The cloudy future of books and publishing.

[Barty]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-the-book.html

The author makes some very good point. I think people now expect to get news and opinion for free. And a certain type of non fiction, what I call the thesis book.

For example, I was reading the Omnivore's Dilemma at the library, and a chapter in, I thought this was the sort of info I could have (and did) get from a longish segment on NPR. True this book was aimed at young readers, but a lot of such books aimed at adults can be similarly boiled down to 15-20 min report or talk that can be found at various places for free.

[jbcohen]

News reports, I agree. I can get so much news content on radio and online that I am not willing to pay for it. However that does not mean that I refuse to pay for my recreational reading I simply refuse to pay $10 per novel, no one is worth that I do not care who you are or what you have written no book is worth that. I also refuse to pay for online content, I am willing to pay when I order from a store online but that's it.

[Todd Young]

I'm prepared to pay around five dollars for a novel. If it is much more than this, I will look for it elsewhere. Only if I really want to read the book and can't find it elsewhere, then I'll pay $10, but that is the limit.

As far as news and so on goes, I'm just not interested enough to pay for it. I can get plenty of it on TV for free.

[apbschmitz]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

However that does not mean that I refuse to pay for my recreational reading I simply refuse to pay $10 per novel, no one is worth that I do not care who you are or what you have written no book is worth that.

War and Peace, 1100 pages. Say you read it at 50 pages/hour, so 22 hours of entertainment. At $10 that's 45 cents per hour. Of course War and Peace is free at the Gutenberg Project, so it's not the greatest point of reference. How about Matterhorn, the recent Vietnam novel? 600+ pages, 12 hours of reading, 83 cents per hour. A much better deal in terms of cost per hour than a movie, a bottle of beer, a cup of coffee or just about anything else short of sitting in the sun on a park bench.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

War and Peace, 1100 pages. Say you read it at 50 pages/hour, so 22 hours of entertainment. At $10 that's 45 cents per hour. Of course War and Peace is free at the Gutenberg Project, so it's not the greatest point of reference. How about Matterhorn, the recent Vietnam novel? 600+ pages, 12 hours of reading, 83 cents per hour. A much better deal in terms of cost per hour than a movie, a bottle of beer, a cup of coffee or just about anything else short of sitting in the sun on a park bench.

On the other hand, movies cost a heck of a lot more to create than books do, as you have to hire hundreds of people (beyond just actors), pay for studio/locations, rent/buy equipment, etc. Books just need a good author, time for him or her to write, and a small handful of editors, artists (for covers), and marketers (optional). So while a book may be a better entertainment dollar option, its cost also needs to be in line with what it takes to create it.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by toddos

On the other hand, movies cost a heck of a lot more to create than books do, as you have to hire hundreds of people (beyond just actors), pay for studio/locations, rent/buy equipment, etc. Books just need a good author, time for him or her to write, and a small handful of editors, artists (for covers), and marketers (optional). So while a book may be a better entertainment dollar option, its cost also needs to be in line with what it takes to create it.

And movies only take a part of someone's time compared to the time investment in a good book... how much is a year or two of someone's life worth or are you happy with 30 minute pieces of plagiaristic rubbish...

If a favoured author produces a book I WANT to read then it's worth the asking price, if it's a book I might enjoy then I'll wait for it to be available more cheaply...

[toddos]

Originally Posted by elcreative

And movies only take a part of someone's time compared to the time investment in a good book... how much is a year or two of someone's life worth or are you happy with 30 minute pieces of plagiaristic rubbish...

If a favoured author produces a book I WANT to read then it's worth the asking price, if it's a book I might enjoy then I'll wait for it to be available more cheaply...

Assume you pay the author a generous salary of $100k/year for 3 years, editors and others maybe another $100-200k total (because they're not spending all their time on a single author/book), and throw in some extra and call it $1million to write and bring a good book to market. That's maybe 1% of the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster. And most books aren't going to cost anywhere near that to bring to write and bring to market.

$5-10 for an ebook is a generous price. $20 for an ebook is an insult. The $10-20 range is a bit of a gray area that I generally will not stray into except for a very small handful of authors (bought George R. R. Martin's latest for $16 or whatever it was selling at, but justified that by being able to buy the previous books for $5 each).

[elcreative]

Oft repeated argument... it doesn't really matter anyway... you win and the number of quality new books will go down as authors will need another job to eat and writing will become even more part-time... but that doesn't matter, does it, there are already more books out there for cheap prices than you can ever read in a lifetime so why bother with paying someone for new ones?

[toddos]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Oft repeated argument... it doesn't really matter anyway... you win and the number of quality new books will go down as authors will need another job to eat and writing will become even more part-time... but that doesn't matter, does it, there are already more books out there for cheap prices than you can ever read in a lifetime so why bother with paying someone for new ones?

Many quality writers already have part time (or even full time!) jobs besides writing, because even the old model doesn't pay a sustainable wage outside of the top 1%. One example I know off the top of my head is Cherie Priest (she works for a video game company), despite the popularity and success of her Clockwork Century novels.

The nice thing about ebooks is that it actually makes it more possible for authors to write for a living, because it makes it easier to cut out (most of) the middlemen while still selling at prices equal to or lower than mass market paperbook prices of old.

[xg4bx]

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

War and Peace, 1100 pages. Say you read it at 50 pages/hour, so 22 hours of entertainment. At $10 that's 45 cents per hour. Of course War and Peace is free at the Gutenberg Project, so it's not the greatest point of reference. How about Matterhorn, the recent Vietnam novel? 600+ pages, 12 hours of reading, 83 cents per hour. A much better deal in terms of cost per hour than a movie, a bottle of beer, a cup of coffee or just about anything else short of sitting in the sun on a park bench.

i tend to agree. i could go pay $60 for an xbox game and be done with it in 5 hours. pound for pound books are still the best value for your entertainment dollar.

of course people will look for the best price but with ebooks theres something for every budget.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by toddos

On the other hand, movies cost a heck of a lot more to create than books do, as you have to hire hundreds of people (beyond just actors), pay for studio/locations, rent/buy equipment, etc. Books just need a good author, time for him or her to write, and a small handful of editors, artists (for covers), and marketers (optional). So while a book may be a better entertainment dollar option, its cost also needs to be in line with what it takes to create it.

Yeah and these days it doesn't pay to go to the theater to see a movie what with how admission and snack prices have gone up. Around where I live the Saturday matinee used to cost $4.50 (for the 1st showing of the day) but now its gone up to $6.00 just to get in the door and snacks are more expensive too so that for one person you are spending some good $ to just get in. Spend a few more $ and you would have the cost of buying a DVD of the movie when it comes out. Of course most of what profit the theaters make is in the snacks since the actual ticket costs are mostly used to cover the cost of renting the movie from the studios now days. With a book though the entertainment is individual in nature. Two people can't read the same copy of the same book at the same moment. I imagine part of the shakeup is due to the new media (ebooks I mean). Probably the same sort of thing happened when printing presses started replacing scribes and when books for the masses became possible due to things like the lineotype machine. No doubt the first printed books were pretty expensive as well being as they were new tech. at the time.

[apbschmitz]

Originally Posted by toddos

Assume you pay the author a generous salary of $100k/year for 3 years, editors and others maybe another $100-200k total (because they're not spending all their time on a single author/book), and throw in some extra and call it $1million to write and bring a good book to market. That's maybe 1% of the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster. And most books aren't going to cost anywhere near that to bring to write and bring to market.

$5-10 for an ebook is a generous price. $20 for an ebook is an insult.

Here's an interesting analysis of the cost of writing a novel, based on a survey of 380 writers (available at http://howtothinksideways.com/novel-cost-survey.php):

"If, following the weak areas of idea generation and project planning, you figure that the average writer spends $4483.92 to write the novel and $8252.83 to revise it, and has $13,826.81 worth of unfinished novels stashed in a drawer on a hard drive somewhere, that writer has spent an AVERAGE of $26,563.56 to get a novel out the door to the publisher. This very expensive project he then sends out an average of 4.37 times before selling it or writing it off and moving on to something else."

So, add another $3000 for editing and proofreading, which is surely lowballing it, another $3000 for design and marketing, and your cost as the writer is $32,356. Now let's figure you sell 5000 copies — a number that for a work of non-genre fiction would leave most traditional publishers blubbering with satisfaction. As the self-published writer, your cost per sale is $6.47. Via Amazon your take is 70 percent, so to get your $6.47 the actual sales price should be $9.42.

Realistically, no one but a fool who is writing non-genre fiction expects to recover the cost of his or her time. People write for all sorts of reasons, some of them noble and some of them borderline pathetic. But if you read a book you love, chances are the writer has given you a gift of largely uncompensated labor. I'm not saying anyone should fall all over themselves expressing their gratitude, but I also don't think it's correct to feel badly used if a book price reflects something of the actual cost.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by toddos

$5-10 for an ebook is a generous price. $20 for an ebook is an insult. The $10-20 range is a bit of a gray area that I generally will not stray into except for a very small handful of authors (bought George R. R. Martin's latest for $16 or whatever it was selling at, but justified that by being able to buy the previous books for $5 each).

Oh, nonsense.

Price is based on the value to the *purchaser,* not the cost to the producer. If an e-book isn't worth $20 to you, just don't pay it. There's no point in engaging in medieval "just price" theories.

[TFeldt]

It's entirely down to a sense of entitlement. Be it a real sense, or an imaginary one. Ultimately it doesn't matter since the effect is the same. I wrote a blog post about this exact subject a while back since it constantly irks me when I hear people say "oh, my favorite internet service just started charging me a buck to use it, time to change".

I'm not entirely sure what the policy on linking to ones own sites is on this forum, hopefully I'm not crossing a rule here. My blog is entirely harmless after all, the worst thing you'll see are pictures of my cats. In the off chance that I -am- violating a rule, then I ask a moderator to slap my post with the moderation hammer. Here's the post in any event, http://anders.tonfeldt.se/?p=790

Unfortunately this entire topic is a dead badger, it doesn't matter how much we poke it, the darn thing will still just lay there. It's impossible for a producer (of any type) to change the behavior, or indeed attitude, of consumers at large. You can reach out and change the mind of individuals, but that won't get you far. If one doesn't adapt one will eventually die out. I'm not saying this in some kind of prophetic "doom is upon us" fashion, especially since the concept of "free" isn't actually -free- anymore with the advent of freemium. I've made a lot more money with my free products than my paid for products, there, that's a better way of putting it.

[ebusinesstutor]

I get all my news for free.

I create my own "newspaper" using Google Reader and subscribe to RSS feeds of my favourite bloggers and news sites. By doing this, the newspaper is chock full of the news I want rather than what some editor thinks I want. So I subscriber to blogs about Internet marketing and social media (my business field), ebooks & publishing (a passionate interest) and about stargazing and Native American flute playing (my hobbies).

I used to buy newspapers every week, but they are full of topics that aren't relevant to me. I might find one or two articles worth reading. With my RSS feeds, almost all the articles are interesting.

Newspapers did it to themselves in a way. They cut the number of real reporters and most of the content is just the same Associated Press articles. So if I buy the Province and the Vancouver Sun, a lot of the articles are identical. And reporting seems to have gotten away from asking the hard questions - the in-depth investigative reporting that can be beneficial to our society.

But, while I do not pay for news, I do buy books and ebooks. I will pay up to $6 or $7 for a good fiction book, or up to $15 for a non-fiction reference book I need. I love all the great free and low cost ebooks from independent authors who can now publish more easily.

I don't find a 600 page ebook demands too much of my time - rather I am always looking for good new reads in SciFi and Fantasy.