Lee Child - BBC Newsnight interview and discussion on The Passive Voice.

[crossi]

Originally Posted by ApK

I believe there are several benefits to eBooks over paper that are perfectly reasonable to expect the market to pay for if they want those benefits, like cloud access, loss replacement, instant delivery, etc.

Ebooks offer value to those of us who want them, and I don't see any problem with the sellers charging for that value.

The publishers aren't supplying those things. Amazon is. The publishers don't manufacture the ereaders, supply and maintain the servers and support staff that make those things possible. They just do a one time upload to Amazon. Amazon bears all the remaining expenses. And the publishers don't guarantee that those benefits will continue if Amazon stops supplying them. They don't even guarantee that if the store you buy the ebook from folds they will make available a download of your paid for but no longer downloadable ebook. Now if Amazon said they needed to add to the price of ebooks to pay for their expences there would be some justification. And don't talk about the publishers servers. They already had those to handle billing and payrolls, adding ebook downloads to Amazon wouldn't add even pennies to the mix.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ApK

I believe there are several benefits to eBooks over paper that are perfectly reasonable to expect the market to pay for if they want those benefits, like cloud access, loss replacement, instant delivery, etc.

Offset by by the ability to loan or sell your books, being able to read your books without having to buy an ereader, being able to read your books when the battery is drained on your ereader, etc.

I'll give some examples of pricing at B&N:

The Escape -- David Baldacci

• $14.00 - hardcover (50% discount)
• $14.99 - ebook

Nonsense! The ebook should sell for $12 or less.

The Heist -- Daniel Silva

• $16.95 - hardcover (39% discount)
• $13.99 - ebook (22% discount)
• $8.09 -- paperback (due Jan 2015)

Again, ridiculous. The ebook should sell for $7.09 or less.

Bad example - I didn't notice that the paperback won't be released until Jan 2015.

The ebook should be $1-2 cheaper than the least expensive paper book currently being sold. If only hardcovers have been released, then ebooks will cost more. Once paperbacks hit the market, then ebook pricing should drop accordingly.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Offset by by the ability to loan or sell your books, being able to read your books without having to buy an ereader, being able to read your books when the battery is drained on your ereader, etc.

I'll give some examples of pricing at B&N:


The Heist -- Daniel Silva

• $16.95 - hardcover (39% discount)
• $13.99 - ebook (22% discount)
• $8.09 -- paperback

Again, ridiculous. The ebook should sell for $7.09 or less.

The ebook should be $1-2 cheaper than the least expensive paper book currently being sold. If only hardcovers have been released, then ebooks will cost more. Once paperbacks hit the market, then ebook pricing should drop accordingly.

The paperback isn't available until January 2015.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Fbone

The paperback isn't available until January 2015.

Thanks; I didn't see that. Then the ebook is priced appropriately and shouldn't drop until the paperback is released next January.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Offset by by the ability to loan or sell your books, being able to read your books without having to buy an ereader, being able to read your books when the battery is drained on your ereader, etc.

I'm glad you mentioned that, because I wanted to argue with the person who brought it up the AvH thread, but I don't feel like posting there any more.

So:

Bull! The choice to by an reader has nothing to do with authors or publishers, and they do not have to adjust their price accordingly.

1. An reader is not required. At all. You can read on a PC or on a phone or on a tablet. All of which you purchase rightfully for your own reasons with it's own value proposition, and with no influence on the price of content.

2. Even if a reader was REQUIRED, unless there was some direct deal between the reader sale and the content sale, it's not reasonable to count the reader in the cost. For example, you might have case for associating the price of Amazon Instant video with the price of Fire, but you have no case for associating the price of a Kindle with the price of a book from Baen.
Similarly, movie studios need not care what you paid for your DVD player.

3. We don't even a tax or license fee on readers like the UK does on TVs for paying for content production.

On the contrary, the benefits you say you "paid for" in the cost of the reader are worthless if the publishers do not publish content, so unless you also want to spend time and effort OCRing and formatting your paper books, which would add a heck of a lot more in cost unless your time and equipment was worthless, there is still every reason in the world to pay for that value in ebooks.

[Barty]

I'm going to play Devil's, I mean, publishers' advocate here. There is a thread on MR about pbook vs ebook and it seems many people here hardly read any pbook novel anymore. Rare is the person who reads even half of novels on paper. I haven't read any pbook novel in years. I'm a special case since I'm handicapped and ebooks are just so much easier for me to deal with. However I suspect most people like the convenience regardless of needs. If ebooks are priced the same as hardcovers when new and paperbacks when released, I think most e-reader owners will keep right on buying them. The cost does not matter (ebooks have upfront costs too, it's the marginal cost that is zero). It's not how much it costs the publishers, it's not even the market value or resale value or sentimental value or whatever, it's how much it's worth to YOU.

I think the publishers should be free to price books however they please, set the same price for all sellers if they want, and see what happens with their sales. It's not like they have virtual monopoly like the cable companies.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Barty

I'm going to play Devil's, I mean, publishers' advocate here. There is a thread on MR about pbook vs ebook and it seems many people here hardly read any pbook novel anymore. Rare is the person who reads even half of novels on paper. I haven't read any pbook novel in years. I'm a special case since I'm handicapped and ebooks are just so much easier for me to deal with. However I suspect most people like the convenience regardless of needs. If ebooks are priced the same as hardcovers when new and paperbacks when released, I think most e-reader owners will keep right on buying them. The cost does not matter (ebooks have upfront costs too, it's the marginal cost that is zero). It's not how much it costs the publishers, it's not even the market value or resale value or sentimental value or whatever, it's how much it's worth to YOU.

I think the publishers should be free to price books however they please, set the same price for all sellers if they want, and see what happens with their sales. It's not like they have virtual monopoly like the cable companies.

I think that is exactly right. If they price too high and sales suffer, then authors should be taking notice, and considering seeking out different publishers who's pricing policies are more in their interests.
The times, they are a'changing', what with self-publishing growing like it is, authors may want to consider escape clauses come contract renewal time.

That notwithstanding, we can still express a preference for lower prices, and certain business decisions might still warrant complaints, or even boycotts from consumers, or the occasional prosecution by the Justice Department.....

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ApK

I believe there are several benefits to eBooks over paper that are perfectly reasonable to expect the market to pay for if they want those benefits, like cloud access, loss replacement, instant delivery, etc.

Originally Posted by ApK

I'm glad you mentioned that, because I wanted to argue with the person who brought it up the AvH thread, but I don't feel like posting there any more.

So:

Bull! The choice to by an reader has nothing to do with authors or publishers, and they do not have to adjust their price accordingly.

1. An reader is not required. At all. You can read on a PC or on a phone or on a tablet. All of which you purchase rightfully for your own reasons with it's own value proposition, and with no influence on the price of content.

2. Even if a reader was REQUIRED, unless there was some direct deal between the reader sale and the content sale, it's not reasonable to count the reader in the cost. For example, you might have case for associating the price of Amazon Instant video with the price of Fire, but you have no case for associating the price of a Kindle with the price of a book from Baen.
Similarly, movie studios need not care what you paid for your DVD player.

3. We don't even a tax or license fee on readers like the UK does on TVs for paying for content production.

On the contrary, the benefits you say you "paid for" in the cost of the reader are worthless if the publishers do not publish content, so unless you also want to spend time and effort OCRing and formatting your paper books, which would add a heck of a lot more in cost unless your time and equipment was worthless, there is still every reason in the world to pay for that value in ebooks.

1- anything you read an ebook on is an ereader (phone, computer, tablet, etc). It's an additional expensive if you don't have such a device.

2- nor is it reasonable to count in services provided by the retailer - cloud access, loss replacement, instant delivery, etc.

3-

And not as expensive as the costs associated with the production of paper books.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by crossi

The publishers aren't supplying those things. Amazon is. The publishers don't manufacture the ereaders, supply and maintain the servers and support staff that make those things possible. They just do a one time upload to Amazon. Amazon bears all the remaining expenses. And the publishers don't guarantee that those benefits will continue if Amazon stops supplying them. They don't even guarantee that if the store you buy the ebook from folds they will make available a download of your paid for but no longer downloadable ebook. Now if Amazon said they needed to add to the price of ebooks to pay for their expences there would be some justification. And don't talk about the publishers servers. They already had those to handle billing and payrolls, adding ebook downloads to Amazon wouldn't add even pennies to the mix.

Exactly

[ApK]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

1- anything you read an ebook on is an ereader (phone, computer, tablet, etc). It's an additional expensive if you don't have such a device.

But there is no logical or rational connection to your purchase of those devices to what the price of the content should be.

It's perfectly reasonable to say "I won't pay x for a book, because I blew my budget on a reader. So I will shop for cheaper books."

That's the same as saying "I spent a lot on a new TV today, so I'm not going to get buy a bunch of PPV movies this month, I'll watch free TV instead."

It's not reasonable to say "Publishers, your prices should be lower because I spent a lot already on my reader" any more than it's reasonable to say "PPV provider, your prices should be lower because I bought a new TV."

That's all well and good.

You bought a PC to do computing stuff and post on Pintrest, you bought a phone to make calls and play Angry Birds. Reading is a free feature there. There is no case for lower prices of ebooks. You want a dedicated e-reader? That's your choice, not a requirement that should drive ebook prices down. It neither diminishes, nor compensates for, the value-add of having the content to use on it.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by crossi

The publishers aren't supplying those things. Amazon is. The publishers don't manufacture the ereaders, supply and maintain the servers and support staff that make those things possible. They just do a one time upload to Amazon.

And if they didn't do it, you'd have a reader from Amazon with no content but fan fiction and books you scan and OCR yourself.

There is value in the product the publishers are offering, in the format they are choosing to offer it, which has every right to have whatever price the market will bear, regardless of the costs associated with producing it.
The content adds value to the purchase of the device, the purchase of the device does not take a away value from the content.

[crossi]

Originally Posted by Barty

I think the publishers should be free to price books however they please, set the same price for all sellers if they want, and see what happens with their sales. It's not like they have virtual monopoly like the cable companies.

I think the publishers should be able to set any WHOLESALE price they want for the ebook. Any price at all, even if it is so ridiculously high no one would buy it like $100 for a harlequin novella. But they should have no say at all in what the retailler sells it for as long as they receive the full wholesale price. Let the retailer give the book away as long as the publisher gets it's money if that is what the retailer wants. If the retailler wants to pay the publisher $100 for every book they give away the publishers should be delighted. If they want to stop this, for some weird reason, they could always raise the wholesale price to $200 and get twice as much, or $400 or $1000. Whatever. Eventually the retaillers couldn't afford to give away any more.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ApK

But there is no logical or rational connection to your purchase of those devices to what the price of the content should be.

Just like there's no logical or rational connection to include services not provided by the publisher - "cloud access, loss replacement, instant delivery, etc".

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by crossi

I think the publishers should be able to set any WHOLESALE price they want for the ebook. Any price at all, even if it is so ridiculously high no one would buy it like $100 for a harlequin novella. But they should have no say at all in what the retailler sells it for as long as they receive the full wholesale price. Let the retailer give the book away as long as the publisher gets it's money if that is what the retailer wants. If the retailler wants to pay the publisher $100 for every book they give away the publishers should be delighted. If they want to stop this, for some weird reason, they could always raise the wholesale price to $200 and get twice as much, or $400 or $1000. Whatever. Eventually the retaillers couldn't afford to give away any more.

I wholeheartedly agree with that

[ApK]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Just like there's no logical or rational connection to include services not provided by the publisher - "cloud access, loss replacement, instant delivery, etc".

If the publisher did not make and offer an ebook version of the book, then you could not have those feature for the book, unless you spent a great amount of effort making it yourself.
Logical, rational, QED, check the gate, moving on.