E-Refuseniks

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

<SNIP>
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.

Um... Except, of course, for the ones who are best-selling authors. Like Weber, and Flint, and Bujold, and Ringo (to name just a few who have hit the NYT best-seller list in recent years; there are others). Sure, they probably aren't commanding the advances and royalties seen by the folks who hit the very top of the best-seller list (except, perhaps, for Weber who's made it to #2 or #3 IIRC -- which I may not). But they certainly have authors who are "best-selling" in the normal sense of the word.

Xenophon

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Crusader

I can't see how ebooks could possibly cost only a small amount less than a paper book to produce and distribute. The costs of creating a physical copy would definitely be far higher than that of the ebook.

Ebooks should basically be seen as an added revenue stream. All the expensive work (editing etc.) would be done in the process of creating an actual print book. The ebook uses the digital version of that final manuscript and the cost related to distributing it digitally would have to be negligible.

I think the people to target with complaints are the authors themselves. In the end they stand to gain the most from having an effective distribution channel for their ebooks. They should have the right to decide how that distribution is done, and hopefully most of them will be more than happy to distribute their works to a global audience unlike the idiotic geo-restrictions the publisher slap on ebooks.

In accounting terms, you really have to 'charge' (in the cost accounting sense) each eBook sale for its pro-rata share of the fixed costs -- editorial, acquisition, author's advance, etc. If eBooks expand your market -- as has happened for Baen -- this has the happy effect of making the fixed costs become a smaller percentage of revenue. But those fixed costs don't go away. The only thing that eBooks avoid is the costs of printing and warehousing.

As for geo-restrictions... Those aren't just from the publishers, nor are they just from the authors & agents. Rather, they are an outgrowth of the history of the book market. When an author has already sold US rights to publisher A and commonwealth rights to publisher B, each of those publishers has a reasonable expectation (as a result of the contract!) that the other won't 'invade' their market. Unwinding the problem requires getting all three parties to agree -- which ain't easy. The overhang of existing contracts is largely to blame for the problem.

Xenophon

[kennyc]

I'm in full agreement Neil. I'm surprised the Atwood is that expensive. I got it for $12.xx I think from Sony not long after it was released.

I'm seeing if for $9.99 at three sites:

http://inkmesh.com/ebooks/year-of-fl...r+of+the+Flood

maybe the international is different, eh?

I think we need to continue to not only vote with our pocketbooks, but send emails and comments declaring why...

[jasonkchapman]

Besides, considering the size of Brown's advances, I'm not at all sure those books are earning out. We also haven't mentioned another cost factor that comes into play. With big-advance, high-profile books, one of the largest cost items is marketing and promotion--and it's a doozy.

[Lemurion]

I don't know the exact economics of the industry. What I do know is that current paperback prices are economically viable for books that are currently in paperback.

That gives me a ceiling. If the book's in paperback I won't pay more than paperback prices. ( I personally think ebooks should be somewhat cheaper - but I know the wastage involved in the mass market and the ability to sidestep that should more than cover the cost of creating e-versions. )

[bgalbrecht]

I blame the publishers. If you look at many older ebooks, the publisher released an ebook 5-10 years ago, priced it comparable to the hardback, or possibly trade paperback, and never changed the price even when a mass market paperback was released. By now, most, if not all of those editions are out of print, but the ebook is still available at the hardback or trade paperback price. For the publisher, this is a really great situation, they get a new burst in sales in basically dead books as the new ebook readers come to market and readers seek to replace older favorite books (or earlier books in series) in ebook editions.

You can tell that it's the publishers' fault when you check the 5 or 6 ebook retailers and see that the prices are all about the same, except maybe at Amazon, where it's usually priced at the mass-market paperback price if one is available. I don't know if this is because only Amazon is able to play hardball and makes the publishers accept a lower price, or if the other retailers just don't have the staffing to ask the publishers to double-check the pricing when there are lower cost print editions available.

[neilmarr]

Cover price is largely set according to retail discount. If he works at it, a publisher can sometimes get down to a 25% commission at an online store like Amazon (it's usually set around 40%). Discount/commission at a brick and mortar store can be anything from 40% to the massive 90% sometimes demanded by large supermarket chains.

Then, of course, the retailer can play with further discounting a publisher's goods himself -- suddenly you might find your books are being offered at 20% off cover price or even more.

On the other hand, a retailer will set his own higher price if he thinks he can get away with charging more. Whereas my own wee store can sell our ebooks at around 10% the price of the paperback equivalent, our outside retailers flatly refuse to sell them at anything much under two-thirds of paperback price.

Of course some publishers are greedy (which is counter productive in an emerging market), but the market itself is retail driven.

What's important to remember is that, unless a work is going straight to ebook, the cost of producing a title -- from editorial to promotion -- goes into the treebook. Conversion to digital to offer an ebook equivalent costs very, very little. After that, there are no production or distribution costs involved, just admin to cover, royalies to pay ... and retail.

Once upon a time, it was the printer with his powerful unions and syndicates who held the whip hand. Now it's the shopkeeper.

Until ebook sales signficantly impact treebook profits, there is no excuse for high cover prices on electronic editions.

These silly prices do nothing to encourage ebook reading -- perhaps that's what it's all about; the protection of an army of ancillary workers from packagers to delivery drivers. If so, it's very short sighted.

Whatever; ebook reading WILL eventually profit those who most deserve to benefit; the creators and the readers. Even this funny money can't stop the rolling snowball, just slow its progress.

Cheers. Neil

[Sweetpea]

We have a fixed book price (which doesn't go for ebooks as ebooks aren't books).

The publisher sets a price. And that's the price the book is sold for. No matter who sells it. You can't really play with price as book seller. This naturally only goes for Dutch books.

[Direct Ebooks]

As a small eBook retailer, I have no problem honestly laying out the pricing structures that are in place for us small fish.

Firstly, the publisher sets the Suggested Retail Price (SRP) of the eBook. Obviously, some publishers are more realistic than others! They then take 45-50% of this price no matter what. Some publishers take as much as 70%, based on their agreement, but 45-50 is the morm.

The Wholesaler takes 10% of the srp. They host, encrypt and deliver the eBooks.

The retailer is then left with approx 40-45% of srp. While this figure seems relatively ok, bear in mind a couple of things. Firstly, any discount applied to the eBook which is often neccessary and desirable from both the retailer and consumers point of view, comes directly out of the retailers share. Often this is neccessary just to counteract the publishers unrealistic pricing!
Also, as we are based in Ireland, we must pay VAT on our sales of 21.5% as well as the ususal associated costs, so as you can see, the margins get smaller and smaller.

We are working on a project that will enable authors and publisher to sell virtually direct to the customer, at 80-90% profit, which we feel is the way forward. By getting more of the pie, the publishers should be able to radically lower the price of eBooks while maintaining their profit - good news for all!

Any questions about the above, just shout!

[Jack Tingle]

Oh dear.

This is hauntingly familiar. If we screen out the clueless, who have no idea what it costs to make something and sell it at a profit, the discussion boils down to pro-rata pricing, vs. marginal pricing. The airline business has managed to lose all of their historical profit in a decade or so by chosing badly.

/Gross Oversimplification On: One school says, "Take all your costs and divide by the number of books you sell; that's your min. price." The second says, "What's the cost to produce of one more book?; that's the price of your most-difficult-to-sell copy. You sell the others for more." You then tack on your profit to either of them if you can.

The right answer is whichever one (or some combination) doesn't cause you to go out of business. Simple, no? Marginal pricing allows you to maximize throughput and avoid unsold inventory, thereby capturing all (or at least more) of your maginal costs. Pro-rata pricing may not capture the premium you can get for some fraction of your production, but you're not vulnerable to losses in normal times.

High competition can lead to you selling all of the product at the marginal price, with low profit, thereby going slowly and painfully out of business. Pro-rata pricing can lead to you being uncompetitive, and slowly losing volume, shrinking your business, while making ever-decreasing profits.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[nboshart]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

Of course some publishers are greedy (which is counter productive in an emerging market), but the market itself is retail driven.

What's important to remember is that, unless a work is going straight to ebook, the cost of producing a title -- from editorial to promotion -- goes into the treebook. Conversion to digital to offer an ebook equivalent costs very, very little. After that, there are no production or distribution costs involved, just admin to cover, royalies to pay ... and retail.

Yes, conversion is relatively inexpensive. Unfortunately, the ebook story does not end there. You need storage for your books and a good DAM system to distribute the books. You have to correctly manage the metadata for all of your books, including pricing, rights distribution, etc. And it can't be created in the same standard ONIX file as your tree-book, as it is a seperate ISBN with different sales, different territories, etc. Each format needs a separate ISBN, and if you're chunking your books and selling them that way, each section needs an ISBN.

And you need to proofread your conversion. I could go on. All I'm saying is it's not as simple or cheap as some perceive it to be. That being said, yes, ebooks cost too much, but they will go down.

As ebooks become more the norm, publishers will start working with an XML workflow that allows tagging for both print design and ebook design so the two can be created together. Overhauling your entire workflow is expensive, so publishers are charging more to cover their costs.

Both Shortcovers and Barnes and Noble offer a 50% split on ebooks. Amazon offers something like 70/30 in their favour. Brutal.

Anyway, it'll all pan out. Publishers are constantly debating eBook prices, and we'll see them settle around $12-$14.There's just a lot of production cost as they get going, so they're all trying to recoup right away.

Nic

[jasonkchapman]

Originally Posted by nboshart

And it can't be created in the same standard ONIX file as your tree-book, as it is a seperate ISBN with different sales, different territories, etc. Each format needs a separate ISBN, and if you're chunking your books and selling them that way, each section needs an ISBN.

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.

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by sony_fox

Don't just moan about it on here.

CONTACT PEOPLE.

I find providing a copy of the second hand book recepit tends to get their attention.


nboshart - Why? You can use DOI's, and even then Baen just use their own system because of the costs of a DOI per-SKU. At the end of the day, the books are still freely avaliable and you've eliminated a cost. The paper version still has a ISBN and you can use that for reference...

[nboshart]

@jasonkchapman It's interesting, apparently before 1991 there was no mention of digital rights in contracts, so a lot of that has to be renegotiated. Open Road Media, ex-Harper CEO Jane Friedman's new company, is taking advantage of this and basing her epublishing-centric house on this, obtaining rights and rereleasing digital backlist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/books/14fried.html

They plan to release 750-1000 books in their first year. Crazy.

[neilmarr]

The Wall Street Journal has what appears to be an interesting article on pricing here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...933592856.html

I'm afraid I can only raise the first four paragraphs or so through this link, but it does begin to address Sweetpea's point about fixed prices in Europe (excluding the UK). Perhaps one of our US pals can come up with the full piece. Happy weekend. Neil