Penguin Upsets Kindle Owners

[abookreader]

Thanks for the Teleread link. I find this to be a very interesting remark from the Publisher

What remedy for competition do you see on the horizon except competition from others who, like Amazon, have an agenda unrelated to publishing? Namely Apple and Google. Retailer-set pricing is a formula to ultimately eliminate publishers and reduce writers’ incomes.

Well first "reduce writer's incomes ... Well okay. That is a whole different discussion which I don't necessarily agree with. Some authors will certainly find reduced income, especially those who receive 5 figure advances and then produce a book which doesn't earn out. Many others will see income growth.

It's the eliminate Publishers part that caught my eye though and gets to the heart of what I think many of the large Publishers really fear. When Publishing reaches the tipping point where digital sales overwhelm print sales (and I believe that will happen), what will Penguin's role in the whole process be?

I think that question scares the pants off of many of them.

[GeoffC]

I don't see why the publishers should be overly worried, I doubt printing will go out of fashion any time soon (if at all). All the publishers need to do is move into this Century instead of languishing with old ideas and business strategies.

[Worldwalker]

Retailer-set pricing is a formula to ultimately eliminate publishers and reduce writers’ incomes.

That's funny, it hasn't done that yet in however many centuries of retailers setting their prices for pbooks.

Ebooks themselves may eliminate publishers, but only if those publishers are stupid and keep trying to insist that all automobiles carry a mandatory buggy whip instead of retooling to make leather seat covers and dashboard trim.

The publishers are used to being in control. They're used to being able to dictate terms to authors, to retailers, to consumers ... to everybody. They're used to competing only with each other, and only on the basis of how good they are at picking books that can be marketed effectively. They're used to one of the major, if not the major, influences on the sales of a book being how much marketing they choose to put behind it.

Now they're looking at a world in which anyone with a word processor can self-publish with little more effort than I'm expending on writing this forum post. They're looking at a world in which competition is no longer a genteel matter between them and their fellow publishers but a cutthroat battle with everyone who has a book to sell. They're looking at a world in which authors' websites, social networking, automated recommendations, and word of mouth (or word of forum) can have more of an influence on a book's sales than publishers' marketing campaigns. In short, they're looking at a world in which they actually have to compete in an open market, a world in which they have to actually add value to their product rather than just controlling the existence of that product, and they're scared (stuff)less.

So they've got two choices from here: One, they can learn to compete, really compete. They can learn to add value to their product. They can use their tremendous resources to make better ebooks, and give authors, retailers, and readers a reason to do business them instead of with J. Random Author with his book and his website and his "buy with PayPal" button. Or, they can form cartels, spew propaganda, threaten and bully and lie, to try to stop or reverse progress and go back to the environment they're familiar with, the one they've evolved to exist in: that past world where turning a manuscript into a book required a multi-million-dollar company instead of just a copy of Sigil, where getting that book into a reader's hands required first getting it into thousands of physical bookstores instead of merely uploading it to Smashwords.

Looks like they've chosen option #2.

In the short term, they might even pull it off. Buggy whip manufacturers might have, had they organized like publishers, made buggy whips mandatory on automobiles, too. But only in the short term. In the long term, someone's going to look at all those cars driving around with buggy whips and say "What were we thinking?" Then they'll no longer be mandatory -- and other companies, smarter companies, will already be dominating the market for leather seat covers and dashboard trim, leaving no room for the old buggy whip companies at all.

What a waste.

What a shame.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

That's funny, it hasn't done that yet in however many centuries of retailers setting their prices for pbooks.

Centuries? Remember net book price? And going from bookshops to a shop selling a thing that happens to be a book have started to change things the recent years.

So they've got two choices from here: One, they can learn to compete, really compete. They can learn to add value to their product.

They add a lot of value just by the selection and the process of making the author write better.

They can use their tremendous resources to make better ebooks,

Which tremendous resources? You are not talking about the publishing industry the last 20 years at least.

[Fbone]

Maybe publishers should have the same system movie studios have with Netflix and Redbox. A 28-day window period when a new release is available for rental to increase DVD sales.
Publishers can offer the print and e-book at similar prices for a length of time before discounting. Those anxious to read can purchase or wait until price reduced.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by tompe

Which tremendous resources? You are not talking about the publishing industry the last 20 years at least.

So NewsCorp et. al. don't have resources then?