eBook sales are down 17%

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by Dutchbook

I don't know how books are taxed where you live, but here in The Netherlands books are taxed with 6% VAT + further subsidized with special regulations. ebooks fall under regular consumer goods, and are taxed 21%

Website design and maintenance also cost a fortune and dealing with returns don't differ from physical books. On the contrary, ebooks cost a lot more in customer care simply because a lot of people have a hard time understanding how "the internet" and computers in general work. Also, they feel less of a threshold to ask for help or to shove away their responsibility.

It is not as simple as putting an ebook on a website and you're done like if you're uploading something on Mobileread.

You need to develop a solid, reliable environment which renders well on everything from the smallest phone and browsers from a decade ago to a modern desktop monitor, without a single hitch or glitch. Then you have to triple-check if personal data is secure, nobody can't access something they haven't paid for, DRM is solid and in place (without denying actual paying customers, and without them having an overly big threshold to use the system). Then you have to research how the best way is to design the website and what customers want (which genres to show, which books to show, avoid words with more than one syllable etc...). After that, you start with designing the environment for analytical data and cookies, which requires even more outside experts. You also have to adapt everything to internet legislation, and legislation for multiple countries. You must ensure that people can use multiple payment methods, which cost money as well.

A lot more go into it than renting some storage, hiring people on minimum wage (and below) and putting a stamp on it.

Thank you for providing a different perspective. I'm not a very tech-oriented person and much of what you said about the work that goes into creating an ebook would not have occurred to me.

[4691mls]

oops double post

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Dutchbook

It is not as simple as putting an ebook on a website and you're done like if you're uploading something on Mobileread.

When you are an Amazon or BOL.COM, yes, it pretty much is that simple (if it isn't, you don't have your internal ducks in a row!) . The online infrastructure you mention which you need to sell anything (be it bits or tangible stuff) is already in place.

When you have nothing, building it isn't free, no. But even then you need that infrastructure anyway, whether you sell bits or paper. So paper still costs more to handle.

External factors may skew things (like the Dutch VAT difference between ebooks and paper books) but from a pure cost perspective ebooks always win. The only question is by how much, and the numbers I have seen bandied about point at 25-30% (which, actually, is roughly the price difference between ebook and paper I see for Dutch books when both editions exist).

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Gardenman

Publishers are private businesses. They do not have a responsibility to sell books to anyone. They only have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders and any contracts they have with their employees and authors.

It actually depends on where they are based. The only ones with a fiduciary responsibility are the directors and execs. In the US, they have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best overall interest of the company. They are responsible to the stockholders only to that level.

One would argue that a publisher who doesn't sell any books, isn't going to have a company for long.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

A lot of posters here seem to think that the supreme responsibility of private businesses is to customer welfare. Your viewpoint at least has the attraction of being different.

At least publicly, I don't think you would find many private businesses saying that their only responsibilities are to obey contract terms and keep up the stock price. But if that really is their only moral responsibility, you just gave a tremendous argument against capitalism.

I don't recall anyone giving such a hyper-capitalist defense -- or any defense -- back when some of the big five refused to sell eBooks to public libraries. Then it was a major sin. But maybe I forget and/or maybe your opinion was different.

Hardly any of the corporate players would publicly agree with your stockholder-focused description of their mission. For one example, Penguin Random House's owner, Bertelsmann, is in turn mostly owned by a charitable foundation. When I posted that before, a German poster questioned the sincerity of the arrangement (I can't recall, but maybe he called it a tax dodge). However it is partly the case that Penguin Random House is in business to help charities. And, even though I'm often an Amazon critic, I think that Jeff Bezos had a genuine public interest motive in buying the Washington Post (and subsequent adding reporters). He would never agree that the purpose of Amazon is to make stockholders as much money as possible while obeying his contracts.

I would argue that Bezos bought the Post mostly to give himself a platform to advocate the things he finds important, including things to the benefit of Amazon.

Bezos is the perfect example of someone who understands the value of pumping money back into the company rather than turn it all over to the stockholders. Jobs was the same way, though Cook caved in to the investors as soon as Jobs died.

When Friedman advocated a primary responsibility to the stockholder, times were very, very different. Investors tended to be long term and care more about things like dividends rather than next quarter's stock prices like so many get rich quick investors want to do now.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

When you are an Amazon or BOL.COM, yes, it pretty much is that simple (if it isn't, you don't have your internal ducks in a row!) . The online infrastructure you mention which you need to sell anything (be it bits or tangible stuff) is already in place.

When you have nothing, building it isn't free, no. But even then you need that infrastructure anyway, whether you sell bits or paper. So paper still costs more to handle.

External factors may skew things (like the Dutch VAT difference between ebooks and paper books) but from a pure cost perspective ebooks always win. The only question is by how much, and the numbers I have seen bandied about point at 25-30% (which, actually, is roughly the price difference between ebook and paper I see for Dutch books when both editions exist).

If I recall correctly, the cost of storage and inventory tax out weight the actual cost of printing a book by quite a bit. The actual printing costs have dropped way, way down over the years and continues to drop.

The main cost for printing was, at one time, the actual setting up of the layout of the book, rather than the physical cost of ink and paper.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I would argue that Bezos bought the Post mostly to give himself a platform to advocate the things he finds important, including things to the benefit of Amazon.

I read the paper a few times a week and haven't noticed this.

Also, if Bezos was pushing the staff in this direction, you would have heard about it, as it would result in resignations.

It's more plausible, to me, that Bezos bought the Post because he thought it already was advocating things he finds important.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

The only Ed McBain books on OverDrive are the ones not published by Amazon.

The same is true for a bunch of APub authors.

[sealbeater]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

If I had to read on that old Sony ebook reader, which is around 7-8 years old, I think I would get fatigued, too!

I personally love my old Sony ebook reader.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There's a lot of people who use Overdrive and those do not count as sales.

The more titles I borrow using Overdrive, Cloud Library, and Axis 360, the more licenses the libraries buy. So eBook public library borrowing does help sales.

The same is true for public library paper book borrowing. However, because a library eBook generates more revenue for the distributor than a paper book, the public library sales connection is a lot higher for eBooks than paper books.

Of course, the total cost of ownership, to the library, is not necessarily higher for an eBook than a paper copy because the eBook doesn't occupy space that can cost hundreds of dollars over the decades for rent/contruction, utilities, salaries, etc.

One thing I don't know: Suppose the library pays three times more for the eBook than the paper copy. How is the 3x revenue split between distributors like Overdrive, the publisher, and authors who previously earned out their advances?

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Dutchbook

Yet how many people read those?

I worked at a very large european publishing house for a couple of months, and I was told during training that it comes from the fact that for the price of the book, it doesnt really matter if something is physically printed or not. Printing costs are a negligible factor in the costs of books and magazines.

Yet the reader doesnt know or understand it, so they expect a lower price from ebooks.

Also, reader research at that publisher determined that people have an emotional tie to paper; they prefer physical over digital because of the feeling, the smell, the appearance of the printing, etc...

Also, ereader sales have been in the drain for years, and ebook sales didnt show the same figures because they were compensated by the growth in tablets. Perhaps people dont enjoy reading on tablets? If so, I can understand why.

It also might be a matter of the status quo. The copernicus theory of the solar system didn't get accepted because it was right, but because the old guard who put the earth at the center died off. Much the same may happen with ebooks. For several centuries we've been reading books on paper and people are slow to change once they have a set way of doing things. As our society becomes more digital in nature (in part due to improvements in digital paper technology) the ereader will become more ubiquitous as a part of our culture and though paper won't vanish entirely people will be more at home reading on a screen I think. And you can't expect two different media to react exactly the same as far as development of the trend. We used horse and cart for many centuries with tiny improvements along the way and then boom! Suddenly we had the automobile forcing the horse and cart off the road (save for groups like the Amish) within 2-3 generations. They say that history repeats itself in cycles as well but it never quite seems to repeat itself exactly the same. So I don't think you can really apply what works in traditional publishing to digital either. Granted there are some similarities between the two but there is a world of difference between having a warehouse stuffed with paperback books for example and a small computer database with links to other databases (stores) where you can pick up a copy of an ebook.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

I read the paper a few times a week and haven't noticed this.

Also, if Bezos was pushing the staff in this direction, you would have heard about it, as it would result in resignations.

It's more plausible, to me, that Bezos bought the Post because he thought it already was advocating things he finds important.

And for that matter doesn't every person of influence do a certain amount of that? As far as that goes I'd argue that most of us when we post (either here, on facebook, twitter, etc.) do much the same thing. We post about things we feel are important to us in some way. It's a basic part of human nature.

[Nate the great]

I followed up with Amazon and OverDrive on the APub library ebook issue.

36 hours later, and neither has responded.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by crich70

It also might be a matter of the status quo. The copernicus theory of the solar system didn't get accepted because it was right, but because the old guard who put the earth at the center died off.

Um, no. It got accepted because it was a much easier computational tool to use to predict the positions of the planets than the old theory of "epicycles". Not more accurate - the two computational methods had similar levels of inaccuracy - but an awful lot easier to use. Ie it was simply a matter of practicality.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by Dutchbook

Yet how many people read those?

I worked at a very large european publishing house for a couple of months, and I was told during training that it comes from the fact that for the price of the book, it doesnt really matter if something is physically printed or not. Printing costs are a negligible factor in the costs of books and magazines.

Yet the reader doesnt know or understand it, so they expect a lower price from ebooks.

Also, reader research at that publisher determined that people have an emotional tie to paper; they prefer physical over digital because of the feeling, the smell, the appearance of the printing, etc...

Also, ereader sales have been in the drain for years, and ebook sales didnt show the same figures because they were compensated by the growth in tablets. Perhaps people dont enjoy reading on tablets? If so, I can understand why.

I expect a lower price on ebooks because they have DRM on them. Can't be sold when I'm done with them, can't be lent to friends. Thus, since my property rights are less than with paper, I don't feel I should pay as much or MORE than paper, in the instance I mentioned, over DOUBLE the cost of paper....

For years, my reading habit was kept going by selling books on eBay/Amazon/Half.com when I was done with them. Then I branched out to buying books from library sales and selling those to keep me in reading material....

And while I may enjoy handling a printed book, I vastly prefer reading an ebook. Printed books usually have too small a font for comfortable reading. And they are much less portable.

I use Overdrive constantly!

EDIT: The other reason I prefer a lower price on ebooks has to do with quality. Too many times I've purchased ebooks that had quality issues ranging from typos to fonts set in a small size that *couldn't* be adjusted in my reader or margins set large that likewise were not adjustable.

In one notable instance, a technical book about making epubs, had some text in a color that appeared as light gray on e-ink and was nearly impossible to read! The same book also had images with text that were too small to read.

Illustrated books with low resolution images that can't be enlarged without turning into a fuzzy pixelated mess are also a turnoff.

I don't mind paying for quality, but it's very hit and miss! And comes down on the side of miss, more often than not.


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