Yet another thumb of the nose from publishers

[sassanik]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

You are assuming the publishers got LESS from Amazon for the Kindle version of the books than they did the HB version. If that is the case then I can see your point, but I don't believe this is so. I could be wrong. Amazon pays contracted price per Kindle version sold, no matter how much Amazon sells to the public for.

Amazon currently pays out 70% of the cover price on ebooks to the publisher, which I imagine is MUCH better than the margin on the HB. (note PD books only pay out 30%)


Amy

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

But pricing is always "What the market will bear". If the retailer can get enough sales of an item at a particular price to meet their targets and make the desired amount of money, they'll charge that price. The fact that you don't like it is your problem. Enough other folks don't think it's a rip off to keep retailer and producer happy.

Really?
I don't think think Waterstones are happy. I think they are seeing Amazon simply taking the market away from them by charging prices people are willing to pay. They either match that or become irrelevant. It is Waterstone's problem, not mine, I'm buying from Amazon.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by brecklundin

ABSOLUTELY dead on right...I do not understand the people who feel a product priced at some amount beyond their comfort zone immediately go to the "rip off" card. Having been in the business of buying and selling since I was just 7-yrs old, so 43-yrs ago now...I accept and understand that a product is worth what someone is willing to spend. There is no such thing as a retailer "ripping someone off" when they have a set retail price....EVER.

I'll post my price checks again:
Steven Fry's new autobiography is £6.30 Amazon for the Kindle version. At Waterstones it is £14 for the ePub.
Tony Blair's new autobiography is £7 for the Kindle version. At Waterstones it is £15 for the ePub.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is £2.68 Kindle at Amazon. At Waterstones it is £5.50 for the ePub.
Eat Pray Love is £3.11 Kindle at Amazon. At Waterstones it is £8.85 for the ePub.

I think the majority of consumers, if told that store B was charging more than twice as much as store A for an equivalent product would decide that store B was attempting to rip them off, and would not only shop at store A instead for this product, but would form an adverse opinion of store B and be less likely to shop there in the future.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Really?
I don't think think Waterstones are happy. I think they are seeing Amazon simply taking the market away from them by charging prices people are willing to pay. They either match that or become irrelevant. It is Waterstone's problem, not mine, I'm buying from Amazon.

I'm quite sure Waterstones aren't happy.

Retailing is a brutally competitive business, and one principal area is competition on price. Part of "What the market will bear" in terms of pricing will be determined by the actions of retailers.

Waterstones is in a position to people like Barnes and Noble or Borders in the US. They are a "brick and mortar" chain, whose principal trade is in paper books. One of the challenges for such chains is the competition posed by online retailers like Amazon who don't have a chain of retail outlets, with the associated overhead. Another is how to sell ebooks, and create a continuing engagement with the customer. They'll be happy to sell ebooks, but they also want reasons for the customers to visit the stores.

You buy where you can get things cheapest, and so do most other folks.

The issue this thread deals with is how much customers are willing to pay for an ebook, and that's not entirely under the retailer's control. As the Agency Pricing move demonstrates, the publisher can set a minimum price the retailer has to charge. This is not unique to publishing or ebooks. You'll see instances of it all over, and moves by vendors to enforce price discipline. This isn't simply producer greed - if your products are sold primarily through retail, and you have an established authorized dealer network, you want to support and preserve that network, and this will include moves designed to lessen retailers using cutthroat pricing to drive other dealers out of business. As a producer selling through retailers, that sort of strife in the dealer channel is not in your best interest, and retailers who behave that way may find themselves dropped from your authorized dealer network and not allowed to resell your products.

As the report quoted upthread points out, customers were willing to pay higher prices for popular ebooks. They paid them for the same reason they buy a hardcover instead of waiting a year for the PB release - they want the book now, and will pay a premium to get it.

Another poster mentioned his experience with Hachette, who were deliberately pricing ebooks a couple of bucks higher than the corresponding paperback release. Hachette is betting that people want ebooks enough that price will not be the determining factor, and that they'll pay a premium to get the electronic edition instead of the cheaper paperback. There are certainly enough folks on MobileRead doing their best to go all ebook, who don't want a paper volume, to make it an interesting question. If you want the book, and only want an electronic edition, will you pay a premium to get it, will you break down and buy the paper book to get the lower price, or will you simply forgo the book?
______
Dennis

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I'll post my price checks again:
Steven Fry's new autobiography is £6.30 Amazon for the Kindle version. At Waterstones it is £14 for the ePub.
Tony Blair's new autobiography is £7 for the Kindle version. At Waterstones it is £15 for the ePub.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is £2.68 Kindle at Amazon. At Waterstones it is £5.50 for the ePub.
Eat Pray Love is £3.11 Kindle at Amazon. At Waterstones it is £8.85 for the ePub.

I think the majority of consumers, if told that store B was charging more than twice as much as store A for an equivalent product would decide that store B was attempting to rip them off, and would not only shop at store A instead for this product, but would form an adverse opinion of store B and be less likely to shop there in the future.

I'm thinking Amazon is selling some below cost as they did in US before agency pricing to gain market share.

[geertm]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I'll post my price checks again:
Steven Fry's new autobiography is £6.30 Amazon for the Kindle version. At Waterstones it is £14 for the ePub.
Tony Blair's new autobiography is £7 for the Kindle version. At Waterstones it is £15 for the ePub.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is £2.68 Kindle at Amazon. At Waterstones it is £5.50 for the ePub.
Eat Pray Love is £3.11 Kindle at Amazon. At Waterstones it is £8.85 for the ePub.

I think the majority of consumers, if told that store B was charging more than twice as much as store A for an equivalent product would decide that store B was attempting to rip them off, and would not only shop at store A instead for this product, but would form an adverse opinion of store B and be less likely to shop there in the future.

WH Smith
Top 100 e-books usually -50% now -60%
Tony Blair GBP 10.22 (Amazon 7.00)
The girl with the dragon tattoo GBP 3.20 (Amazon 2.68)
Eat Pray Love GBP 3.76 (Amazon 3.11).

I wonder why WH Smith tries to compete with Amazon, while Waterstones does nothing. Perhaps Waterstones is hoping that Hachette succeeds in forcing bookstores to accept the agency model?

[Freeshadow]

Dennis, well since Elfwreck spoke of 20-30 years I answered keeping this in mind.
I never meant to state the same true for sources from the Linotype era, when typesetting meant feeding a machine with lead and the only backups were hardcopy or microfiche.

the guy who assured me RTF is still (i.e. I'm aware of the status slowly passing) regarded pretty universal is working as a typsetter himself. his argument was, it's known as export or conversion format by pretty every text editor, and imported both by by quarkxpress which was for years the leading piece of soft in this field, as well as by the adobes. he also pointed out docfiles are everyones creep, due to inter version and plattform differences.

your example portraying the lifecycle of 70+ years on from creation up to now is far beyond what i answered to. but apart from that my kudos to said company for what they do.

In case of the really old stuff I'm softening my point to "if the still have copyright for that the might have taken care about media transition of backups at least in 15y cycles, what would lead to having digitized tapes with a file format still readable now.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If you want the book, and only want an electronic edition, will you pay a premium to get it, will you break down and buy the paper book to get the lower price, or will you simply forgo the book?

buy the cheaper pbook, and make the ebook myself? Unlike the other way round, there are no additional material costs like there were when making an own print of an e-edition.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

buy the cheaper pbook, and make the ebook myself? Unlike the other way round, there are no additional material costs like there were when making an own print of an e-edition.

This assumes you are someone who can do that. But even if you are, what value do you place on your time?

I could create my own ebook from a paper copy, but doing it properly takes time and effort. Assuming the publisher's ebooks are created to decent levels of quality, I'd consider it worth my while to spend the extra couple of bucks over the PB price for the electronic edition. If I'm going to go through the effort of creating an ebook from a paper copy, I'll do it for a paper book that doesn't have an available electronic version.
______
Dennis

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by geertm

I wonder why WH Smith tries to compete with Amazon, while Waterstones does nothing. Perhaps Waterstones is hoping that Hachette succeeds in forcing bookstores to accept the agency model?

If you need epub format you cant shop at Amazon. Do Sony and Pocketbook owners even look at Amazon?
I dont think WH Smith and Waterstones necessarily compete against Amazon but they do with each other. Waterstones are pricing themselves out.

They are very sensitive to the costs of ereaders other than the kindles as the more epub readers sold the more business they'll receive. An expensive PB or Sony hurts them tremendously.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Dennis, well since Elfwreck spoke of 20-30 years I answered keeping this in mind.
I never meant to state the same true for sources from the Linotype era, when typesetting meant feeding a machine with lead and the only backups were hardcopy or microfiche.

I didn't think you did, but it's still a factor.

And forget about the publisher for a moment: does the author have an electronic file? I just answered a question elsewhere from an author who has electronic files she can't read: they were created in MS Word 2.0. Word 2003 won't open them.

This was actually MS trying to do folks a favor by blocking potentially harmful content that might have been included in older Word documents, and they subsequently admitted they over-reacted and post instructions online on re-enabling Word 2003 to open the files, but that didn't help her at the time.

the guy who assured me RTF is still (i.e. I'm aware of the status slowly passing) regarded pretty universal is working as a typesetter himself. his argument was, it's known as export or conversion format by pretty every text editor, and imported both by by quarkxpress which was for years the leading piece of soft in this field, as well as by the adobes. he also pointed out docfiles are everyones creep, due to inter version and platform differences.

He's quite right about the advantages. RTF files are pretty universal, in that a number of things can read and write them. The problem is that they aren't universally used. As mentioned, publishers all expect Word files.

And even if everyone used RTF, that gives you a readable backup for the manuscript. It does not give you a useful backup for the marked up, typeset version that will be used as the source file for the actual book, paper or electronic. You don't want to recreate that from scratch.

your example portraying the lifecycle of 70+ years on from creation up to now is far beyond what i answered to. but apart from that my kudos to said company for what they do.

Oh, mine as well. I was aware of John Deere as a quality brand, but I wasn't aware of their commitment to service and support of really old gear.

But the key is that with XML, you take the pain up front to get your material into good XML, and your life becomes easier down the road.

The specific case I asked her about was brought up by a discussion elsewhere, and regarded textbooks. To do textbooks electronically, you pretty much have to use PDF files. They tend to have things like multi-column layout, sidebars, footnotes, and illustrations that are not well supported (or supported at all) by current dedicated ebook readers. The Kindle DX is intended to address that case, with a larger screen and PDF support, but initial reports from students using them in pilot university projects has been underwhelming.

The chap I was talking to thinks textbooks have to be reimplemented to take advantage of the capabilities of things like the iPad. I see the point, but the problem is cost. Creating two separate output formats like that - PDF for printed book and whatever for iPad - will be expensive, and textbooks already cost a lot to produce by the nature of the material. I was wondering how much XML and XSLT could assist, so they you could keep your source material in XML and use XSLT style sheets to handle much of the dirty work of maintaining two separate output formats. She guessed XML/XSLT could handle about 85% of it, which makes the idea a lot more reasonable. But you still have to have the stuff in XML in the first place.

In case of the really old stuff I'm softening my point to "if the still have copyright for that the might have taken care about media transition of backups at least in 15y cycles, what would lead to having digitized tapes with a file format still readable now.

I agree with your desire. I just felt the execution was a bit more complicated than you made it sound.
______
Dennis

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

As the report quoted upthread points out, customers were willing to pay higher prices for popular ebooks. They paid them for the same reason they buy a hardcover instead of waiting a year for the PB release - they want the book now, and will pay a premium to get it.

Some people are willing to pay the higher price. More people would be willing to pay a lower price. When there is no incremental cost of producing another copy, there is more economic sense to price low and sell more. Unless you are scared this will damage sales of the paper product. Which is why it may make sense to keep the eBook price high while only the high-priced hardback is available. It depends whether by selling the eBook at a lower price you think you would 'steal' more hardback sales than you would gain new ones.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by geertm

WH Smith
Top 100 e-books usually -50% now -60%

This was in direct reaction to Amazon entering the market, previously they were selling at prices similar to Waterstones.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Fbone

If you need epub format you cant shop at Amazon. Do Sony and Pocketbook owners even look at Amazon?
I dont think WH Smith and Waterstones necessarily compete against Amazon but they do with each other. Waterstones are pricing themselves out.

They are absolutely competing with Amazon for new customers.
The eReader market in the UK is considerably behind that in the US. It wouldn't surprise me if Amazon sold more Kindles in the UK in a year than the total of eReaders that have been sold so far.
If Amazon can buy market share with low eBook prices, it freezes the ePub sellers out forever.
I've had two people ask for eReader advice in the last couple of weeks, and other than library access it is a no-brainer. Amazon books are much cheaper and the Amazon device is cheaper. Amazon's selection is at least as good, if not better, and their delivery method and user experience is superior.
And the eBook retailers are stuck, as they have no control over the devices, so are limited in how much they can react.

[Szumo]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

...
If you want the book, and only want an electronic edition, will you pay a premium to get it, will you break down and buy the paper book to get the lower price, or will you simply forgo the book?
______
Dennis

You forgot to include the last option. Get a pirated ebook for nothing.