Stars fall in Amazon protest about ebook prices

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by NVash

Have most of these publishers even realized the growing market with ebooks? Why is this such a problem? Cant they just go to the authors, pitch the idea to them and that be that?

They don't pitch to authors. They pitch to agents.

Setting aside the number of authors who'll be paying attention to Konrath and deciding to ditch publishers entirely for their backlists...

What's the publisher's pitch? "Let us release your backlist and we'll give you 15-25% of each sale?" That, they might go for. Except for the part that says, "If they get popular, you can't sell a movie script without giving us a cut. And you can't sell them at ebookstores we don't have a contract with. And you can't set the price of the book. And we retain the right to sell your book as an ebook for as long as we like."

Most pbook contracts expire after a book goes "out of print," which is defined as a certain amount of time after the last print run. Ebooks don't go out of print, so when does the contract expire and leave the author free to look for a better deal? If another publisher wants to offer a pbook contract, how does the author get the rights for that?

Publishers *are* seeking out some authors for backlist rights, but authors aren't automatically willing to hand them over. Maybe the author wants to hold out for a pbook re-release to go with the ebooks. Maybe the author wants a higher percentage than the publisher offers. Maybe the author wants to retain control of derivatives. Maybe the author's shopping around among publishers to see who'll offer the best deal.

As for the back catalog, I have no idea how many books will ever see the light of day as ebooks. Especially the books from publishers who no longer exist. How will they ever become ebooks? Is it even possible?

Of course! Copyright on those books expires 70 years after the death of the author, and then anyone can republish them!

[ypocaramel]

50 in some jurisdictions.

[NVash]

Yeah but by then who will care? Some books might stand the test of time but how many of the books that people know and love right now will? I think theyre more likely to be forgotten about.

[karunaji]

Originally Posted by tompe

But the main problem is that the process of publishing a book does not contain the final version in electronic format such that it would have been easy to archive it. The final version of the book was what was printed or the film for it.

Not relevant because the final PostScript sent to a film printer was generated from the final electronic file.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

And had to store those tapes in ways they wouldn't get damaged. Why bother, for the few titles that would ever be reprinted?

Exactly! Why bother if it doesn't increase their quarterly earning by 3 cents.

If you can find it. It's no longer available; InDesign is Adobe's current page layout program. So you have to import, hope that data isn't lost or hopelessly scrambled (if the original had special text boxes set up for layout purposes, they might wind up in the wrong places when it imports), and then sort out fonts & standard layout issues.

Do you want to imply that big publishers are totally inept regarding the core of their business? Or that technological barrier between now and 15 years ago is too great?

I don't believe this. Much simpler explanation is that they did not think in long term perspective.

Any small, independent press could certainly have been archiving its books & be able to reformat them fairly quickly. But for the big publishing houses, with hundreds or thousands of new releases each year--it wasn't economical.

Does it mean that big companies are less efficient than small ones? That small publishing company I worked 15 years ago had put selected books into a database (Folio views) and was selling it.

If anything, big publishers had considerably greater resources to experiment with ebooks many years ago even though the society and technology was not yet ready. In any case, it wasn't inconceivable that one day we are going to want ebooks. The very least what they could do was to keep backups. But it is no wonder that they didn't: big businesses tend to act irresponsibly.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Not relevant because the final PostScript sent to a film printer was generated from the final electronic file.

You missed the point. The important word was "process".

Do you want to imply that big publishers are totally inept regarding the core of their business? Or that technological barrier between now and 15 years ago is too great?

Typesetting the book is not the core of the business. And often that part is bought by the publisher from other companies. The core of the business is finding and developing new authors and selling all authors they publish.

Does it mean that big companies are less efficient than small ones? That small publishing company I worked 15 years ago had put selected books into a database (Folio views) and was selling it.

Well, it is not uncommon that big companies have processes that are hard to change and are inefficient.

[karunaji]

Originally Posted by tompe

Typesetting the book is not the core of the business. And often that part is bought by the publisher from other companies. The core of the business is finding and developing new authors and selling all authors they publish.

That's not how I see it. Finding authors is mostly done by agents and selling is achieved by big bookstore chains. It is the process of every business to acquire source materials and sell the final product. What distinguishes publishers from other companies is exactly their specific expertise to take an author's draft and turn it into appealing product, namely a book containing well edited text with illustrations etc. A publisher controls all aspects of their product, especially the characteristics of a physical book – size, cover, paper, font type and size, color etc. Whether it is actually done by their employees, contractors or freelancers, are minute details.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by karunaji

Whether it is actually done by their employees, contractors or freelancers, are minute details.

Not for the argument here. If you use different companies doing the typesetting it is not obvious at all that it is natural for the publisher to retain the source file the company doing the typesetting and printing used.

[speedlever]

Apologies if this has been linked before, but I just stumbled across this interesting read on ebook pricing from an author's perspective:

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01...le-via-amazon/

[leebase]

Originally Posted by speedlever

Apologies if this has been linked before, but I just stumbled across this interesting read on ebook pricing from an author's perspective:

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01...le-via-amazon/

One of the best articles I've read on the subject, thanks.

Lee

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by speedlever

Apologies if this has been linked before, but I just stumbled across this interesting read on ebook pricing from an author's perspective:

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01...le-via-amazon/

That article was from last April, when Cartel pricing was implemented. And didn't get a lot a accolades here, as I remember...

[leebase]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

That article was from last April, when Cartel pricing was implemented. And didn't get a lot a accolades here, as I remember...

I wouldn't expect it would.

Lee

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

So you wanna get specific, huh?

$10 cover price
$2.50 royalty
$3.30 retailer's cut
$4.20 is publisher's cut

If we ignore taxes, and conversion costs $10k, that's 2300 copies to break even. If conversion costs $7500, that's 1700 copies.


$5 cover price
$1.25 royalty
$1.50 retailer's cut
$2.25 is publisher's cut

$10k conversion is 4,444 to break even. It may be plausible that the book will sell twice as much at half the price, but it's hardly guaranteed.

Or, to look at it another way: Let's say you run Penguin, and you get your conversion costs down to $2000 per title. If you convert 200 titles, that's still going to cost you $400,000. (Or, let's say you hire a staff of 8 at $50k a year each, and each staffer converts 25 books per year). At the $5 price point, Penguin will need to sell 175,000 copies of those 200 titles just to break even.

Ya know, I see all kinds of numbers being thrown around in thread after thread, but hardly anybody ever documents where their numbers come from. So, where are you getting these prices/percentages from, and why should I believe them instead of the numbers on Joe Schmuckatelly's blog?

[MV64]

Originally Posted by Fabe

Ultimately we are paying for the value of the content, not the cost of the packaging. There is no reason what-so-ever electronic books should cost less or more than a hard or paperback edition. It comes down to what the market will bear.

Yes there is. As you and others so eloquently point out, we're not paying for the paper. But with a paperback book, you're not paying for content or value. A 3000 page book is about the same price as a 300 page. You're paying for all the costs that go into making that book.

Since those costs don't exist with e-books (and the costs that do exist are very, very low) we shouldn't be paying the same as a paper copy.

[speedlever]

Is there more work involved creating the ebook copy vs the pbook? There's certainly no more value in content between the two. The ebook is more convenient and has virtually no printing, packaging, shipping, or warehousing costs. You don't even need a physical presence (B&M store) for the public to buy it.

The only difference I see is that with ebooks, we're paying for convenience.

So no, I don't see any justification for ebooks costing the same or more than pbooks (as a newbie in the world of ebooks).

[tompe]

Originally Posted by speedlever

Is there more work involved creating the ebook copy vs the pbook? There's certainly no more value in content between the two. The ebook is more convenient and has virtually no printing, packaging, shipping, or warehousing costs. You don't even need a physical presence (B&M store) for the public to buy it.

For the ebook you also have searchability, more advanced way to handle annotations, support for book reading a book at the same time as friend reads it and sharing comments, and so on. It has much added value compared to paper books.

Then they also have DRM which removes all value from the book but that is another thing.