E-Refuseniks

[zacheryjensen]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

I've been campaigning for and hoping for ebooks that make sense in terms of their price for the past decade. My own small publishing house offers them at 10% of the price of our paperbacks and they make money ... even though authors are on a 40% royalty rather than hard copy 10% with us.

We are now seeing ebook reading as a possibility with all the new ereaders on the market, thanks to folks like us.

But retailers are putting a spoke in ... their prices are potty!!!

I've already (against the grain) bought ebooks that cost more than their harback equivalents. But enough is enough ... when over the past week I can find nobody selling Margaret Atwood's *Year of the Flood* in ebook at anything less than double the available hardback price, I refuse to go there. I refuse to encourage such greed by becoming a customer. I refuse to embrace the counter-revolution.

We should boycot retailers who play this game. We should NOT buy their ebooks. We should say: "Sod off -- this is not what the ebook ideal is about!"

Neil

Personally I think books should cost MORE money. Especially good ones. I have to buy several copies of a good book before I feel I've sufficiently rewarded the author.

[neilmarr]

***Personally I think books should cost MORE money. Especially good ones. I have to buy several copies of a good book before I feel I've sufficiently rewarded the author.***

Methinks there ain't too many ZacheryJensens in a kilo ... which is a crying shame. What an admirable notion. Here's karma for you. N

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

As far as I know, none of the writers published by Baen are requesting / demanding /getting the same kinds of advances and royalties as a best-selling author, and hopefully they don't get sued as often either.

Advances are pegged on the publisher's best guess of how well a book will sell, as it it technically an advance against royalties. Royalties tend to be fairly standard, and start accruing after the book has sold enough copies to cover the advance.

Many (probably most) writers never see actual royalties. The agent wants to negotiate a high enough advance that the book won't "earn out" and generate royalties beyond the advance.

Exactly what terms a Baen author gets will be between the author, author's agent, and Baen. We can assume that David Weber, for example, whose Honor Harrington novels are hitting the New York Times best seller list, will get a better deal than a first author, but generally, Baen authors seem happy enough with their treatment.

Baen is a mid-range action/adventure SF/fantasy house, so I think people writing for it are moderate in their expectations. They know they aren't going to get Dan Brown sales numbers.

And fat contracts are two edged swords. An old friend with no reason to lie about it claims to have seen the numbers and says no publisher makes money on Steven King. King's contract is so good that what would have been publisher profit goes into his pocket.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by jasonkchapman

Yup. Not to mention completely different rights, as acquired from the author. Many of the large houses don't even know, without a great deal of research, whether or not they own digital rights to items in their back catalog. It's coming up more and more, since a lot of authors these days are wanting to exercise e-rights for their OOP p-books.

There was a flap over this between Random House and Rosetta a while back. Rosetta wanted to do electronic editions of some older titles originally published by Random House. The books had been written, contracts signed, and printed versions produced back before electronic books were even a gleam in someone's eye (and the manuscripts were hardcopies produced on typewriters...) Precisely who does have electronic rights?

Current contracts include erights as one of the things covered, and also define just what is meant by "out of print" when ebooks and POD are part of the equation, but it's thorny for older books.
______
Dennis

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by zacheryjensen

Personally I think books should cost MORE money. Especially good ones. I have to buy several copies of a good book before I feel I've sufficiently rewarded the author.

Agreed 100%. Given that the price of a book, which can literally (sic) change your life, is of the same order as a takeaway pizza, the good ones are ludicrously under priced.

The trick is how to recognise the good ones up front - it could be argued that the p-book model of pay-then-read is what holds back the rewards for good writers. I'd like to see (but I can't see how it would really work) a model where you read a book and then paid what you thought was appropriate. I'm currently reading MR member Boyd Morrison's "The Ark", which I downloaded for free. It's a fantastically entertaining read, and I'd happily pay for reading it, but the system isn't set up that way. (I'll probably end up buying a commercial copy to achieve the same end, but somehow it feels artificial).

/JB

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Current contracts include erights as one of the things covered, and also define just what is meant by "out of print" when ebooks and POD are part of the equation, but it's thorny for older books.

For the most part, yes. There's still a whole lot of dickering going on over the definition of "out of print." Reversion clauses are still a sticking point nearly two years after the Authors Guild and S&S battled over the issue.

Not that I think the AG is infallible--the Google Books settlement is a travesty (see SFWA's take on it)--but in the S&S case they did a good job.

[lybrary]

Here is a very recent example of a mis-priced ebook we researched. It clearly shows that the problem lies primarily with the publisher.

About 2 weeks ago a customer contacted us regarding an ebook on our website. We had the ebook priced at $110 as had several other ebook retailers. However, the same work was available as printed book from Amazon for $42.95. So we contacted the ebook distributor who in turn contacted the publisher, in this case Wiley. It took a couple of emails until they understood our question. Finally they lowered the price from $110 to $92.95. Well, at least that was a reduction but not quite the reduction I was looking for. After another inquiry why the ebook is still more than twice as expensive as the paper book the anser from Wiley:

"The price for STMS (one of our three Divisions) e-books is pegged with the price of the cloth format, which is $92.95. The customer is looking at the PAPER format, which is priced at $42.95. Remember these are SRP and e-tailers, like Amazon can vary the price a bit."

I was stunned by the response. The only reply I could muster was "the last time I checked ebooks don't come with cloth". Particularly condescending was the last sentence like a retailer could offset a 2.16x higher price. Even if I lower the price to the wholesale price it would be more than the printed book. It clearly shows that most publishers have no clue how to price their ebooks.

Best,
Chris
[Promotional link deleted - MODERATOR]

[GA Russell]

I agree that eBooks should be much less expensive than paper books. But I don't see a problem here.

If the eBook is more expensive than the paper book, then it is a gyp, so don't buy it. Buy the paper book. I assume that the paper book is priced fairly.

Go ahead and write to the author and the publisher, and tell them that you did not buy the eBook because you think that it is, at its current price, a gyp. If enough people do that, I think they will get the message.

You are not out anything by buying a fairly priced paper book.

Overpriced gyps happen every day. That there should be some in the eBook industry shouldn't be surprising.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

If enough people do that, I think they will get the message.

Why? You've still bought the book! Now, if you tell that that because of the price of the ebook you've bought it second hand...

[GA Russell]

Great point, Dawn!

[neilmarr]

***If the eBook is more expensive than the paper book, then it is a gyp, so don't buy it***

Fair enough GA, but many with ereaders don't want a paper option (I only buy treebooks now -- most reluctantly -- if there's no ebook available). And those worthy souls who've invested in an expensive ereader, thus removing the cost of printing, physical distribution, warehousing, sale-or-return wastage, penal high street retail commissions, etc, etc have a right to see these savings to the industry reflected in ebook cover prices, I think. Cheers. Neil

[jasonkchapman]

On someone's blog, Jim Minatel, Associate Publisher at Wiley/Wrox, had this to say in response to a similar complaint:

You make some really valid points and I’ll agree, our e-book solution isn’t perfect. A couple of minor corrections I’d point out: ebooks aren’t free to produce: we use a 3rd party e-book ecommerce solution and the per unit charge is roughly the same as the per unit cost of printing a book. I hope we can lower that charge soon and then have more flexible e-book pricing.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by jbjb

I'd like to see (but I can't see how it would really work) a model where you read a book and then paid what you thought was appropriate.

Baen has a very close mechanism, the lengthy (say, 30% of the ebook?) teaser. The price is set, though.

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

[I]And those worthy souls who've invested in an expensive ereader...have a right to see these savings to the industry reflected in ebook cover prices, I think.

Neil, I completely agree that the savings should be reflected in the eBook price. That is why I say that if they are not, then the eBook price is a gyp.

But don't you think that you see items for sale that are overpriced every day? Why should eBooks be any different? I don't think that eBook reader owners have a right to go through life without seeing overpriced products, although I would be happy if they never encountered said eBooks!

If everyone who owned an eBook reader emailed the publisher and used the word "gyp" in reference to his price whenever the case arises (We can have a thread here at MR devoted to only that!), I think the industry would get the message fairly soon.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Neil, I completely agree that the savings should be reflected in the eBook price. That is why I say that if they are not, then the eBook price is a gyp.

But don't you think that you see items for sale that are overpriced every day? Why should eBooks be any different? I don't think that eBook reader owners have a right to go through life without seeing overpriced products, although I would be happy if they never encountered said eBooks!

If everyone who owned an eBook reader emailed the publisher and used the word "gyp" in reference to his price whenever the case arises (We can have a thread here at MR devoted to only that!), I think the industry would get the message fairly soon.

Hey, we could do the same thing to Apple!