Publishers still missing the point on e-book prices

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

ETA: For comparison, my ending decon is 20,000 words. My book is 60,000 words (without decon, so my "extras" are the size of 1/3 of my book.

I'm not even cool enough to understand that.

[HarryT]

What's a "decon"? The compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary appear to be unaware of the word.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by HarryT

What's a "decon"? The compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary appear to be unaware of the word.

Sorry. My shortening of the term "deconstruction". I type it a LOT and so I start shortening it and then forget that I'm in a different audience.

If you've ever read Fred Clark's several year long deconstruction of the Left Behind books, or if you've read my Twilight or Narnia deconstructions, that's what I mean. My novel is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale and there's a long decon at the end about the themes in the original work. Which was originally written as a feminist tale arguing that women should have the right to choose their own marriage partners, interestingly enough.

[HarryT]

Thanks. Hadn't come across that before.

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Let me ask those people who think that eBooks are too expensive a question:

The standard price for a paperback book in the UK is £7.99 (about $12.30); that's what you'll pay in any physical bookshop.

What would you consider to be a reasonable price for the corresponding eBook, assuming it to be nicely formatted, error-free, etc?

Just because that's the standard price (list, discounted, what?) doesn't mean any individual consumer thinks that is a fair price. Everyone has their own utility curve. Personally, that's too damn high for a couple of hours of entertainment. However, if we're talking Wheel of Time length novels for $12.30, then we have a deal.

Tangent: I've noticed that I prefer longer and longer books with the switch to ereading.

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Seriously, as long as most consumers display similar inflexibility over prices, I don't see how publishers can satisfy them anyway. If they drop the price, there will always be those who insist it be lower. As I said before, this is a 2-way street, and consumers can't just barricade their end.

Yes, they can. The consumers have the money, and everyone else is trying to convince the consumer why they should spend those limited funds on THAT product. The consumer can simply decide that they don't care enough about books to buy any this year. They can substitute entertainment with internet forums, TV, video games, theater movies, plays, etc. There are many goods/services all vying for the same money and time. Netflix at $7.99 a month for all-you-can-watch streamed movies is a much better deal, or many other goods such as free books from your local library.

It is the SELLER's responsibility to convince as many consumers as possible to buy their good/service. It is NOT the consumer's responsibility to spend money because someone else wants it.

It's about time the publishers and associated authors remembered ECON 101.

[EscapeVelocity]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Sorry. My shortening of the term "deconstruction". I type it a LOT and so I start shortening it and then forget that I'm in a different audience.

If you've ever read Fred Clark's several year long deconstruction of the Left Behind books, or if you've read my Twilight or Narnia deconstructions, that's what I mean. My novel is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale and there's a long decon at the end about the themes in the original work. Which was originally written as a feminist tale arguing that women should have the right to choose their own marriage partners, interestingly enough.

Not just marriage partners, but to act on their animal sexual attraction.

Sexual Revolution!

[EscapeVelocity]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

It is the SELLER's responsibility to convince as many consumers as possible to buy their good/service. It is NOT the consumer's responsibility to spend money because someone else wants it.

It's about time the publishers and associated authors remembered ECON 101.

Bravo! MovieBird!

They pricing scheme should be $1 to $3 for a one time read. That will be enough for many people....and you would make profits on increasing the volume of sales, whilst production costs would remain near zero (just the first typeseting/formatting plus whatever security software costs for DRM. No books to print ahead of time in the hopes of selling them. You reduce your possible loss downside (losees due to over production of books which do not sell is non-existent), run your costs of production way, way down (no paper or other physical production costs), and then increase volume by dropping the price, to an afterthought.

But alas...

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've just paid £8.85 ($13.60) each for four James Herriot Kindle books, simply because I've been waiting for an eternity for them to appear as eBooks, and I'm willing to pay that much for them because they are such wonderful books. For some completely inexplicably reason, the fifth book in the series was a much more modest £5.31.

I may just have to follow you up on that . Didn't know there was a fifth book. Was there another line in the hymn verse that I don't know about?

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Bestseller print lists are made by sales to distributors, not customers; returns are not considered.

Bestseller ebook lists at Amazon are calculated using free samples downloaded in addition to sales; getting a few hundred people to download a sample will cause a spike in the numbers--the thousands who download samples of new advertised books will drive highly-advertised books up the charts.

Bestseller NYTimes ebook lists refuse to count self-published books that are a substantial portion of popular ebook sales.

I'm not saying it didn't sell, or didn't sell well--just saying that "top of the charts" is a matter of publicity and hype as much as it's a matter of copies sold.

And yes, there are plenty of people who'll pay those prices. Those aren't the majority of readers. Stross pointed out that 75% of an author's fans--readers--never contribute financially to the author. The majority of readers don't buy new books full price, and the big publishers are oblivious to them as a viable market for ebooks, because our purchase levels are below their sales point.

Doesn't mean we're not purchasing; we're just not purchasing their wares.

With all due respect, a fan who isn't willing to buy an author's book isn't really a fan, IMO. Note also that Stross doesn't set his prices for his books arny differently than anyone else.
Publishers are certainly aware that people buy books used and borrow them from the library, but so what? No business sets new product prices based on used product prices. I can get a used car for the fraction of what a new car costs, but if I walked into a new car lot and demanded that they sell me a new car at the used car price, I'd be laughed off the lot.
The fact that the markets are clearing at the prices that the publishers are setting is an indication that the publishers are (mostly ) getting it right. If they get it wrong, then the ebooks won't sell and the publishers will be moving to "paperback" and promotional prices.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Let me ask those people who think that eBooks are too expensive a question:

The standard price for a paperback book in the UK is £7.99 (about $12.30); that's what you'll pay in any physical bookshop.

What would you consider to be a reasonable price for the corresponding eBook, assuming it to be nicely formatted, error-free, etc?

The thing is, with a pBook, I can get discounts and sales. I cannot with agency eBooks. So if the eBook and pBook are priced similar enough, I can get the pBook for less.

I know the agency publishers did this so Amazon could not discount any of their eBooks. But that does make it unfair for the eBook buyer.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I may just have to follow you up on that . Didn't know there was a fifth book. Was there another line in the hymn verse that I don't know about?

The final book is called "Every Living Thing". It was the last book he wrote, shortly prior to his death.

[EscapeVelocity]

It's not unfair to the ebook buyer, but merely lost sales accepted by the publishers.

The real issue here is cutting out the unnecessary huge middle men. It will take some time to trim the industry back to effecient levels.

Prices of real books will climb. Prices of ebooks will fall.

Middle managers at Random House will disappear. Self publishing and small operation eBook formatting businesses will flourish.

The same is happening in the music industry.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Let me ask those people who think that eBooks are too expensive a question:

The standard price for a paperback book in the UK is £7.99 (about $12.30); that's what you'll pay in any physical bookshop.

What would you consider to be a reasonable price for the corresponding eBook, assuming it to be nicely formatted, error-free, etc?

Paper books used to cost $7.99 here, now not so much (expect maybe on Amazon).

I am willing to pay the same price for an ebook that I would for a paperback book, but I am not willing to pay more for an ebook than I would for a paperback book.

I will not pay more than $9.99 for either (which is up from my initial $7.99 cap from a year ago), and I do not buy hardcovers.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Bestseller print lists are made by sales to distributors, not customers; returns are not considered.

Bestseller ebook lists at Amazon are calculated using free samples downloaded in addition to sales; getting a few hundred people to download a sample will cause a spike in the numbers--the thousands who download samples of new advertised books will drive highly-advertised books up the charts.

Bestseller NYTimes ebook lists refuse to count self-published books that are a substantial portion of popular ebook sales.

There was an article a year or so ago that explained how the NYT determined their bestseller lists. Sorry I don't have the link. Basically, it said they count customer purchases from the cash register only in their lists. They stopped using the distributor method due to fraud. They have quite a few different merchants reporting sales. Besides bookstores I remember grocery stores, drug stores, warehouse clubs, dept stores listed. A few online retailers also.

The problem with self-published titles they noted was that it was still too easy to defraud or "fudge the numbers" and they do try to be as accurate as possible. An author/publisher can purchase their own titles from their own website and report 10,000 sales. And with many thousands of publishers and authors selling direct, quality control would be difficult. In any case, the list would probably be similar to Amazon's anyway.

[TechnoCat]

Originally Posted by stonetools

With all due respect, a fan who isn't willing to buy an author's book isn't really a fan, IMO. ... No business sets new product prices based on used product prices. I can get a used car for the fraction of what a new car costs, but if I walked into a new car lot and demanded that they sell me a new car at the used car price, I'd be laughed off the lot.

True, but it misses a few details.

• I can be a fan of Porsches without ever buying one.
• And I can be a fan of Porsches while owning a more expensive and generally higher-performing car (which I am)
• I can buy a Porsche (or other car), use it for a while, and resell it, reducing my cost-of-ownership to a depreciation value much lower than the initial cost.

I may be a fan of an author but unwilling to pay, e.g, $30 for that author's newest tome. I might be willing to pay $12 for it in paper, but unwilling to pay $8 for it in ebook form, because...

• Paper is still a bit more magical, and certainly more tangible, than an ebook.
• I can more easily lend out the paper.
• And I can, if desired, resell it. (Typically at a 75% depreciation, but none-the-less, even then it becomes less expensive than the single-user ebook.)

But the reality is actually a bit different. I consider roughly $2 for an Android app and $3 for an ebook the impulse level, doesn't require any consideration. Then there's the slight-consideration range, sliding up to around $8, beyond which there are too many options for the ebook to meet my personal sense of fair value, mostly because at that point it's usually more expensive than the paper.