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Old 07-03-2008, 10:34 AM   #1
rhadin
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PW's Sara Nelson on Sony, Kindle, & ebooks

In this week's edition of Publishers Weekly, Sara Nelson, in her Foreword column title "E-Dreaming," comments on e-books, the Sony, and the Kindle. The complete article can be found here: E-Dreaming.

Nelson wrote, among other things:

Quote:
. . .I love the Kindle's wireless download and the ability to read newspapers; I prefer the reading experience of the Sony. . . .
She obviously is unaware of Calibre and the feeds for newspapers and magazines. I'm posting a message to her to let her know about both Calibre and MobileRead. She definitely needs to expand her horizons.
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Old 07-03-2008, 01:01 PM   #2
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I love the Kindle's ability to download my newspaper VIA the wireless. It may seem silly, I know I could dl via usb using Calibre or some other tool for free, but the wireless is just so easy and convinient being an all in one portable solution. Now since she wrote "'...download AND the ability..." maybe she's not aware of the alternatives?

Also I don't understand the fear of publishers that people will buy ebooks instead of hard copies. As long as they sell a unit for $x do they care what packaging the unit comes in? Do they actually sell ebooks for less per unit profit than hardbacks or paperbacks? So far I've been lead to believe they don't but I'm not sure I've seen any hard numbers.
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Old 07-03-2008, 02:07 PM   #3
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Originally Posted by TheJohnNewton View Post
Also I don't understand the fear of publishers that people will buy ebooks instead of hard copies. As long as they sell a unit for $x do they care what packaging the unit comes in? Do they actually sell ebooks for less per unit profit than hardbacks or paperbacks? So far I've been lead to believe they don't but I'm not sure I've seen any hard numbers.
AFAIK, no publisher will sell an ebook for less than they would make on a paper edition. Publishers are in enough trouble. Part of the problem is that publishers tend to have exaggerated ides of how much they can sell an ebook for. When an ebook retails fro the same price as a hardcover edition, the buyer knows a lot of the costs are less (because there isn't a physical book to print, bind, warehouse, and ship), and says "No thanks!"

Part of publishing is fear of piracy: if you have the book in electronic format, you can then copy and share it with all your friends, costing them sales. Hence, DRM provisions.

The bigger problem is that publishers don't normally sell direct to consumers. They sell to distributors who sell to retailers who sell to you. Most publishers aren't set up to handle retail sales and sell ebooks directly to the customer. this is one reason why a lot jumped on the Amazon bandwagon. Amazon is set up to do that.
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Old 07-03-2008, 05:01 PM   #4
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Part of publishing is fear of piracy: if you have the book in electronic format, you can then copy and share it with all your friends, costing them sales. Hence, DRM provisions.
This may be their fear but if so they have a limited grasp of reality. You can easily find copies of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or any number of other books available on the dark net. By releasing legal ebook versions they would at least give people the option of buying a legit copy. Not offering them does nothing to stop piracy. It just frustrates potential customers.

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The bigger problem is that publishers don't normally sell direct to consumers. They sell to distributors who sell to retailers who sell to you. Most publishers aren't set up to handle retail sales and sell ebooks directly to the customer. this is one reason why a lot jumped on the Amazon bandwagon. Amazon is set up to do that.
I don't see the problem? If they sell to Amazon or to Walmart or directly to Joe Reader and make the same per unit profit what does it matter to them? The article makes it seem that they have some fear that selling an ebook will bring lower retail prices but what they should be concerned about is what it does to their profit not the retail price. I don't get the emphasis on retail price. I could see the retailer being concerned about that but does it affect the publisher (assuming they are not direct selling to the end user.)

Last edited by TheJohnNewton; 07-03-2008 at 05:06 PM.
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Old 07-03-2008, 06:06 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by TheJohnNewton View Post
This may be their fear but if so they have a limited grasp of reality. You can easily find copies of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or any number of other books available on the dark net. By releasing legal ebook versions they would at least give people the option of buying a legit copy. Not offering them does nothing to stop piracy. It just frustrates potential customers.
I concur, but I'm not the boss at a publisher.

BTW, I've seen lots of stuff on the darknet. No thanks. My standards for ebooks are set by the sort of work uploaded here. I'm not interested in someone's plain text conversion from a scanned paper book, and haven't time or desire to put it into a decent format. If I'm going to do that, it will be something I can legally share with others.

Quote:
I don't see the problem? If they sell to Amazon or to Walmart or directly to Joe Reader and make the same per unit profit what does it matter to them?
Sales to distributors/retail chains are at a discount. The distributor and retailer also have to make money. Sales directly to Joe Reader will be at a higher price and margin, but as mentioned, they aren't set up to do that.

Quote:
The article makes it seem that they have some fear that selling an ebook will bring lower retail prices but what they should be concerned about is what it does to their profit not the retail price. I don't get the emphasis on retail price. I could see the retailer being concerned about that but does it affect the publisher (assuming they are not direct selling to the end user.)
The retail price affects what the user will buy. See the commentary here on ebook pricing set unrealistically high. No way most users will pay as much for an electronic copy as they will for a hardcover.

Book selling is a retail business. Retailers need to sell X units of whatever per day to cover their costs. Retailers buy from wholesalers. If a retailer lowers the price on an item, that comes out of their margin. They still pay the wholesaler the same for it.

If there is pressure on the retail price, the retailer gets squeezed, and may be squeezed out of business. This is already happening in the book selling trade. Smaller independent bookstores are going out of business because they can't match the pricing offered by places like Barnes and Noble and Borders, and those outfits are in turn being squeezed by discount "warehouse" retailers like Costco and Sam's Club. Economies of scale: the more copies of books you can order from a publisher, the greater the volume discount you can get, and the lower you can price the books.

Ebooks add another wrinkle to the problem. In the computer business, one of the perennial problems is "Channel conflict". A computer manufacturer may sell through retailers, or Value Added Resellers, or direct. Dell is going through that as they attempt to sustain growth, because they want to sell through retailers, but the retailers are afraid Dell may undercut them selling direct.

Consider retailers selling paper books faced with competition from ebooks? They sell paper books. The publisher sells the ebooks directly. Depending on ebook pricing, the customer might get the ebook simply because it's cheaper, and bypass the retailer. The retailer sees possibility of going belly up, and isn't happy. Channel conflict. the publisher needs the retailer to sell paper editions, and will be concerned about adversely affecting them.

Until there is an easy method for bookstores to sell electronic editions as well as paper copies, and make money on it, this issue won't go away.
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Old 07-07-2008, 07:41 PM   #6
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Originally Posted by rhadin View Post
In this week's edition of Publishers Weekly, Sara Nelson, in her Foreword column title "E-Dreaming," comments on e-books, the Sony, and the Kindle. The complete article can be found here: E-Dreaming.

Nelson wrote, among other things:



She obviously is unaware of Calibre and the feeds for newspapers and magazines. I'm posting a message to her to let her know about both Calibre and MobileRead. She definitely needs to expand her horizons.
YEah. Maybe she doesn't want accept the new technology. Some people refuses to accept hi-tech.
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Old 07-08-2008, 01:25 AM   #7
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if publishers don't have to manufacture and ship paper books, they can afford to charge less for ebooks and make the same money - or maybe even more, while charging less. they'll also be contributing in a positive way to stuff - less traffic from less shipping, less pollution from less manufacturing.

i personally am happily reading about 1 book a day these days, but i do still read and buy some paper books - in fact, i got 3 new paper books from amazon today and 2 ebooks from bOb a couple days ago. and paper books aren't dead - paper books still make great gifts and are better for children, plus huge coffee table books aren't worth getting on either a 6 or 9 inch screen. i'd love it if i could buy a paper book that also came with a download link so i could take that book with me in eformat. in fact, i'd make a point of supporting any retailer or publisher that made that happen.
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