The ebook windowing controversy has subtext

[JSWolf]

The thing is, I don't buy hardcovers. So why should I be penalized? I feel hardcovers are a major rip-off.

[Lemurion]

I read these articles and there's one glaring factor that always seems to be missing: and that's consideration of mass market paperbacks. Applying a delay to ebooks so that they come out between hardcover and paperback won't affect people who are using ebooks to replace paperbacks - though the ebooks may get lost in the shuffle by not being tied to either dead tree release. Applying the delay to ebooks of mass market paperback originals will simply kill sales: why buy an ebook for significantly more than the paperback cost when you may have already bought, read, and traded the paperback in at a used bookstore?

The real killer for ebooks in the long term is going to be pricing and availability. No one can buy an ebook that's not legally available, so any time the ebook isn't available is going to lead to lost sales whether it's through people obtaining the book from the darknet or simply buying a book that is available in place of one that isn't. As for price, in order for ebooks to succeed with all their limitations they can't be more expensive than dead tree - and that's too often the case. I'm not talking suggested retail either - the real price of most new hardcovers is about $18 - not the $25 SRP - because that's what people really pay for them.

Another problem is the value disconnect between publishers and consumers. Most publishers appear to think the value proposition of an ebook is the same as that of a hardcover and this disconnect is going to bite them. Hardcovers are generally perceived as being worth more than paperbacks because of the physical format (easier to read and more durable). Ebooks don't have this advantage; the ebook of a hardcover is no different than the ebook of a paperback.

Hardcovers are collectible reading, paperbacks are disposable reading - and ebooks are much more like paperbacks than hardcovers. People buy hardcovers for more than the content, not so with paperbacks and ebooks. Early release doesn't make up for that, especially when it's delayed in comparison to the hardcover.

None of these schemes are going to succeed in the long run as long as publishers fail to consider what consumers value.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by AprilHare

We're not all attached to Amazon; why should we all suffer this totally unjustifiable delay?

See the earlier comment about contracts. The publishers probably can't delay the ebook release only for Amazon. The contracts likely specify that if they release an ebook, they release it to all] retailers they have a relationship with.

Mind you, I'm not sure delaying release only to Amazon if they could would have a desirable effect.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

I was talking specifically about maintaining accounts on the private trackers, and you cannot track volumes on usenet. And, um, Grokster? Sorry, you're quite litterally years behind the status-quo if you think that's still even remotely relevant today - it entirely died four years ago, and was surpassed well before then.

True, Groxster was a poor example. I was thinking of P2P networks that aren't torrent based, using things like eMule.

You can know that it's instead of a legal copy when no legal copy exists.

Assuming you know no legal copy exists. Discovering that can take time and effort.

And I wasn't just thinking of the "no legal copy". I was thinking of the cases where there is a legal ebook copy for sale, which someone has stripped of DRM and made available through file sharing. Or, for that matter, the cases where there is a legal ebook copy, but also a pirated edition based on a scan of the paper book.

As mentioned, the key question is "What is the impact on sales of people who download a read a pirated electronic copy instead of buying a legal one?" Assuming every illegal download equates to a lost sale is open to large questions.

There are a small number of horders, but they're basically insignificant except insofar as they seed everything.

Agreed.

It's really not that hard!

Not that hard is relative. For an individual title, it's one thing. For a full publisher's line, collecting the data might be a chore.

I don't believe so from the statements Baen have made over the years. But if they replace hardback sales at 1:1, so what? The money involved is higher for Baen and the author for eARC's than a hardback (and it's months earlier)! I for one tend to wait and pick up the final ebook later rather than *any* paper version.

Is it really? I haven't spoken to any of the Baen folks in a bit, but I believe they make rather more from a hardcover sale than an ebook sale.

Indeed, the Baen Free Library was started entirely to promote the dead tree editions, and Baen credited the Free Library with driving their metamorphosis from a struggling mass market publisher to a thriving hardcover house with a 70% sell through rate. In an email some time back, Baen stated he did not see pure electronic publishing as a source of profit at the time.

Fortunately, he's been proven incorrect in that assumption: Baen makes more money from the Webscriptions program than they do from all foriegn sales.

But I don't think Baen would be happy if hardcover sales dropped to 0 and were replaced by ebook sales.

And why, precisely, wouldn't their model work for any fiction publisher? Oh, some academic press publishers and so on might find it dosn't work, but they'd be better looking at offering a service rather than a fixed book in the first place.

I'm not talking about just fiction publishers. I am talking about all publishers.

Baen is to some extent a special case. They are an independent publisher who is manufactured, marketed, and distributed by Simon and Schuster, but they are not an S&S subsidiary. They have far more freedom to make their own policies and innovate in their sales and marketing methods.

Tor is a full subsidiary of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck in Germany. Tor is part of Macmillan in the US, and Macmillan is un umbrella including Farrar Straus and Giroux, Henry Holt & Company, W.H. Freeman and Worth Publishers, Palgrave Macmillan, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Picador, Roaring Brook Press, St. Martin’s Press, Tor Books, and Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishing Group.

But Tor was an independent who sold themselves to Holtzbrink when CEO Tom Doherty foresaw increasingly difficult times in publishing, and decided being part of a bigger, better heeled organization was a wise idea. Tor seems to have a fair degree of autonomy, and is being used by Holtzbrink as a test bed for new ideas and innovations.

Most other fiction publishers are imprints of larger companies whose lines include non-fiction, and who lack that freedom.

This is not one-size-fits-all. Assuming Baen's model will work for all publishers, or even all fiction publishers, is extremely optimistic.
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Dennis

[DawnFalcon]

You're confusing two things.

"Will it work"
and
"Can we do it"

It'll work. Just because they can't do it because of the corporate structures they themselves set up is their own business and one which, as ever, their customers will be remarkably insensitive to. And bluntly, if they can't adapt and die that's their problem - there's no evidence that books as a whole will go down the pan with them.

To the rest, I was simply addressing the points you'd made. The situation they're causing is that clear cut and easy to track, isn't it.

[fugazied]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Instead of creating a window which will encourage pirating, it would make more sense to me to promptly release eBooks in the formats of the cooperative retailers, and let Amazon hang by their thumbs for four months.

Absolutely.. If I know that a publisher is with-holding an ebook for no reason or holding off on certain formats, I'm not going to rush out and buy the hardcover. I'm not going to wait 2 months for the ebook. If I REALLY want it, I am going to visit a site with pirate in the title and they will probably have a copy or scan. If I didn't find it essential, I just won't buy it if it's not available in ebook format.

It's a great strategy for publisher who want to lose sales and flip the bird to Amazon, that's about it.

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by AprilHare

We're not all attached to Amazon; why should we all suffer this totally unjustifiable delay?

Have you been reaping any benefits from Amazon's pricing even if you don't buy Kindle books? It seems to me that Amazon set the bar and other retailers have been lowering their book prices to compete.