You don't matter - and you never did

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, they really do not find new extremely good books so of course that will lead to less cost since they do not search for new authors in that way.

I beg to differ. Some of the authors with first books published by Baen:

Lois McMaster Bujold
David Weber
Eric Flint
John Ringo
Dave Freer
Travis S Taylor
John Lambshead

Baen do not just issue reprints or novels by established authors. They have a slush pile and do publish new authors as well.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by leebase

Is it REALLY so hard to understand that there IS a market for books over $20?

You are the one who seems to find it hard to understand that there is also a market for lower priced books.

That the publishers make MOST of their money from THOSE customers?

Care to offer any evidence of that at all?
All those paperbacks taking up 80%+ of the fiction section at a book store aren't making money? All those books published only in paperback aren't making money?

(Or that most hardbacks are actually sold at list price? I was in a book store
yesterday, and more than half the hardbacks on display were discounted. So maybe people aren't actually willing to pay the full price?)

There truly are a lot of people who think that professional photography isn't worth much more than the cost of ink and paper.

And those people will spend (in combination) a large amount of money at cheaper photographers. In total, do you think mall photographers or art photographers make more money?

Such people do not matter to a professional photographer. He doesn't cater to them. They are not his market. Their opinions on his prices are never going to change his prices.

And he will make less money that the companies that do cater to those customers.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I beg to differ. Some of the authors with first books published by Baen:

Lois McMaster Bujold
David Weber
Eric Flint
John Ringo
Dave Freer
Travis S Taylor
John Lambshead

Baen do not just issue reprints or novels by established authors. They have a slush pile and do publish new authors as well.

Yes, as I said. I actually like Lois McMaster Bujold a lot but I would not class her books in the top. Of the other I have read three and I think they fall in the category of books that some people think is fun to read.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Care to offer any evidence of that at all?
All those paperbacks taking up 80%+ of the fiction section at a book store aren't making money? All those books published only in paperback aren't making money?

They are making money bu a best selling hardcover makes much more money.

(Or that most hardbacks are actually sold at list price? I was in a book store
yesterday, and more than half the hardbacks on display were discounted. So maybe people aren't actually willing to pay the full price?)

It is the retailer that discounts. The publisher get the same amount of money regardless of the retailer's price.

[Rich_D]

Originally Posted by leebase

To my fellow forum participants all upset at the cost of ebooks. You seem to be under the impression that you matter. Well, you don't. You never did. You never paid $25 to $30 for a new hard back book. You used the library, borrowed from a friend, bought at garage sales -- or perhaps you bought the paper back when the really cheap mass produced version came out.

So -- continue on. Use the library. Buy from the remainder bin at Costco. Wait until your best friend reads the book she bought and then borrow it. Troll through the neighborhood yard sales and buy books for pennies.

You simply don't matter to the publishers and you never did. You have never supported the art and you never will. That's ok. There should be used books for the rest of your reading lifetime.

What you can't have -- and never could have -- are the first run desirable books at the price you are willing to pay. You didn't value books enough before ebooks to pay that price -- and you don't value them now. As such -- your opinion doesn't matter to publishers who cater to the millions of folks who actually pay the freight. They did before, and they will continue -- because they value the art enough to actually pay the price that the industry is willing to work for.

The rest of you can simply do whatever it is you always did. Heck, go ahead and steal books via whatever excuses you tell yourself is ok. It doesn't matter, because you don't matter. You never did.

Lee

Now that right there is funny!

[leebase]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

And those people will spend (in combination) a large amount of money at cheaper photographers. In total, do you think mall photographers or art photographers make more money?

Let me see if I can help you out. I am not denying there is a market for cheap books....and free books...and used books for cheap and free. It's just that no one is complaining much about cheap ebooks. So they are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

There are $500 wedding photographers and friend-with-a-camera wedding photographers. Yep. Sure are. But the $10,000 wedding photographer couldn't care less that the $500 customer think his $10,000 price is outrageous. Not one bit. Couldn't care. Doesn't matter. They aren't his customer.

Thing is -- Amazon for a time, subsidized popular new release hard backs such that the $500 wedding customer was getting $10,000 weddings. They liked that very much. Who wouldn't? Well, the guy selling the $10,000 wedding.

So the publishers gave Amazon a choice. Either allow the publishers to set the prices (agency model) -- or wait to get ebooks to sell months AFTER the "new hard back price window". You know, just like paperbacks have ALWAYS been.

A very reasonable proposition. Amazon choose to give those publishers pricing control instead of having no ebooks to sell at any price while Apple would have them for sale at the price the publishers wanted -- still cheaper than hard backs but more than paperbacks.

And OH the whining and moaning and swearing of vengeance! Oh the travesty, the INJUSTICE. What injustice? These customers, by and large, were NEVER the new popular hard back book customer in the first place. So their views on new book prices mean NOTHING to the publishers.

For a time Amazon gave them a taste of the "good life" -- but that was just Amazon buying up market dominance. I know it hurts with the teat is taken away, but truly, you need suckle no more. Merely WAIT -- AS ALWAYS -- for the "no longer so in demand" pricing.

The publishers DO care about such folks. That's why they have had cheaper editions that come out LATER. Just like movies. The publisher will happily take your money THEN. THEN you will matter.

Lee

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by tompe

They are making money bu a best selling hardcover makes much more money.

a) What about the evidence bit?
b) Of course a bestselling one will make more money. That is not the same as saying that in general publishers make more money on hardbacks than paperbacks. Which is what you said, after all.

It is the retailer that discounts. The publisher get the same amount of money regardless of the retailer's price.

Irrelevant to the point as to how many people are will to pay full price for hardbacks, if they are not actually paying full price.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by leebase

Let me see if I can help you out.

It would help if you had actually said what you now say that you mean, which is completely different to what you originally said.

Then:

To my fellow forum participants all upset at the cost of ebooks. You seem to be under the impression that you matter. Well, you don't. You never did.
[...]
You simply don't matter to the publishers and you never did. You have never supported the art and you never will.

Now:

The publishers DO care about such folks.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by leebase

Thing is -- Amazon for a time, subsidized popular new release hard backs

I assume you mean subsidized ebook versions of popular hardbacks.

They do also subsidize the hardbacks themselves, these are the current top selling 5 hardback books on Amazon, at around 50% of cover price.
Where is the outrage?

Decision Points
›George W. Bush
Hardcover
$35.00 $14.00

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth
›Jeff Kinney
Hardcover
$13.95 $6.94

Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1
›Mark Twain …
Hardcover
$34.95 $19.22

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and…
›Laura Hillenbrand
Hardcover
$27.00 $13.99

Life
›Keith Richards …
Hardcover
$29.99 $16.18

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

a) What about the evidence bit?
b) Of course a bestselling one will make more money. That is not the same as saying that in general publishers make more money on hardbacks than paperbacks. Which is what you said, after all.



Irrelevant to the point as to how many people are will to pay full price for hardbacks, if they are not actually paying full price.

Just because a book sells more copies doesn't necessarily mean it will make more money. How much money a book will make depends on profit margin times sales. A book with a low profit margin has to sell a lot more books than a book with a higher profit margin.

Generally speaking, you are correct, however.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Just because a book sells more copies doesn't necessarily mean it will make more money. How much money a book will make depends on profit margin times sales. A book with a low profit margin has to sell a lot more books than a book with a higher profit margin.

Generally speaking, you are correct, however.

Yes, you are right, I was being sloppy.
Put more precisely:
A bestselling hardback would be expected to have a higher proportion of publisher profits generated by the hardback edition compared to others editions than books in general. (Many (most?) of which never even have hardback editions.) That does not in any way provide evidence for the OP's claim that hardbacks make much more money for publishers generally than paperbacks do.

[Worldwalker]

Consider also that bestselling hardcovers are often discounted, sometimes heavily discounted, by bookstores as loss leaders.

With pbooks, the retailers have the choice to do that if they want. With cabal-published ebooks, that has been taken from the retailers. I don't like cartels.

And for every bestselling hardcover that makes a ton of money, there are at least a dozen that make a brief stop in the bookstore on the way to the remainder bin. That's a risk, by the way, that publishers don't take with ebooks: their "shelf life" is eternal, and there's no cost for production and, especially, returns.

A typical hardcover is a couple of inches taller, and about twice as thick, as the equivalent MM paperback. So in the horizontal space of one hardcover, the bookstore can pack two paperbacks; in the vertical space of four hardcovers (or fewer, if there are a few of those tall ones messing things up) he can pack at least five paperbacks. So if your typical MM paperback sells for $8, then the equivalent HC has to sell for $19.20 -- and sell as may copies -- just to make the same amount of money, assuming costs also track with space consumption. And that's selling just as many copies; people who buy two MM paperbacks for the same money aren't buying that HC, nor are people like me who long ago ran out of shelf space. The HC is often discounted; many stores advertise "10% off all hardcover fiction" or more. And it still doesn't sell as many copies as the MM paperback, whether because of cost, or size, or because people see fiction as disposable and don't want to pay high prices for it.

In a typical fiction section in a typical large chain bookstore, maybe 20% of any given area's fiction will be hardcovers. Why not 100%, if hardcovers are where the money is and paperbacks and their readers don't matter? Are bookstores so unaware of where the profits are? Are publishers deliberately publishing books they know are unprofitable?

Or ... just maybe ... is it just that only other artists care about "supporting the art" and the rest of us merely want a book to read?

By the way, over the years I've known many photographers. I've known a fair number of commercial photographers -- the kind who do senior photos, pictures for family greeting cards, and ordinary wedding pictures -- who made a very good living, sometimes even an exceptional one, from their work. I've never known an "art" photographer who didn't have to have another job (or a spouse with one) to make ends meet. The stereotype of the starving artist exists for a reason.

[bminata]

Ditto that.. I have several bookshelves full of hardcovers.. but there's no way in hell I'm willing to pay the same price for ebooks.

OK, charge ebooks at a slightly higher price (but still lower than hardcovers since ebooks eliminates all costs associated with physical hardcover books, and keep the bullshit that they're only a small percentage of the total cost to yourself) when they're new.. then lower the price once paperbacks are out.

Originally Posted by hpjrt

I never minded paying full price for hard cover books that were of great interest to me. I knew the cost of reading something "first" ... and chose those books accordingly. With other offerings, I was willing to wait the 8 months for the mass market version to come out.

Am I willing to pay the same price for a newly released ebook as I might be for a hard cover? Absolutely not. With an ebook, there aren't the costs of producing a hard cover. There's no paper ... no binding costs ... no shipping and no storage costs. In fact, theoretically, once the manuscript is input [and preferably proofread] it's a simple matter of bouncing the input version into various formats ... and you have an ebook.

The costs of producing a hard cover, of shipping a hard cover and of warehousing a hard cover dictate, in part, the cost of that hard cover. Without those costs, the publisher could charge less for the ebook and still make the same margin of profit and pay the author the same royalty. It's really a no-brainer ... and all the condescending diatribes you can muster can't argue with the cost savings of ebook production over physical book production.

Mary

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

ebooks: [...] there's no cost for production

Unless you add DRM. Adobe DRM gives a production cost of $0.22 per ebook.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Unless you add DRM. Adobe DRM gives a production cost of $0.22 per ebook.

Isn't that charged per sale, though, the same as, say, author's royalties?