Do Amazon and the Publishers want to Kill Digital Sales ?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Back to the pricing argument, it's usually just a temporary pricing artifact because the retailer may have sales on the print material for several reasons, including clearance sales, that causes the ebooks to be more expensive than the print editions but eventually the price of ebook ends up at or below the price of the cheapest print edition.

That is not how it is playing out in the US since Agency Part Deux took effect.

BPH Ebook retail prices went up and are fixed, with no discounting.

Pbooks remain wholesale and Amazon is discounting them regularly and not just for promotional or clearance purposes. Rather, it is a strategic move they are making to take advantage of the enforced higher margin on BPH ebooks to increase their share of the BPHs' business, thereby making them even more dependent on them.
(Yeah, the opposite of what the BPHs claim they intended.)

Since Amazon is less dependent on BPH ebook sales than their competitors they now have three ways to win:

1- if the high BPH price drives the buyer to cheaper, non BPH ebook, it reduces BPH sales but not Amazon's; they keep the sale.

2- if the high BPH price drives the buyer to print they will find the cheapest price at Amazon. This lets them retain the sale when the buyer switches from ebook to pbook, unlike Apple, Google, and Kobo, who only sell ebooks. The net result is Kindle owners stay with Amazon regardless of which edition they get but epub buyers have to either pay the higher price or go elsewhere for the print edition. It weakens their ebook competition without Amazon having to do a thing.

3- if the buyer is willing to swallow the higher price... Cha-Ching! More money for Amazon.

All the reports on the matter indicate that virtually all the increased pbook unit sales for BPHs in 2015 came through Amazon. So the increased pbook discounting will continue indefinitely. They are sitting pretty.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by darryl

And you're right, of course. Like another poster I can name, sometimes silence is golden.

I can name another poster too, but at least he is a source of amusement.
This one isn't particularly funny. And isn't particularly good at making himself The Funny either.

[issybird]

A reminder that people are to mind only their own manners.

[whismerhill]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The ebook business is doing fine without government meddling.

There is no aspect of the business that can be improved by dragging in idiot politicians (and certainly not the matters that concern the OP) but plenty of aspects they can mess up. Ergo, any government action will be a net negative. So, hands off.

Seriously, what is government going to do, force people who prefer print to stop buying pbooks? If ebooks are a good fit to people's needs, they'll adopt them on their own. If not, they'll stick to dead tree pulp. There is no social good being served there. Again, hands off.

ha ! xD
that's interesting
Well to start with an example
In france and unlike lots of other countries in the world, where Audio CDs price is "free" to be set by the retailer, Audio CDs are the same as ebooks, that is : publishers set the price of Audio CDs
this means that the Audio CDs business in France is absolutely not competitive. retailers can't compete with each other... And when the market doesn't work out, instead of trying to see why it doesn't work, they blame piracy exclusively.

I am just thinking governments could throw this up & force publishers to stop this practice so the retailer has the choice to sell at the price they wanted.
Now this is just an example, I have no idea how doable it would be, nor what the result would be. Just something I came up with in the spur of the moment

And really I wasn't even thinking that when I first wrote about how "green" ebooks are compared to pbooks.

[whismerhill]

So apparently I offended some people.
I believe my tone & intent was badly misinterpreted but that's the beauty of the internet.
Either way, sorry guyz, if you'd let me apologize.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by whismerhill

So apparently I offended some people.
I believe my tone & intent was badly misinterpreted but that's the beauty of the internet.
Either way, sorry guyz, if you'd let me apologize.

But of course.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by whismerhill

I am just thinking governments could throw this up & force publishers to stop this practice so the retailer has the choice to sell at the price they wanted.

And really I wasn't even thinking that when I first wrote about how "green" ebooks are compared to pbooks.

And you think publishers are just going to sit there and take it passively?
Instead of going out and buying themselves a bunch of legislators to block such a law/regulation? (Which, btw, they have already done in many nations.)

As for the green-ness of ebooks vs pbooks that topic is debatable and is occasionally debated around here. It isn't as clear cut (ahem) as it appears at first glance. Just as the ecological merits of electric cars you need to look at the entire system that produces and supports the product (in this case ereaders, phones, and tablets) to determine whether there is a real decline in environmental impact or merely a shift or (like with carbon taxes) an export of pollution.

The law of unintended consequences loves good intentions.

[MGlitch]

And just what should the price of an ebook be? Should established and popular authors ebooks be cheaper since they're more likely to sell more? Or should they be priced higher and new authors be priced lower? How would the government ensure that the pricing systems they create would allow for new authors to grow as a viable means to make a living?

If you think the price of an ebook is too high, don't buy it. If enough of the market agrees with you, the price will eventually be adjusted. If not, then there are other (legal) options available to you, which would allow you to read the book.

[Lemurion]

The amount I'll pay for a book (p or e) depends on how badly I want it and nothing else. Both forms have advantages and disadvantages, and my preference depends on the way they play out.

In general, ebooks have two huge advantages over pbooks for me. 1) I can adjust the font so I can read it easily, and 2) I can buy and read the book from home at any time without worrying if the store is open or has it in stock.

Someone else may not value those factors as highly as I do, but they matter a lot to me. I find mass market paperbacks almost unreadable, so saving $1.07 by ordering the latest Star Trek novel in paperback rather than Kindle format is a net loss for me. It's just too hard to read to justify the savings.

I know there's the argument that functionality like font changing and search belong to the ereader rather than the ebook, but there isn't an ereader on the planet that will let you change the font on a paperback.

It's worth more to me to buy ebook than a paperback, whether it is to anyone else or not.

[Cosimo]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Nope. The ebook itself, is more valuable to me than the pbook. Period. The device is not responsible for all the added value.

The device isn't what allows me to back up copies that will last forever. The device isn't what allows me to edit an ebook and change the formatting in whatever manner I see fit.

The device is a sunken cost. I can't unbuy it. So given that I have a device that I already own: I'm willing to pay the same or a little bit more for the ebook than the pbook, because I don't want the pbook. At. All. The ebook is my preference which makes it inherently more valuable to me. I don't care what something I don't want costs compared to something that I do.

I feel the same.

I have no interest in buying pbooks and I don't care if there is a price difference between a pbook and an ebook. If Kobo has the books I want, I buy them. If they don't, I add them to a list and check again later.

[MGlitch]

The argument of which brings the feature, the ebook or ereader, is moot. The feature is now a part of reading an ebook regardless of where that feature originates from.

Ebooks for me have advantages which vastly outweigh the disadvantages. They won't fall apart, they take zero physical space, if there are typos I can either edit the ebook or wait for the publisher to reissue a corrected file. Or both. I set the font, and various other typographical settings. I can read anytime anywhere thanks to the front light. I can make notes and highlights without damaging the book

The disadvantages are waiting until release day even if the print edition has already shipped to stores. And I need to charge the ereader, of course given that I can't read 24 hours of every day and the lengthy battery life of ereaders this isn't a big issue.

[Manabi]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Pbooks remain wholesale and Amazon is discounting them regularly and not just for promotional or clearance purposes. Rather, it is a strategic move they are making to take advantage of the enforced higher margin on BPH ebooks to increase their share of the BPHs' business, thereby making them even more dependent on them.

If the BPHs want to remove the stranglehold Amazon has on them (which is, as you note, their own fault), the best thing they could do would be to get rid of DRM on eBooks. This would enable more competition between eBook stores, since it would no longer matter where you bought your book. Want to buy from Apple but read it on your Kindle? No problem, no DRM to strip and easy to convert. Want to read eBooks bought from Amazon, but don't have any app that'll read MobiPocket or AZW format? No problem, no DRM to strip and easy to convert. (And yes, I realize that there's probably a Kindle app for everything, including your toaster, but it's just an example.)

The recording companies did something similar to help loosen Apple's stranglehold on music sales. They dropped DRM and let Amazon (and others) open music stores selling non-DRM'd tracks. It helped a lot, although they waited too long and it was too little, too late for them. Unfortunately I suspect the same will happen with eBooks. The BPHs will eventually realize they need to do this to increase competition, but it'll be far, far too late to help them much.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

If you think the price of an ebook is too high, don't buy it. If enough of the market agrees with you, the price will eventually be adjusted. If not, then there are other (legal) options available to you, which would allow you to read the book.

Well that's the problem. The BPHs, using agency pricing, are demanding that they set the prices even if the market won't buy them. Sales go down? Blame it on piracy, never on prices being too high. So definitely don't buy it if it's too high, but don't expect the prices to be adjusted as they would in a sane market.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

And just what should the price of an ebook be? Should established and popular authors ebooks be cheaper since they're more likely to sell more? Or should they be priced higher and new authors be priced lower? How would the government ensure that the pricing systems they create would allow for new authors to grow as a viable means to make a living?

If you think the price of an ebook is too high, don't buy it. If enough of the market agrees with you, the price will eventually be adjusted. If not, then there are other (legal) options available to you, which would allow you to read the book.

Or one other option: buy a different book.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Manabi

If the BPHs want to remove the stranglehold Amazon has on them (which is, as you note, their own fault), the best thing they could do would be to get rid of DRM on eBooks.

(Snip)

The BPHs will eventually realize they need to do this to increase competition, but it'll be far, far too late to help them much.

It may already be too late for DRM-free to help.

Having neutered interactive epub in the larger, more mature markerts, the BPHs fostered walled garden ecosystems which, quite naturally, are evolving into distinct, proprietary formats. DRM isn't the only thing keeping iBooks from being opened in Kindles. Take away DRM and the incentive to differentiate the formats with "enhancements" goes up. The likeliest scenario would be similar to what is now playing out in game consoles where both Sony and Microsoft built their current gen consoles off similar cpus and gpus, which makes it relatively easy to port games back and forth but prevents interoperability so the two ecosystems remain separate.

A second problem is the "tyranny of the installed base" where the majority of the existing mature markets is already commited to one ecosystem or another.

The time for DRM-free was late 2010-early 2012 precisely the period during which ebooks became maibstream in the US/UK and agency was effectively steering consumers towards Amazon.

At this point getting people to willingly abandon their vendor of choice requires a big incentive in either features or pricing. Both approaches would be expensive on the publishing side and far from a certain success.

At this point all they can do is grin and bear it at least until the current contracts expire.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Should established and popular authors ebooks be cheaper since they're more likely to sell more?

Or should they be priced higher and new authors be priced lower? How would the government ensure that the pricing systems they create would allow for new authors to grow as a viable means to make a living?

The latter is what is increasingly happening in the Indie ebook space: a lot of successful indie authors are practicing stair-step pricing, especially with series titles. Starting out low and steadily increasing prices on latter books. (Of course, the "high" priced books top out at half BPH pricing; usually $4.99-5.99.)

The idea there is that price is a function of risk and familiarity. Readers will be more likely to take a chance on an unknown through a lower-priced book than a higher-priced one. (That is one function of Kindle Unlimited, after all.) Once the reader sees the author as a known quantity, they are willing to go somewhat higher.
In fact, the effect of pricing on traditionally published debut authors has been so strong it has become an actual point of discussion among publishing circles.

https://janefriedman.com/4-lessons-publishing/