Publishers still missing the point on e-book prices

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

No you don't, you can download it for free very soon after it comes out in the cinema, just like millions of other people...

Piracy doesn't matter in the analogy. ebooks are pirated, movies are pirated. Doesn't change the fact that movies come out in their most expensive and profitable format first...and with increasingly cheaper and less profitable in succeeding time frames.

That's true of movies, and until Amazon's attempt to monopolize the ebook industry, was true of books as well.

Nonny

[markbot]

I've always said that ebooks could be far more profitable for publishers in the long run (if there is no piracy) because it is much harder to borrow, lend, and resell an ebook. ebooks hinder the secondary book market, which is ultimately good for publishers...although it takes longer for this to play out.

also, ebooks cost far less than pbooks to distribute and are far more convenient to consume. it makes sense for ebooks to be priced below pbooks. the lower price spurs volume and they are far more profitable than pbooks in both the long run.

i generally use my kindle to read cheep ebooks or out of copyright books. I simply buy whichever book format is the cheapest and I take into account the fact that I can't resell my ebooks also.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by leebase

Piracy doesn't matter in the analogy. ebooks are pirated, movies are pirated. Doesn't change the fact that movies come out in their most expensive and profitable format first...and with increasingly cheaper and less profitable in succeeding time frames.

That's true of movies, and until Amazon's attempt to monopolize the ebook industry, was true of books as well.

Nonny

Movies are starting to become available on DVD and Bluray closer and closer to their cinema release dates. Probably because not everyone wants to go to the cinema and may just wait to purchase the DVD, but by releasing the DVD so long after the cinema hype has died down they risk customers buying something else or pirating it.

If anything it's the cinema's that are trying to prevent simultaneous release rather than movies companies.

There was a news post the other year about Disney angering cinemas because they brought the DVD out a few month after the cinema release.

With ebooks, not everyone wants the hardback, some might buy it because they really can't wait to read it, but the rest that hold out for the cheaper paperback release are customers who will also wait until the ebook price drops. Customers that may have moved onto other authors/books by the time the price drop occurs. Which is also overlooking the problem that some books that are out in hardback and paperback form have ebooks still priced in line with the hardback rather than paperback.

If anything, the analogy shows that publishers are acting in the opposite way to the movies industry in terms of release times. Although I'm not sure that it's a good comparison anyway as DVD vs cinema has the view once vs purchase issue, where as hardback vs ebook isn't the same comparison, both you get to re-read unlimited times.

[leebase]

The Movie "Publishers" are in control of when the DVD is released. They do not allow RedBox to make the movies available for $1 when the movies are still in the theater.

Amazon was putting out a very cheap version during the time window the most expensive version was selling.

Lee

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by leebase

The Movie "Publishers" are in control of when the DVD is released. They do not allow RedBox to make the movies available for $1 when the movies are still in the theater.

Amazon was putting out a very cheap version during the time window the most expensive version was selling.

Lee

The cinema is free to charge $1 admission if they want, in fact I've been to several such screenings, well for £1 here . Movies companies don't control cinema nor retail store prices.

When it gets to the DVD release, retailers are free to charge $1 if they want.

So in that sense to be like the movie industry, publishers should hold back the ebook release until they offer the paperback version. I wouldn't object if they did that, it's their right to do so. However I think it'd be just as silly a move as agency pricing and would lose some customers to other authors/publishers who don't do so.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by JoeD

So in that sense to be like the movie industry, publishers should hold back the ebook release until they offer the paperback version. I wouldn't object if they did that, it's their right to do so. However I think it'd be just as silly a move as agency pricing and would lose some customers to other authors/publishers who don't do so.

"Time Windowing" the ebooks was one of the solutions on the table. Amazon chose to have agency pricing.

Lee

One issue with the free market arguments and the maximizing profits arguments is that we don't live in a free market. Books are a clear example of this.

Publishers sell books, not words. If it was a simple matter of selling words, we wouldn't be interested in top-seller lists. We would be looking at reviews instead. If a book received a good review from a reviewer we trusted (i.e. one that reflected our tastes) we would simply buy the most compelling book that we were willing to pay for.

But it only works that way for people who love reading for personal reasons. As soon as someone wants to read for social reasons you are stuck reading a particular book from a particular publisher. Publishers want to take advantage maximizing their profits, so they introduce a form of scarcity: they limit what they publish to high priced formats.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by leebase

"Time Windowing" the ebooks was one of the solutions on the table. Amazon chose to have agency pricing.

Lee

Yes I'm aware of that. They had a choice between two poor options. Neither of which the video game or music industry imposes on their retailers.

It's just that publishers have managed to pursued their customers that a piece of card makes the product premium and worth a premium price. Where as other industries have protected their premium products in the move to digital by actually having something premium in them, namely directors cut, limited editions, models, maps and other "collectables", bonus footage and so forth.

The "premium" content means they can release both at the exact same time and not cannibalise their sales. Publishers however don't have anything that's actually premium when it comes to the digital version. Which makes their pricing strategy forced and customers will resist it

Edit: Don't take my "card" comment the wrong way either, I do see why some people buy hardback over paperback, I tend to buy hardback books as presents as they feel a more substantial gift. But it's unfortunately not premium content and does not translate to digital.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Yes I'm aware of that. They had a choice between two poor options. Neither of which the movie industry, video game or music industry imposes on their retailers.

The movie industry most certainly does. The video game and music industry don't have any time windowed offerings.

Yes, you can offer premiums (extra songs, signed covers) and the like, but then those are different products.

There is no "hardback ebook". Just as there will be no "used ebook".

Nonny

[Lazybones]

I've found a number of great authors on the Kindle store by looking at the top-ranked free offerings. Because independent authors don't have the marketing power of a big publisher, the common trend has becoming to offer a free or deeply discounted first book as a lure to get people to try the author's work. If I don't enjoy the book after the first few chapters I go onto the next one, but I've been surprised how good some of them are (even if they are a little more "rough" in the editing department, I'll forgive a few mistakes for $0.00, as long as they are not pervasive).

At least in the case of the last few authors I've tried, their followup books have been around $2-3. So for the price of one title from a big publisher, I'm getting five or six good books, not even counting the free titles from other new authors I've saved for later. Now with the Kindle loaning program allowing authors to offer books temporarily for free (instead of having to go through the more cumbersome price matching process), I expect to find a lot of other authors worth trying in the coming months.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by leebase

The movie industry most certainly does. The video game and music industry don't have any time windowed offerings.

Yes, you can offer premiums (extra songs, signed covers) and the like, but then those are different products.

There is no "hardback ebook". Just as there will be no "used ebook".

Nonny

Yeah, I shouldn't have included movie industry in there (I got distracted before re-reading my post to notice and edit, which I've now done ) Although the movie industry does appear to be wanting to close the windowing gap, cinemas are simply resisting them at the moment, the opposite of ebooks where amazon want no gap, publishers want a gap.

But I feel my point remains about premium content. It's what allows a higher price on the digital product and yet with ebooks publishers have no way to do this as, like you say, you can't have a hardback ebook. That makes any attempt to keep ebook prices at the hardback level feel out of place.

When the movie industry releases a DVD they'll most likely release the digital version at the same time yet the price difference is down to content not an arbitrary extra due to the "case" the DVD comes in.

ebooks content is identical to the paperback, price should be in line (or lower with the acceptance that discussion on the production costs, drm, licensing... is another ongoing debate elsewhere on here )

DVD content is identical to the digital version, price is inline or lower if the download quality is lower.

BTW I understand _why_ publishers want ebooks at hardbook prices on release. I just don't think it's logical for them to do so without finding a way to make the ebook at that point premium in some way too.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

One issue with the free market arguments and the maximizing profits arguments is that we don't live in a free market. Books are a clear example of this.

No, books are a clear example of the fact that we do live in a free market. The book market (in the US) is more free than most markets.

Publishers sell books, not words. If it was a simple matter of selling words, we wouldn't be interested in top-seller lists. We would be looking at reviews instead. If a book received a good review from a reviewer we trusted (i.e. one that reflected our tastes) we would simply buy the most compelling book that we were willing to pay for.

This is meaningless distinction. Publishers sell books and words.

People read reviews all the time. But people are also interested in best-seller lists because that is also a type of review. I.e., the fact that more people bought this book than that book is some evidence of that book's merit.

But it only works that way for people who love reading for personal reasons. As soon as someone wants to read for social reasons you are stuck reading a particular book from a particular publisher. Publishers want to take advantage maximizing their profits, so they introduce a form of scarcity: they limit what they publish to high priced formats.

I don't think that there are many "social" readers at all. Almost everyone who reads reads for personal reasons.

As for scarcity, that's part and parcel of the free market.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I don't think that there are many "social" readers at all. Almost everyone who reads reads for personal reasons.

There are social readers--but not for ebooks. Book clubs often have a few people who enjoy the social aspects more than the actual book-reading. They read because their friends are reading; if the friends switched to knitting, they'd get together and swap patterns instead.

But ebooks don't work well as social foci; there's no lending a finished copy to the person who can't afford it this month (there's often no *buying* them a copy, either); the formatting is drastically different based on device, so there's no "let's talk about the awful scene on page 187," and even finding things by chapter is troublesome; there's no "just flip through to chapter 8;" the publisher has to have set up the TOC properly, and many fiction books don't have that.

There's no ebook that gets handed around the office because it has a chapter that takes place in the diner they all like. No book a teacher loans out to the whole class, because the first four readers made a club based on some of the events in the book.

The lack of social aspects to ebookery is one of the things publishers should *really* be worrying about; that's what's going to fragment the market worse than the way TV has fragmented.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

When the quality of independent authors improves I will happily buy from independent authors. The ones I have tried have not been at a level that I am willing to pay for them. You are lucky because there are a good number of people who are happy with what they get for the price and it appears that many independent authors are doing reasonably well.

It's bad enough that you lump all independent authors in the same pile (which you obviously think is cr@p)... as if all professionally published works were award winners, or even vaguely entertaining.

Then you say indies are okay for some people--apparently those with far less taste and sophistication than you--because we're cheap?

Yeah, thanks loads. I feel so much better.

[BeccaPrice]

Steven Lyle Jordan - I'm one of the ones who tends to avoid indy authors - but I admit that part of the problem is discovery. I'm careful what I read, because what I read profoundly affects my moods, and I have to be cautious about that. So, I go mostly by recommendation from trusted sites and book groups that I follow - and at least one of the blogs where I get most of my recommendations specifically does not review indy books, because the few that they've tried were so terrible, or so terribly proofread that the reviewers couldn't get into the story for all the grammatical and other errors. (what indies they do review tend to be M/M or other forms of erotica that I don't read.).

So - tell me how to find *good* quality romantic suspense (or strongly character-driven suspense) novels that are well formatted and proofread, that end well, and maybe I'll try an indy author.