg's press democratized reading nearly six hundred years ago. It's not too late for the big publishers. They need to look at the services they offer and the things they do better than anyone else and capitalize on those strengths. Pretending nothing has changed is a guaranteed death sentence. Paying lip service to electronic publishing is a guaranteed death sentence. Failing to act and act quickly is a guaranteed death sentence. Vacuums attract new players. Look at Amazon and the steps they've taken. They are concentrating on vertical integration, owning a piece of every part of the publishing chain of distribution from its publishing arm (BookSurge) to its distribution system (Amazon.com): Publisher => Wholesaler/Distributor => Retail Outlet => Reader New technology offers all kinds of opportunities. Look at the deal Lightning Source (a division of Ingram) cut with the people who developed the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). Unlike Amazon, Ingram is focussed on horizontal integration. Many EBMs placed in bookstores or libraries around the country would lead to a hugely decentralized market where there would be numerous distribution outlets. I think there are going to be more and more unusual partnerships in publishing. Writers and agents and bookstores and publishers are going to begin to come together in new and creative ways. We'll talk about this some more in my next post on Monday.

02-16-2009, 04:22 PM	#87
dirtylc Enthusiast Posts: 33 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Kindle 1 (the best one!)	TROLL!!! That's funny close to 1,000 people weighed in at the Amazon page and a majority of those posts were against some of the pricing that many people here are gullible enough to accept blindly. I am not opposed to the publishers/distributors making a profit but the digitization process is relatively cheap. Why do most of you refuse to get that? To those that get it thanks for your support and keep it coming maybe we can talk some sense into these folks.

02-16-2009, 08:02 PM	#89
dirtylc Enthusiast Posts: 33 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Kindle 1 (the best one!)	Not if they don't know any better People will buy anything if they aren't educated about the actual underlying inequalities. It is simply my mission to let them know so they can avoid subsidizing criminal publishers.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
are you participating in the 9.99 boycott?	kindlekitten	Amazon Kindle	107	07-30-2010 04:54 AM
The $15 Boycott: Will you be participating?	Alisa	General Discussions	362	06-30-2010 12:16 AM
Boycott Amazon's eBooks	JSWolf	General Discussions	15	04-03-2010 01:26 PM
Kindlers Boycott $10+ ebooks	rhadin	News	137	04-19-2009 04:23 PM
Germany's Boycott of the music industry	Colin Dunstan	Lounge	3	04-05-2004 04:34 PM

02-15-2009, 11:10 AM	#76
lilac_jive Grand Sorcerer Posts: 5,870 Karma: 27376 Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Pennsylvania Device: PRS-505	I really don't mind paying $11.99 for a new hardcover (what Sony charges for a new hardback). The thing that makes me nervous is amazon is taking a loss on those books. I don't mind paying an extra dollar or two to keep up a sustainable business model. If I said this already, sorry, was too lazy to go through old posts.

02-16-2009, 10:27 AM	#80
ProDigit Karmaniac Posts: 2,553 Karma: 11499146 Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: Miami FL Device: PRS-505, Jetbook, + Mini, +Color, Astak Ez Reader Pro, PPW1, Aura H2O	Boycott all books over $0,01! Visit MOBILE READ LIBRARY!

02-16-2009, 10:40 AM	#81
Wario Connoisseur Posts: 59 Karma: 11 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: UK Device: Sony PRS-505	I don't mind paying $9.99 for a ebook. That means I pay around £7. Which is a good for me. I only hope that the pound don't fall against the dollar.

02-16-2009, 01:32 PM	#82
dirtylc Enthusiast Posts: 33 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2009 Device: Kindle 1 (the best one!)	wario that is all right. There needs to be some reasonable profit to keep e books coming. The beef that many of us have is that they are radically overpricing books many times either more then the hardback and/or paperbacks. This is unacceptable because with those two versions you actually own a physical copy.

02-16-2009, 02:02 PM	#84
DixieGal Hi There! Posts: 7,473 Karma: 2930523 Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Ft Lauderdale Device: iPad	But seriously folks, it's time to quit poking the troll and let El Cheapo here find someplace else to grind his teeth up against. It's been fun, but troll baiting is not productive for MR and the high quality of the community here.