You don't matter - and you never did

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

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

When did I say it wasn't? Going from zero per-unit production cost to $0.22 per unit production cost is significant, especially as the charge is unrelated to the retail price of the ebook, unlike royalties.

[tompe]

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.

Well, boksellers claim it is their most important product:

http://www.booksinc.net/bestseller_price_wars

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestseller :

ot all publishers rely on, nor strive for, bestsellers, as the survival of small presses indicates. Large publishing houses, on the other hand, are like major record labels and film studios, and require consistent high returns to maintain their large overhead. Thus, the stakes are high. It is estimated that 200,000 new books are published each year in the U.S., and less than 1% achieve bestseller status.[7] Along the way, major players act as gatekeepers and enablers, including literary agents, editors, publishing houses, booksellers, and the media (particularly, publishers of book reviews and bestseller lists). In the U.S., the five major publishers—Random House, HarperCollins, Time Warner Publishing, Penguin USA, and Simon & Schuster—are responsible for about 80% of bestsellers;

You:

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.

The point was that it is not relevant for the publisher that retailers discount. And it is the publishers income we are discussing in this thread.

[Just4kix]

Don't forget the distributors and booksellers who take the biggest percentage of the selling price. A distributor will ask for 60% of the selling price and will probably offer the bookseller 40%. The author is likely to get 10%, or 8% if the book has illustrations and the illustrator also gets paid.
Having been published by mainstream publishers, self-published in print, and now published in e-book form, I find the e-book route is my preferred method.

[boxcorner]

Originally Posted by Just4kix

... I find the e-book route is my preferred method.

With, or without, DRM?

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Ankh

I am not sure that most of the participants will agree that the industry is the same thing as the art. Further, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a large number of us who would like to see "author, inc." paying editors and typesetters out of his pocket (bank loans for starting business?) and then distributing his ebooks directly from his web page.

Let me introduce you to Mr. Simon Royle, author of the Tag.
http://www.simon-royle.com/
He paid out of his own pocket for professional editor, typesetter, cover designer, copy editor and a few other services and in about 10 days he is starting to sell his book from his site.
He will also sell ebooks via Amazon and a few other places.

Oh ... and he is member of this forum ;-)

One more thing.
He does not call himself "author, inc.", but I&I press. Much better name, IMHO.

[murraypaul]

The point was that it is not relevant for the publisher that retailers discount. And it is the publishers income we are discussing in this thread.

The point that has been made several times is:

Is it REALLY so hard to understand that there IS a market for books over $20? That millions of such books are sold?

What matters is that millions of people ARE willing to pay the premium price.

But given that millions of books sell for more than $20 lets us know that the mass market price for new works is -- $20 or more.

My point is that they aren't paying that price. They are paying discounted (sometimes heavily discounted) prices.
Physical books (unlike eBooks now) have prices set by retailers. The list price is not the price that is actually charged.
A physical book with a list of $20 will actually cost less than an eBook with a list price of $20, and probably less than one with a list price of $15.
So it hasn't been shown that there is this mass demand at $20. It has been shown that there is demand at the price people actually end up paying. You can't then translate that into demand at a fixed $20 with no discounts.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

My point is that they aren't paying that price. They are paying discounted (sometimes heavily discounted) prices.
Physical books (unlike eBooks now) have prices set by retailers. The list price is not the price that is actually charged.
A physical book with a list of $20 will actually cost less than an eBook with a list price of $20, and probably less than one with a list price of $15.
So it hasn't been shown that there is this mass demand at $20. It has been shown that there is demand at the price people actually end up paying. You can't then translate that into demand at a fixed $20 with no discounts.

Well, I do not know how it works in the US. But in Sweden people pay $20 or more for hardcovers. Finding a hardcover for under $20 is not common.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, I do not know how it works in the US. But in Sweden people pay $20 or more for hardcovers. Finding a hardcover for under $20 is not common.

6 of the 10 top selling books on Amazon.com at the moment are hardcovers. Apart from one with a list of $14 and a price of $7, they all have list prices above $26, and all have discounted prices of below $20.
($35->$14,$14->$7,$35->$19.22,$29->$14,$27->$14,$30->$16.18,$35->$19,$26->$13,$28->$14)
Yes, a lot of people are buying these hardback releases. No, they are not paying full hardback release price. No, that does not translate into demand for the eBook versions at non-discounted list price.

[crich70]

Haven't read all the posts, but I do think the original poster missed one little point. It isn't always that a given person doesn't want to buy a copy of a given book, but sometimes that they can't afford to. I mean say a new Stephen King book (for an example) in hard cover costs $25.00 plus tax. So altogether maybe it costs $30.00 for the book. Doesn't sound like much does it, but say a person is on a limited income or having trouble making ends meet as far as keeping the important bills like Rent, Electric, Natural Gas and of course the Grocery bill paid. Things add up after all. So if they are struggling to keep the important bills paid are they really likely to spend $30.00 on a book? Not likely I'd say. Of course they want to read a good story just like the rich or at least well to do person does. So they go to the library or used book stores etc. hoping to find what they want at an affordable price. And there are a lot more average to poor income people in this country than rich ones. We hear on the news about tax breaks for the top 1% for example, which means there is around 99% of the population who aren't among that group. Also you can sell more copies of a product (book or otherwise) if you keep your price down. I mean what's better, selling 50 copies of a book or selling 5000? Oh sure you might make more $ in the short term with the high price product, but the more people can purchase it the more advertising you can get out there (i.e. have you read the newest Stephen King book, or listened to the newest CD by band X?). Publishers may do some promotion of a given book, but what really gets the word out about a given author is the people who read his/her works, and the more people read a given book the more such advertising there is out there.

[Taylor514ce]

Originally Posted by leebase

Ebooks by and large, are cheaper than hard backs by about the amount that credible sources tell us is the cost savings. But it's not good enough that an $18 hard back is sold for $14.99. Just listen to folks who swear vengeance against publishers if an ebook costs more than $9.99.

Those are the folks who never spent $25 for a hard back, who never supported the art. That they won't spend $12.99 to $14.99 doesn't matter because folks like them (including me) never mattered.

The people who pay are the only ones who ever matter. Just like as a photographer it doesn't matter to me if someone thinks $50 is too much for a professional print as such people simply don't value my art enough to pay for it. I spend my time caring about the folks who do care for and are willing to pay for art.

Lee

Can you please provide a source for your statistics? As someone who routinely purchases full-price hardcover books, rare editions and collectibles, as well as trade cover and paperbacks, but who refuses to participate further in the e-book market due to the protectionist pricing policies of publishers, I'm trying to figure out if I "matter", or not.

What you're doing is precisely what you decry: you're ranting. I doubt you'll find a single member here who "never spent... for a hard back". That being said, your posts... well, don't matter.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by kacir

Let me introduce you to Mr. Simon Royle, author of the Tag.

The pleasure was all mine. So will be one of the 250 copies of the First Limited Edition of the book.

Have some karma.

[simonroyle]

Originally Posted by Ankh

The pleasure was all mine. So will be one of the 250 copies of the First Limited Edition of the book.

Have some karma.

Wow. I hope you don't think of this as being churlish, but the pleasure was shared .

Something to tell your Grand children. You are the first person, ever, to buy a book I've written . If the fine line between being a writer and author is the act of money passing to the former to turn them into the latter, then you are the one to have pushed me across that line.

I hope you enjoy the story.

[dorino]

Capitalism, ho!

I just spent the past few hours playing Recettear, so do excuse me for posting this.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by leebase

Ebooks by and large, are cheaper than hard backs by about the amount that credible sources tell us is the cost savings. But it's not good enough that an $18 hard back is sold for $14.99. Just listen to folks who swear vengeance against publishers if an ebook costs more than $9.99.

Those are the folks who never spent $25 for a hard back, who never supported the art. That they won't spend $12.99 to $14.99 doesn't matter because folks like them (including me) never mattered.

...

Hm, I generally buy hardcover books, because they offer a significantly better reading experience than paperbacks, IMO.

But most of the time, I get my money's worth from hardcovers: they are generally well-made, well-designed and I can keep them forever on my bookshelf.

Ebooks currently are at best at the level of a mass-market paperback (most of the time ebooks are worse), with practically nonexistent typography, sometimes with typos, or weird formatting.

To boot, ebooks are DRM laden, in a variety of incompatible proprietary formats, which means that when I change my bookshelf (ereader), I have to re-buy all of them again. And really, without design, printing, distribution and storage costs, ebooks should be considerably cheaper than mass-market paperbacks.

Publishers can't have it both ways: they either have to provide a product which I can keep forever and transfer to my next ereader, whatever it is, and make that product good enough to be worth keeping, or they have to charge a lot less.

[SpiderMatt]

Originally Posted by leebase

Heck, go ahead and steal books via whatever excuses you tell yourself is ok.

Will do! I'm happy either way. I don't care whether or not I matter to publishers. I can find ways to get what I want for cheap and publishers can still find ways to make huge profits (a very temporary situation, mind you). Regardless, we both seem to be happy for now, so why all the venom in your post?