Do some publishers have any idea?

[Deskisamess]

Amazon can and will block US accounts if use of a VPN is found out. Hiding or falsifying your location is against the TOS of the account.

I know this because if folks posting on the various forums on Amazon over the years. It's usually talked about concerning streaming video or music.

I'm fairly certain you need a credit card with a US billing address and a US address to buy Kindle books. Pre-paid VISAs work, if drawn on a US bank. I've seen folks talk about using those to start the account, and regardless of balance, the card works to verify the account until the expiry date.

You can fund the account with gift cards, but the cc is part of what is used to verify the account. That said, I don't always pay close attention to the discussions about various country sites and Amazon purchases, as it's not an issue for me.

[Timboli]

One thing many of us would really like from publishers, is transparency. But you could say the same for many things we buy, so unlikely to happen, especially as many profit models are based on hidden stuff ... they like to keep us in the dark ... means they can make all sorts of claims and no way to easily disprove them.

It was said earlier in this topic, that we should not be comparing physical books with ebooks, and while many of us don't agree with that, let's just do that for a moment, and use another equally as good comparison.

Let's compare Authors and Publishers.

Why is it, that many authors and publishers, can get away with doing the right thing and playing fair with prices, but others can't?

This is not an Indie vs Traditional question. There are those out there that publish physical and digital books, and do so with decent fair prices, and have been doing so for many years.

If their model was not working economically, they have had plenty of opportunity to change that model. In fact, they could make a plea and join the ranks of the over-pricers, and say it is not viable to be cheaper. The more in that camp, the harder for us to prosecute an alternative argument.

Myself personally, I can only draw one conclusion ... the same one many others have.

I'd love to see a breakdown of what it costs to make a book and why, and why there is a need to get extra profit from ebooks. Algorithms etc are often mentioned, but I have yet to see how they apply in this instance.

I'll be the first to admit, that not all books or authors are the same. That should be a given for most of us. But this argument that ebooks devalue books as a whole, is just lost on me. Sure ebooks devalue physical books, that's only logical. If more are buying ebooks and physical books are selling less, then of course they are devalued, because overall profit for them is less. That's the way of the world and the price of progress.

It's only natural, that physical books should start to cost more and probably already are. That of course will mean more will start to consider the cheaper ebooks, and eventually even less physical books sold. One day, physical books will very much become a niche market.

Nowhere in that model, is there a need to increase profits via ebooks. There is if you want to continue to provide physical books at current prices, rather than logically raise the price because you are selling less of them. So what we have is ebooks propping up the physical book market in many cases. I and many others think that is wrong, ethically and morally wrong.

Why should we subsidize the physical book market, when those readers should be moving toward digital like the rest of us have? If they don't want to do that, then by all means pay extra to have things your way, just don't expect the rest of us to pay for it.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by asleyam

I emailed the author and asked her if she knew her book was unavailable in audio in AU. No she replied, perhaps I should contact the AU govt to make it available there. Well that told me all I needed to know, which was that many authors have no idea what geoblocking is and who is responsible. I told her it was her publisher she should contact, govts don’t do commercial marketing that creates geoblocking.
Meanwhile I am still waiting for that book in audio.

I've had a similar experience, and spoken about it here before, but here is a not so brief summary.

I read and loved Hugh Howey's Wool (Silo) saga, and he was gracious and adventurous enough, to allow many others to write their own Silo stories. I tried to collect (buy) all the ones I thought sounded decent. In the end, I bought about 100 of them. Many were released as segments to buy, so often 3 or 4 would constitute a whole story.

Perhaps I made a mistake to read one such segment collection, before all parts were released ... not that it is always easy to determine how many segments there will be in total, and sometimes they take their sweet time coming out.

In any case, I bought the first 3 of 4 segments by Wilson Harp, for his Hart's Folly story. The 4th segment was slow to be released, so I had read the others before it was released, but not too long before it was actually released... though I did not know that until much later, where I saw it by accident ... it had been hidden from me.

When I went to buy it, it said it was not available to me. So I contacted Amazon and I contacted Wilson Harp, who was quite surprised and said he would look into it. Amazon on the other hand kept giving me the run around and it took a while before i found someone who actually understood how odd the situation was. Alas, I was told that all they could do was pass the issue on to those higher up the chain.

They never got back to me, and neither did Wilson Harp after the first two emails. In the end, I asked for my money to be returned for the first 3 segments, and Amazon complied.

Sure, I got my money back, and sure I read 3 segments, but it was an incomplete story. No different really to reading a book and finding the last five chapters missing. So wholly unsatisfactory.

From what I was told, it was all to do with the Geolocation crap, and even though all seemed to agree with me, that a mistake had been made, nothing was ever done about it ... certainly not in my favor anyway.

If I recall rightly, the author also released all 4 segments as a whole story (one ebook), but that also was unavailable to me.

My wishlist program checks that ebook every day, to see if there has been any change. There never has been. If there was, I would buy all 4 parts.

I added it to my Wishlist on the 27/09/2016. It was only $1.99.

Just had a quick check, and no parts seem available now ... at least to me.

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Amazon can and will block US accounts if use of a VPN is found out. Hiding or falsifying your location is against the TOS of the account.

Correct-a-mundo. And if you start calling attention to yourself here on how to violate their terms, they can and will block. These are the guys building data center for the NSA--they can hunt you down.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by maximus83

Correct-a-mundo. And if you start calling attention to yourself here on how to violate their terms, they can and will block. These are the guys building data center for the NSA--they can hunt you down.

I think the key thing here is force them to take notice. As far as I can tell, they aren't going to go out of their way to track you down.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I think the key thing here is force them to take notice. As far as I can tell, they aren't going to go out of their way to track you down.

True. I've never doubted Amazon could block any and all of us if they really wanted to, and put an end to DeDRM as well. I know one of their CDN networking engineers (I live in the area), and they are not unaware of any of this activity. But I think so far, they don't care enough to bother. It seems they tolerate what we do because (a) most people here tend to be ethical about it--paying for the stuff they buy and not doing illegal distribution, and (2) I'm guessing that we here on MR who do this stuff are probably fractions of 1% of Amazon's ebook business, so we aren't having an impact at any scale that they'd care about. We're sorta' like a horse fly riding on a horse: as long as we don't bite or do anything to get noticed, we won't get bucked off.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Deskisamess

Amazon can and will block US accounts if use of a VPN is found out. Hiding or falsifying your location is against the TOS of the account.

I know this because if folks posting on the various forums on Amazon over the years. It's usually talked about concerning streaming video or music.

I'm fairly certain you need a credit card with a US billing address and a US address to buy Kindle books. Pre-paid VISAs work, if drawn on a US bank. I've seen folks talk about using those to start the account, and regardless of balance, the card works to verify the account until the expiry date.

You can fund the account with gift cards, but the cc is part of what is used to verify the account. That said, I don't always pay close attention to the discussions about various country sites and Amazon purchases, as it's not an issue for me.

Perhaps you can point me to the particular provisions in the TOS you refer to. You could be right but I don't recall seeing any such provisions. Yes, to stream books and music from the US site you did need a US issued card on your account. I'm not sure if this still applies.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Timboli

[...] Why is it, that many authors and publishers, can get away with doing the right thing and playing fair with prices, but others can't?

This is not an Indie vs Traditional question. There are those out there that publish physical and digital books, and do so with decent fair prices, and have been doing so for many years.

If their model was not working economically, they have had plenty of opportunity to change that model. In fact, they could make a plea and join the ranks of the over-pricers, and say it is not viable to be cheaper. The more in that camp, the harder for us to prosecute an alternative argument.

Myself personally, I can only draw one conclusion ... the same one many others have.

I'd love to see a breakdown of what it costs to make a book and why, and why there is a need to get extra profit from ebooks. [...]

Many Indy authors also publish paper and digital, and not always under an obviously Indy name - so you can't always easily tell just by looking at the publisher name.

You cannot assess the situation by looking at just a few titles. For Indy authors/publishers the question of "working economically" is quite variable (we'd all love to make a living from it, but a more realistic expectation is supplemental income and we all have different expectations of what makes an acceptable supplement). For non-Indy publishers you need to look across a wide selection of the books they publish, because publishing has always been about using very good investments to support the new stuff that may or may not turn out to be good.

Your search for people "playing fair" is a search for an illusion because every person's idea of "fair" is different and sometimes quite arbitrary.

Take, for example, one Indy author that I know that would like to make $x per book, whether paper and ebook, and so sets the prices to ensure that minimum. It should be obvious to all that $x is entirely arbitrary, and the next Indy author I meet may well use $y.

Capitalist economics is not about fairness or justice, it's about what the market will bear. This is especially true with luxury items, and books are luxury items (as has been pointed out previously).

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by gmw

Many Indy authors also publish paper and digital, and not always under an obviously Indy name - so you can't always easily tell just by looking at the publisher name.

No, and that was not the comparison I was using.

You cannot assess the situation by looking at just a few titles.

No, and that is not what I did.

For Indy authors/publishers the question of "working economically" is quite variable (we'd all love to make a living from it, but a more realistic expectation is supplemental income and we all have different expectations of what makes an acceptable supplement). For non-Indy publishers you need to look across a wide selection of the books they publish, because publishing has always been about using very good investments to support the new stuff that may or may not turn out to be good.

Indeed.

Your search for people "playing fair" is a search for an illusion because every person's idea of "fair" is different and sometimes quite arbitrary.

What search?
And sorry to disagree, but I have never seen fair as arbitrary. Sure, you need to weigh up each case, but some things are bleeding obvious, or should be. Any arbitrariness is in the mind of those applying such.

Take, for example, one Indy author that I know that would like to make $x per book, whether paper and ebook, and so sets the prices to ensure that minimum. It should be obvious to all that $x is entirely arbitrary, and the next Indy author I meet may well use $y.

I think you are mixing up expectation with arbitrary. Sure there is an arbitrary element, but I fail to see that as relevant when it comes to fairness.

On the one hand, you can have someone who expects no profit for their effort, while for another, they might expect heaps of profit. It is reasonable and fair to take a middle ground. All else is desire and expectation.

Capitalist economics is not about fairness or justice, it's about what the market will bear. This is especially true with luxury items, and books are luxury items (as has been pointed out previously).

Never said otherwise.
But I will say there are degrees of capitalism, and I am not a fan of capitalism that goes too far and impinges on Democracy and ultimately fairness.
I believe in boundaries to behavior and how you treat others, and especially in society, which was created for all. If you are filthy rich, society made you so and so you owe it, as you would be nothing without it ... too many forget that and think its all their own doing. It's called greed and taking advantage of others.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by gmw

For Indy authors/publishers the question of "working economically" is quite variable (we'd all love to make a living from it, but a more realistic expectation is supplemental income and we all have different expectations of what makes an acceptable supplement). For non-Indy publishers you need to look across a wide selection of the books they publish, because publishing has always been about using very good investments to support the new stuff that may or may not turn out to be good.

This bears looking at in more detail.

The notion, that we pay more for books so that Publishers can then extend deals to unknowns, usually quite heavily in the publisher's favor, but clearly they sometimes take a punt for something they truly believe in, whether warranted or not.

Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the industry, knows just how arbitrary or biased publisher support is. Many eventual big sellers over the years, have been rejected by most publishers time and time again. So much so, that many of us think that many publishers just really don't have a clue, but are often just a business taking what they think is the easy option to a quick buck.

Many publishers out there are guilty of destroying lives or making them difficult. Not so now so much, because we have the testing ground of Indies. And there are many Indie authors who have succeeded and then been offered a deal from Traditional publishers.

So clearly, the old-time publishers in many cases need to move on away from the old models and algorithms and start catching up with the rest and the modern world.

Why should us ebook buyers, have to prop up the old out-dated way of doing things? Which was often never very fair or good anyway.

[Timboli]

By the way, I am not here with the illusion I can convince anyone of anything.

I am here for a chat about something that I care about and which interests me, as well as planting seeds for others to mull over.

Only a fool would take everything I say as gospel, even though I believe in the truth of it. Everyone should do their own deliberating and research, and test the truths of my words.

It's a complex world, and I am a simple man trying to make sense of it.

You can sit on the fence or meekly accept what others say, or you can have a point of view and express it, so that you have a greater chance to learn and grow, through interaction with the views of others.

No-one says you have to stick to any belief you have forever, and I am as prepared as anyone to change my mind about anything, given the right incentive to do so.

Truth for me, is the biggest incentive of all.

[Timboli]

After writing something in another topic, I am reminded of a disparity with some publishers.

I am sure many of you are aware of how many publishers and authors and readers feel about the sameness of ebooks or chiefly the plastic devices, especially compared to the work of art that many books are. Sure, for many of us, at times for me, the ereader or tablet is a wonderful looking tech toy. But I can perfectly understand why others don't like them and prefer the magic of a physical book. That's something I still wrestle with at times, though ebooks have now become a clear preference for me. Admittedly I have a huge physical library that I still get great joy from, to offset things.

So on the one hand, many publishers don't really like ebooks, while at the same time, telling us we should pay more because of all the wonderful benefits, that only we perceive. Seems a clear contradiction to me ... they believe physical books are better, but we should pay extra for the ebooks they consider are inferior.

[Deskisamess]

Originally Posted by darryl

Perhaps you can point me to the particular provisions in the TOS you refer to. You could be right but I don't recall seeing any such provisions. Yes, to stream books and music from the US site you did need a US issued card on your account. I'm not sure if this still applies.

"3. GEOGRAPHIC VARIABILITY
Due to technical and other restrictions imposed by content providers, the Service is available only in certain locations. The Digital Content (including subtitled and dubbed audio versions of Digital Content) and how we offer Digital Content to you will vary over time and by location. Amazon will use technologies to verify your geographic location. You may not use any technology or technique to obscure or disguise your location."

I see this in the TOS for Amazon Video. I've seen many posts from users complaining that their accounts have been locked, or they are blocked from watching video, after it had worked for them using a VPN. It stands to reason if Amazon is going to use "technology to verify your location" that they would take action if a user was found to be disguising their location.

I've often wondered about the users who aren't doing an end run around the location limits, but simply using a VPN for privacy reasons.

I thought I had read a similar statement about the Kindle Store, but Amazon has recently been updated and moving some help pages around, and I don't see it now. I might be mistaken in my memory.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Timboli

[...] And sorry to disagree, but I have never seen fair as arbitrary. Sure, you need to weigh up each case, but some things are bleeding obvious, or should be. Any arbitrariness is in the mind of those applying such.
[...]
Never said otherwise.
But I will say there are degrees of capitalism, and I am not a fan of capitalism that goes too far and impinges on Democracy and ultimately fairness.
I believe in boundaries to behavior and how you treat others, and especially in society, which was created for all. If you are filthy rich, society made you so and so you owe it, as you would be nothing without it ... too many forget that and think its all their own doing. It's called greed and taking advantage of others.

So, despite the fact that I would characterise most of your posts on this thread as complaining that the price of ebooks is unfair, you are not actually expecting our system of economics to produce fairness in pricing. Okay, although it's not the way I interpreted your previous posts. And we still have a gaping hole: what is fair? (And why are you a better arbiter of it than publishers?)

You say "some things are bleeding obvious"; well, I'm missing the bleeding obvious. How can a fair price for any book be determined that isn't - for the most part - quite arbitrary?

Cents per word might seem tempting, but I have been happy to pay hardback prices for some authors, but wouldn't accept freebies from some others.

Some reasonable income for the author and publisher might sound good, but there will always be some books that are more popular than others, and popularity is not related to the amount of work that went into production - so how can that be fair?

The big publishers probably come closest because they have the benchmark of paper books from which to start, and the advantages of scale to provide cost effectiveness across many books even when some sell better than others. And they also have a long history over which they have learned what readers in general will and will not accept (and we're talking all readers, not just the select few ebook specialists here on MR).

If readers (as averaged by what the publishers see, but you don't) will accept the price then I suspect that is about as close as we're ever going to get to fair (but isn't really) - after all, they don't have to pay that price. Books are luxury, people can choose not to pay new release prices; it should not even be a hardship, it's not like is a shortage of public domain books. Current prices seem to offer strong evidence that enough people think the prices are fair (or close enough to fair) to sustain those prices.

And note that even with that being true, I still say the result is arbitrary. What readers are willing to spend on new books is partly dependent on what else is available (video, music, social networking, public domain books), and how much free income they have (which is dependent on their level of debt etc. etc.). There is nothing in here anywhere that says anything about the length of the book, the quality of the writing, the editing, the cover and so on. The price of a book is independent of the book's production effort. Fairness simply isn't part of the equation.

[Timboli]

Originally Posted by gmw

So, despite the fact that I would characterise most of your posts on this thread as complaining that the price of ebooks is unfair, you are not actually expecting our system of economics to produce fairness in pricing. Okay, although it's not the way I interpreted your previous posts. And we still have a gaping hole: what is fair? (And why are you a better arbiter of it than publishers?)

Well, it sounds like you have skimmed most of the conversation here, going by a few of your comments. For starters I have never said all ebooks are unfairly priced, just a good number of them. And a good number are fairly priced. There is a discrepancy occurring.

And while there are certainly complaints within on both sides, this topic is really about discussing about the situation and various aspects of publisher behavior and claims etc.

No-one, especially me, has said I am a better arbiter. I am only voicing the concerns that many feel and the contradictions, and putting a spotlight on things, looking at the past and so on.

What is fair, is that ebooks which cost a lot less to produce and provide, should cost less than their physical versions.

Nowhere that I can recall are we discussing an overall book price. And briefly, we did look at word count and quality, but as you say, and I agree, hard to quantify. So nowhere am I discussing what any author deserves for the book they wrote ... only discrepancy between ebook and physical book prices.

You say "some things are bleeding obvious"; well, I'm missing the bleeding obvious. How can a fair price for any book be determined that isn't - for the most part - quite arbitrary?

Well, you say arbitrary, and I personally agree, but publishers certainly have their formulas, to quantify. They are all very mysterious really. But once again, I am not talking book price overall, just what is fair to pay for the ebook version.

If you have a cost established for a physical book, and then add up all the costs of providing that to the end reader, that an ebook does not incur, then the cost of the ebook does become bleeding obvious.

Cents per word might seem tempting, but I have been happy to pay hardback prices for some authors, but wouldn't accept freebies from some others.

Some reasonable income for the author and publisher might sound good, but there will always be some books that are more popular than others, and popularity is not related to the amount of work that went into production - so how can that be fair?

Can't disagree with you there, but not what I am discussing.

The big publishers probably come closest because they have the benchmark of paper books from which to start, and the advantages of scale to provide cost effectiveness across many books even when some sell better than others. And they also have a long history over which they have learned what readers in general will and will not accept (and we're talking all readers, not just the select few ebook specialists here on MR).

Now you have changed track a bit.
As I said earlier, there is no real evidence that they have been doing the best thing all along. Certainly they have done enough of something to have some success for a good number of authors, but many mistakes and troubling biases have occurred along the way. And many have failed spectacularly.

If readers (as averaged by what the publishers see, but you don't) will accept the price then I suspect that is about as close as we're ever going to get to fair (but isn't really) - after all, they don't have to pay that price. Books are luxury, people can choose not to pay new release prices; it should not even be a hardship, it's not like is a shortage of public domain books. Current prices seem to offer strong evidence that enough people think the prices are fair (or close enough to fair) to sustain those prices.

And note that even with that being true, I still say the result is arbitrary. What readers are willing to spend on new books is partly dependent on what else is available (video, music, social networking, public domain books), and how much free income they have (which is dependent on their level of debt etc. etc.). There is nothing in here anywhere that says anything about the length of the book, the quality of the writing, the editing, the cover and so on. The price of a book is independent of the book's production effort. Fairness simply isn't part of the equation.

Refer to my comments above.
I cannot argue, for the reasons you say and other factors, about what a fair price for a book is. I can only look at what publishers have decided is fair for a physical book, look at the law of averages and then look at how much less an ebook should cost, which is quantifiable.

The cost of an ebook should not be arbitrary in relation to a physical book.