Waterstones and ebook prices

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Adele Ward

The minimum price we could charge for an ebook while paying the author a royalty, the online seller a commission of at least a third, and even if we took nothing ourselves, could work out at more than the lowest price from an Amazon marketplace seller.

I think that in your calculations you're neglecting the (fixed) postage cost that's added to orders from Amazon Marketplace sellers.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by MoodRing

I have noticed that whilst paperback prices are falling ebook pricing are rising, but why as they are more avilable than ever?

It's either people are super obtuse, or greedy, or both. Anyone knows the difference between a 500-ishK digital file and a book that requires ongoing materials, storage and manpower to create. Publishers have to be aware that people just aren't that thick.

A digital file just copies itself forever and ever ad infinitum. The work is all front-loaded pretty much - done. I wish I had some magic beans that did that with the stuff I create, but I had to go and get good at yarn crafts. If someone takes a snowflake Christmas tree ornament I crocheted, its taken. Another one isn't sitting right there as if no stock had moved. I have to get my fingers and tiny thread and make another one. Because one = one. Not an infinite amount.

[Adele Ward]

It actually takes publishers more time to work on an ebook than they are getting back in income at the moment. I know there are exceptions to this, but the sales of ebooks mostly don't pay back the time invested in selecting an author, editing them, working with them for months or up to a year on the book, then the close edit, designing the book and cover, sending it out to a proofreader, designing the ebook and producing it and promoting it. Although we bring out ebooks as well as a print book, it actually takes me as long to edit it again because I re-edit the whole book each time there's a file conversion. A professional publisher can't have a book with typos. I also send it to a proofreader again. We redesign it because the design of a print book doesn't work as well as an ebook as paragraphs, section breaks etc, work in a different way on a screen. At the moment we really can't cover the amount of time we have to put into editing and producing an ebook by selling them, but it's important for the authors to have their books available as Kindles so we do it. It's easy to be cynical about publishers, but most do work while struggling to break even because they believe it's important to keep publishing outlets open. Publishers and bookshops are closing. It isn't a business rolling in loads of money from ebooks. A good edit is something many authors really want and it's incredibly time consuming. I'm certainly not earning enough from ebooks to pay for the time I'm putting into them and I'm sure many publishers are in the same position.

[Adele Ward]

Authors often don't estimate the number of sales a publisher makes in an accurate way because the news stories are about the bestsellers. I have close contacts in publishing who tell me most debut novels with a major publisher sell about 500. Most other books sell between 1,000 - 3,000 copies. When you think a book needs to sell more than 450 copies to start breaking even you will see that it's not the easiest business to make money in. The major publishers do have the bestsellers and they have the ebooks that are selling well too. But the publishing industry as a whole has many publishers working at break even levels, and even for the large publishers many books make a loss or just about break even. Ebooks do take work. They aren't just easy files to upload that are the same as the print book. And, contrary to rumour, publishers do have a team of editors and proofreaders working on each book, and use this team again when it's converted to ebook format.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Adele Ward

Although we bring out ebooks as well as a print book, it actually takes me as long to edit it again because I re-edit the whole book each time there's a file conversion. A professional publisher can't have a book with typos. I also send it to a proofreader again.

Well, to be brutal, your process isn't very good then, is it?
Those are costs incurred by the current process you are using, not inherent to producing an eBook.

[Adele Ward]

There are no shortcuts to doing a good edit on a book. A good editor and publisher will work with an author in a way that may well not be cost effective. It makes no difference whether the end result is an ebook or a print book. This is the expensive part of the process. The lengthy time spent working with the author and working on the edit.

Publishers do take all of the financial risk by putting all these hours in when working with an author. They take the financial risk of the print run too, not knowing if it will be recuperated in sales. But the real cost is the amount of time spent working with the author while they're writing their books once their on the list, and working on the edit.

This is why there isn't really a big difference in cost betweeen ebooks and print books and why the prices are so similar.

People are mentioning costs they feel make a print book more expensive to the publisher, but they aren't really how publishing and bookselling work. It feels very similar to me to be selling a print book or an ebook. The fact is that the print book also goes straight from the printer to a wholesaler who warehouses it because bookshops and online sellers want to buy from a wholesaler. The books are registered on the Nielsen database and all online booksellers update from that from a feed.

Whether people buy a print book or an ebook, this is all automated - with an ebook it's downloaded, with a print books the order goes to the wholesaler and it's posted out. Either way the middle men take a commission - we don't pay for warehousing, they take a commission. It's very similar how Amazon and others take a commission for ebooks. In fact Amazon take a larger commission at times. They take 65% from the sale at times.

So from the publisher's point of view, the amount we get from the sale is very similar. And the real expense is in the amount of time we invest in work with each of our authors. You may find that not cost effective but you can't rush a good book, and authors want a good edit.

It's not cost effective that the publishers take all the financial risk, and invest in time. Even bookshops tend to buy on sale or return from the wholesalers. But this is how it's done. It's surprising to me that people want to criticise publishers so harshly for the cost of ebooks.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Adele Ward

There are no shortcuts to doing a good edit on a book.

There are shortcuts to not doing the same edit twice though.

Whether people buy a print book or an ebook, this is all automated - with an ebook it's downloaded, with a print books the order goes to the wholesaler and it's posted out. Either way the middle men take a commission - we don't pay for warehousing, they take a commission. It's very similar how Amazon and others take a commission for ebooks. In fact Amazon take a larger commission at times. They take 65% from the sale at times.

There may be some situations where the commission is that high, but the standard for ebook platforms is now 30%, no?

[Adele Ward]

You need to look closely at the conditions for commission on Amazon. They give themselves a lot of ways that more than 30% commission can be taken. This is affecting us as we do have sales to Australia and other countries that fall into these categories. I'm guessing it's Australia that's affecting us at the moment but there will be others. For sales to Australia it seems they always take 65%. You can see the full list of countries where they pay 70% and for all other countries it's 65%. That's a large number of countries. They also have a clause that says they can lower the commission if there's a competitive price offered elsewhere for the book.

You don't do the full edit twice - the whole editing process actually lasts for months as publishers work with an author, so that part doesn't have to be repeated. But a professional publisher will have at least two people doing a close proofread after work has been done on a book, and particularly after a file conversion such as an ebook. Various typos and other errors will creep in during an ebook conversion and they don't show up as they can seem like correct spellings. For a professional book all sorts of other details also have to be correct. Some publishers do use proofreaders who are particularly experienced with ebooks as they know some of the main errors to watch out for - you'll know some of the ones that creep in with each type of conversion. But you do have to read the whole file. One good thing with ebooks is that you can change them if an error shows up later, but really you don't want to have mistakes in a book you're selling.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've certainly seen no evidence that eBook prices are rising. Do you have any figures to support your viewpoint?

I certainly do!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

I certainly do!

Would you like to share them with us?

[Blue Tyson]

http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/ha...by-blue-tyson/

For one.

[elcreative]

But that's Australia... there's rather more to the world than one small group in the southern hemisphere... Seriously, it tends to look like charging smaller national groups is on the increase but larger groupings are tending to stabilise...

[Blue Tyson]

Yes, but even if the prices everywhere else are the same (and they are not, from 2009) book prices on average have still gone up!



It is entertaining that it is the English doing it,too. The country that Australians are probably most likely to give the middle finger to and get it for free. ;-)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

It is entertaining that it is the English doing it,too. The country that Australians are probably most likely to give the middle finger to and get it for free. ;-)

Do you believe that it's justifiable to illegally download a book, simply because you consider it to be too expensive?

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Adele Ward

You need to look closely at the conditions for commission on Amazon. They give themselves a lot of ways that more than 30% commission can be taken. This is affecting us as we do have sales to Australia and other countries that fall into these categories. I'm guessing it's Australia that's affecting us at the moment but there will be others. For sales to Australia it seems they always take 65%. You can see the full list of countries where they pay 70% and for all other countries it's 65%. That's a large number of countries. They also have a clause that says they can lower the commission if there's a competitive price offered elsewhere for the book.

You don't do the full edit twice - the whole editing process actually lasts for months as publishers work with an author, so that part doesn't have to be repeated. But a professional publisher will have at least two people doing a close proofread after work has been done on a book, and particularly after a file conversion such as an ebook. Various typos and other errors will creep in during an ebook conversion and they don't show up as they can seem like correct spellings. For a professional book all sorts of other details also have to be correct. Some publishers do use proofreaders who are particularly experienced with ebooks as they know some of the main errors to watch out for - you'll know some of the ones that creep in with each type of conversion. But you do have to read the whole file. One good thing with ebooks is that you can change them if an error shows up later, but really you don't want to have mistakes in a book you're selling.

It seems to me that ebooks without errors are few and far between. At least among those that I have read. Most common are typical OCR errors (1 instead of l, for example). Missing spaces. And those are books from the big 6. So apparently they are not taking their ebook editing jobs very seriously. Mistakes are much less common in pbooks.