05-18-2008, 03:07 AM | #1 |
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The abysmal pricing of ebooks...
So I'm fairly new to ebooks and ereaders in general. Lulled into complacency by the low prices of Kindle book prices, I jumped right into the whole scene with a Cybook Gen3, and I'm now completely taken aback by the prices on books anywhere approaching new.
Since I'm primarily a SF reader, my early purchases were a lot of sci-fi classics by the masters; Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and their contemporaries. These were cheap titles, and I thought the future looked rosy for ebooks. Now that I've started to look for some more recent titles, I'm completely floored that I'm seeing prices of $20+. Double-u, Tee, Eff?!? I can understand if it's a brand new book just out in hardcover, but hardcovers that have been out a year, or even books now in paperback go for the same damn price?!? The first book I was looking for was Spook Country by Gibson. $20 at most sites. The book is out in bloody paperback for $10, and you can still get the damn hardcover for $12! You know, physical books that they had to destroy trees to make and get a whole manufacturing and shipping process to get in peoples hands. And I have to pay almost double for a manuscript file that was run through an ebook creator program? What is going on here? I've read several threads where people have said that the ebook retailers drag their feet when it comes to updating prices for current books, but the problem seems more endemic than that. Do companies like BooksonBoard, Fictionwise, or Mobipocket respond to questions/requests for lower prices on books where the physical editions are already far cheaper than the digital versions? |
05-18-2008, 05:35 AM | #2 |
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Well, if you like SF then www.baen.com is always good. They have a lot of free ebooks and AFAIK all new books are $5. Or you could just buy a webscription and get 5 Books for $15.
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05-18-2008, 05:41 AM | #3 |
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Thanks for the tip! With the prices the way they are, I'll be on the lookout for deals like never before.
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05-18-2008, 08:28 AM | #4 |
zeldinha zippy zeldissima
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prices are definitely one of the biggest obstacles to more widespread acceptance of ebooks. like you, i can't justify paying full hardcover price for an ebook (not even when it's new ! sorry), and this sometimes prevents me from buying a book, which i will try to get at the library instead.
the ebook industry is still in its infancy, and i think it's important for us, as consumers, to participate in the form it will take. we can do this by trying to make our voices heard to the publishers ; i have written to a couple of publishers to ask them about their intentions of making digital editions of their books available, and also to let them know that i won't buy overpriced books. a lot of people talk about voting with your pocketbook, and refusing to buy books with drm at outrageous prices ; i think this is a good idea too, but it's best to do so while also letting the publishers know *why* you are not buying their books, so they don't interpret the lack of sales as a lack of interest. in this thread we discussed penguin's prices and a few of us wrote to them (you'll find the contact info in the thread, if you would like to do the same ) ; we got back identical noncommittal replies, but i think it's a valid effort nonetheless and the more people write to them the better ; hopefully they will eventually be forced to listen. i would encourage you to send an email to the publisher whenever you see an ebook priced the same as a new hardcover, *especially* if the hardcover is already available for less. in this specific case, i've heard that some booksellers are quite responsive, and will mark down the books if you alert them, so you should also write to Fictionwise or Books on Board or wherever you are shopping for ebooks. |
05-18-2008, 10:13 AM | #5 | |
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Quote:
1. All the major publishing imprints are divisions of large multinational media conglomerates these days. For example: if Ace or Roc go bankrupt, don't expect to read about it in the Financial Times -- they're units of Penguin Group, which in turn is part of Penguin-Putnam, who happen to also publish the FT. 2. The execs in charge of the publishing units are, like execs in any other multinational, expected to contribute to the corporate bottom line -- or else. 3. The structure of these publishing units is geared around a production pipeline that takes in manuscripts at one end and ships provisions to a warehouse for distribution via retail outlets at the other, typically processing several books per week. This process is reflected in the rights contracts that their legal departments negotiate with the authors. It is very hard to change this structure because it's How The Industry Works. (Which is inviolable, because the publishing industry works the way it does because its practices are the vector sum of all practices that have not caused some other publisher to go bankrupt at some previous point in the past two hundred years. In other words, it doesn't make sense to look at what it does, you need to understand it by looking at what it doesn't do.) 4. Consequently, ebooks are generated by the same production process as dead tree books, and are "shipped" to an imaginary "warehouse" from which copies are distributed to imaginary "wholesalers" like, say, Fictionwise. 4a. It is worth noting at this point that the cost of paper-and-ink contributes maybe 10% of the cover price of a novel. Another 10% goes to the author (plus or minus), about 10% goes to the publisher in profits, and 70% is gobbled up by the wholesale and retail supply chain. 5. This means that there's little or no flexibility in the process, and the publishers can't easily cut their overheads by redesigning the publishing pipeline to work sensibly. 6. They recognize that they could boost ebook sales by cutting the prices. But if they did that, they'd risk cannibalizing the sales of their dead-tree editions, and reducing their profitability. Their hands are tied so they can't streamline their processes to make a bigger profit on the ebooks; if they cut the ebook prices by even 10% below the dead-tree prices, they're eating into their profits. And that brings us round to point #2 above. 7. Moreover, ebook sales of DRM'd high-cover items are so piss-poor -- figures in double digits are not uncommon, compared to the four to five digit sales expected of a hardcover -- that there's no pay off in sight to act as an incentive for executive risk-taking (like, oh, selling ebooks for what everyone understands is a realistic price). Finally, 8. You try selling a novel to a major publisher without giving them the ebook rights! I've tried it, and my agent just gets knocked back -- withholding ebook rights is a deal-breaker, because despite all of the above nonsense, everyone knows that ebook rights are going to be worth something sooner or later. So they insist on buying them, even though they can't use them effectively. And at the end of the day, we writers have to earn a living so we can eat and excrete more of the product, so we knuckle under. |
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05-18-2008, 10:22 AM | #6 | |
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Right now ebook publishers are trying to make a fast buck with unnecessarily high prices. In fact, in a previous thread, someone (I expect he was from the ebook industry) argued that we had to pay more because of the convenience of buying ebooks versus driving to a bookstore to buy a pbook. IOW, his argument was similar to the justification for the odious 'Convenience charge' some cinemas and sports venues add to the bill; when, in reality, they are charging you for saving them money! The truth is, the prices will ultimately be driven by supply and demand. But the ebook industry, like most, wants the answer to be low demand and high prices. The recording industry was like this over esongs till Steve Jobs grabbed them by the ears made them realize that selling to at a low cost would drive up demand and, since the price is so low, help reduce pirated songs. Lots of other factors involved but that's a major one. |
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05-18-2008, 12:04 PM | #7 | |
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Sigh, I love it when they kill a market (or induce rampant pirating) in the misguided attempt to make ever more money. |
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05-18-2008, 12:19 PM | #8 | |||
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BOb |
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05-19-2008, 02:35 AM | #9 |
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It's fair to point out that if you go to a site like Fictionwise, you'll find many, many thousands of books at the US$5.99 price point, which seems enimently fair to me.
The average paperback book cost around £7-8 (say US$15) in the UK, so paying even $10 for an eBook is a considerable saving over paying a paperback here. |
05-19-2008, 04:42 AM | #10 | ||
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Is too. :-P Seriously, accusing Mr Stross of being either an idiot or a liar strikes me as... disingenuous. His point, as I understand it, is that the publishing industry is f**ked up. It also has very good historical reasons to be as f**ked up as it is, which means its hard or nearly impossible to un-f**k. A couple thousand e-book fanatics writing enraged campaign letters aren't going to do the trick, I'm afraid. Amazon making serious bling with Kindle e-book sales, or Baen Books raking in enough money to make Croesus green with envy just might, but I don't think we are quite there, yet. Last edited by Alexander Turcic; 11-19-2010 at 02:52 PM. |
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05-19-2008, 06:21 AM | #11 |
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Be that as it may, with the current low value of the US$, for those of us in Europe, eBook stores which price their books in US$ offer extremely competitive prices.
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05-19-2008, 07:56 AM | #12 |
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And you can buy the American editions of paperback books in some shops and they are usually much cheaper so you should compare the price for these books.
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05-19-2008, 08:10 AM | #13 |
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Bookshops in the UK tend to merely replace the "$" with a "£" when it comes to setting prices .
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05-19-2008, 08:14 AM | #14 | |
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In the Science Fiction Bookshop in Stockholm and American mass market paperback is 7-8 Euro and en UK edition is 10-11 Euro. |
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05-19-2008, 08:19 AM | #15 | |
Wizard
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It was cheaper to buy them from Amazon (US) than from Amazon (UK) - even with the cost of international shipping . (I did wonder if they'd just ship them from their UK warehouse as it would have saved them some expense - but they didn't.) |
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