Yet another thumb of the nose from publishers

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Szumo

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

For an apparently small percentage of us, getting an illegal copy is not an option.

[Szumo]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

For an apparently small percentage of us, getting an illegal copy is not an option.

My point exactly. Some people, if offered ebook at a price they consider unreasonable will buy it at that price or refuse to (and don't get it all), but more of them will resort to other means of getting that book (legal and not).
And as getting illegal ebooks is quite easy (perhaps not as easy as getting pirated music or movies), publishers who demand unreasonable (in potential buyer's eyes) prices only turn people towards piracy.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Szumo

My point exactly. Some people, if offered ebook at a price they consider unreasonable will buy it at that price or refuse to (and don't get it all), but more of them will resort to other means of getting that book (legal and not).
And as getting illegal ebooks is quite easy (perhaps not as easy as getting pirated music or movies), publishers who demand unreasonable (in potential buyer's eyes) prices only turn people towards piracy.

So the ease of getting illegal books justifies it?

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

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 think textbooks just have to go back to the way they were a few decades ago, once a math specification is written into epub.

I looked at some of my mother's old math/computer science books from her university days, and there were no pictures! There was a paragraph, a single equation, a couple paragraphs, a small diagram, etc. To contrast to my undergrad Thermodynamics book, there is a spiffy chapter heading with a colored triangle behind the portion of the chapter (4.4), with color coded text helping me to identify keywords. There are summations of principles in the margins, which are either superfluous in an epub with search, or implemented as a cheat sheet at the back of the book. There are color coordinated examples with pretty line drawings, which could easily be grayscale svgs, and not inline. I'm not sure why I need a "Thermodynamics in the News" section with a picture of a house...

It would be layed out differently from a big pdf, but all the material could easily be the same. There's simply no need for most of the crap publishers shoehorn into a book on a topic that's over 150 years old (for the undergraduate level). It's just an excuse to charge even more for the same thing.


One of my professors told us to use whatever Aerodynamics book we wanted, but he recommended a certain series. He photocopied and posted all the homework questions so we weren't locked into the BS behavior of changing a couple of questions at the back of the chapter and fixing typos to put out a new edition.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Fbone

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

Possible, but I'm not sure how likely.

From the publisher's point of view, they sell the books to a wholesaler or large retailer, at a discount specified by contract. If the retailers chooses to sell below cost as a "loss leader" to build traffic, that's on the retailer. The publisher has been paid. And retailers will normally sell selected items below cost, to get traffic into the store where they can be sold other things as well at pricing that isn't a loss leader. The retailer doesn't, as a rule, price everything below cost.

The risk from what you propose is what happens once Amazon thinks it has the market share. Do they suddenly jack up prices all around to make money? Low ball pricing is a good way to gain market share, but having gained it, you must keep it. Amazon is customer-centric. I don't see them being enthusiastic about pissing off customers by getting them accustomed to a low price then raising it on them. That's not the way you retain customers.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

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.

Agreed, some people won't pay the higher price.

One of the calculations any producer makes when setting pricing is the optimum price. They may indeed be able to sell more widgets at a lower price. Will they sell enough more to compensate for not making as much on an individual sale, and make more revenue and profit over all? One of the questions will be the production costs, and how much they have to charge, simply to break even. Another will be how much they have to make to remain a going concern.

So if I'm the producer, I'll make the best guess I can as to the optimum price. I may decide that selling my widget cheaper won't generate enough additional sales to compensate for the lower price and margin on an individual sale, and that the best price I can charge will be the somewhat higher one.

You might not be willing to pay the higher price, and refuse to buy. If I can meet my revenue and profit targets at the higher price, I don't care. That's your problem. You want to buy it cheaper. I want to stay in business. Guess which wins?
______
Dennis

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The risk from what you propose is what happens once Amazon thinks it has the market share. Do they suddenly jack up prices all around to make money? Low ball pricing is a good way to gain market share, but having gained it, you must keep it. Amazon is customer-centric. I don't see them being enthusiastic about pissing off customers by getting them accustomed to a low price then raising it on them. That's not the way you retain customers.

Nah, it's fine.
You just wait for the publishers to band together and force you to raise prices, and put all the blame on them

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

I think textbooks just have to go back to the way they were a few decades ago, once a math specification is written into epub.

I looked at some of my mother's old math/computer science books from her university days, and there were no pictures! There was a paragraph, a single equation, a couple paragraphs, a small diagram, etc. To contrast to my undergrad Thermodynamics book, there is a spiffy chapter heading with a colored triangle behind the portion of the chapter (4.4), with color coded text helping me to identify keywords. There are summations of principles in the margins, which are either superfluous in an epub with search, or implemented as a cheat sheet at the back of the book. There are color coordinated examples with pretty line drawings, which could easily be grayscale svgs, and not inline. I'm not sure why I need a "Thermodynamics in the News" section with a picture of a house...

You are assuming all textbooks are like your mother's comp sci/math texts. They aren't. There are plenty of texts that must include illustrations, perhaps even in color (medical textbooks, anyone?), and multi-column layouts, footnotes, and sidebars are largely the norm.

Simply adding math to ePub doesn't help you. (And you can include equations now as embedded illustrations.)

When you have something like an iPad, you have the potential in the device for new ways of presenting the material, but it requires a new format for the book. Creating that new format will cost money.

It would be layed out differently from a big pdf, but all the material could easily be the same. There's simply no need for most of the crap publishers shoehorn into a book on a topic that's over 150 years old (for the undergraduate level). It's just an excuse to charge even more for the same thing.

Don't you just wish. Not all topics are over 150 years old, and amenable to using an old textbook to cut costs. Some areas change with bewildering rapidity, and a textbook may be out of date (thought still largely usable) when it's published. (Some areas of computer science are notable here.)

One of my professors told us to use whatever Aerodynamics book we wanted, but he recommended a certain series. He photocopied and posted all the homework questions so we weren't locked into the BS behavior of changing a couple of questions at the back of the chapter and fixing typos to put out a new edition.

Your professor is certainly an improvement over some I've heard of that mandate a specific book (which is often one they were involved in writing.)
______
Dennis

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You might not be willing to pay the higher price, and refuse to buy. If I can meet my revenue and profit targets at the higher price, I don't care. That's your problem. You want to buy it cheaper. I want to stay in business. Guess which wins?

That depends on whether the If is true, doesn't it?
If they stick with high prices, don't sell enough to make any money, and conclude that eBooks aren't a good market to be in, everybody loses.

An initially high price when the book is new, gradually reducing to pick up the long tail of buyers, makes sense. A fixed price which never changes doesn't.

[cfrizz]

I simply refuse to pay the higher price & I refuse to buy a paperback version of it. There is enough out there to read both at prices I'm willing to pay & for free that I will simply wait for it to come down in price.

Now if a book comes out that I simply must have & the price doesn't drop to what I'm willing to pay, after a reasonable period of time, I will seriously think about going to the 'net' for a copy.

So far that hasn't happened yet, but I will never say never.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

That depends on whether the If is true, doesn't it?
If they stick with high prices, don't sell enough to make any money, and conclude that eBooks aren't a good market to be in, everybody loses.

An initially high price when the book is new, gradually reducing to pick up the long tail of buyers, makes sense. A fixed price which never changes doesn't.

Not really. Whether publishers like it or not ebooks are here to stay and if they were stupid enough to stop producing them then piracy would truly go through the roof!

No matter what they tried to do to stop or slow down mp3s it didn't work, so eventually they caved & started making the option available drm free & at lower prices.

If they want to repeat the same mistakes with ebooks, there are people out there who are more than willing to repeat the same lessons to get publishers to see the light.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

That depends on whether the If is true, doesn't it?

Yes. What if it is?

If they stick with high prices, don't sell enough to make any money, and conclude that eBooks aren't a good market to be in, everybody loses.

High prices are in the eye of the beholder. As mentioned, if I'm a producer, there will be a minimum amount I have to charge, simply to remain in business. I'll have flexibility in pricing as long as I can reach my required minimum, and if I discover price resistance at a higher price, I might lower it. Part of "pricing at what the market will bear" is figuring out just what that is. I'm not going to start at the lowest price I can possibly charge and go up from there.

If "what the market will bear" is below the minimum I have to charge to remain in business, I'll get out of that business.

An initially high price when the book is new, gradually reducing to pick up the long tail of buyers, makes sense. A fixed price which never changes doesn't.

I concur. But it's precisely that "high price when the book is new" that has caused a lot of adverse comment when it's applied to ebooks.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Not really. Whether publishers like it or not ebooks are here to stay and if they were stupid enough to stop producing them then piracy would truly go through the roof!

Publishers are all aware ebooks are here to stay, and none is likely to stop producing them. What they are all trying to figure out is how to make money selling ebooks.

There's an awful lot of wishful thinking on the publisher's side about how much they can successfully charge for an ebook, and even more wishful thinking on the buyer's side about how cheap an ebook can be.

The truth is somewhere in the middle, and everyone is trying to find out just where that middle is.
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Dennis

[Freeshadow]

Szumo, people regarding an illegal copy as an option of choice will always head for it. Thus they are out of the comperative schemes here.

[cfrizz]

Well I hope it gets figured out sooner rather than later!

But most businesses take the attitude of let's ignore the problem & hope that it will go away then scramble to fix it when the $hit hits the fan. Rather than be proactive and actually HELPFUL to its customers.

It gets rather tiresome after a while.