Murdoch Says E-Book Prices Will Kill Paper Books 538
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timothy
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from the moving-companies-are-probably-unhappy-too dept.
hrimhari writes "The settlement between Amazon and Macmillian got the attention of a known dinosaur. Consistent to his views, Mr. Murdoch wants to defend his book editors by killing the cheaper solution. '"We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99," Murdoch said. "They pay us the wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge," he said. "But I think it really devalues books, and it hurts all the retailers of the hardcover books.'"
Devalues books... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, eBooks DO devalue books - as they should. Books are just a very (very!) old medium.
What eBooks don't devalue is content, or at least they shouldn't. Up until now, the content has been tied to the medium in the publishing world. We've seen what happened when the two became decoupled with music and movies (and even video games, to some extent - at least for PC gaming), and it's about damn time that the same thing happens with the written word.
As for companies that sell hardcovers... well, sucks to be them. That's what happens when your business model is tied to a single medium.
The information market was like the housing market (Score:3, Interesting)
Information has artificially inflated in value. The prices coming down are a natural result of people realizing this.
We have been paying too much for books, films, and music for years. Party's over. They still get to make profit, just not obscene profit.
Books vs. E-books (Score:3, Interesting)
That said. I can't afford the dead-tree versions of alot of the books I want. So I have to resort to e-books. The people like Murdoch need to catch up with the times. Amazon makes it to where I can afford to read the books I love. As far as I'm concerned, they get my business because they tend to do things for the customers from what I've seen, not their wallets.
Paper trumps electronic (Score:3, Interesting)
e-readers have their place. I'd say it would be for viewing more dynamic docs or quick reference over a networked feed for tech docs. Paper books, for me, are not replaceable. You don't have to worry so much about a paperback. I can smack my son (allegedly) with it when he acts like a kook. I can throw it off a twenty story building and it still works. I can treat my book like the $6.00 price it cost.
I know this is an old argument. I am an old dude, (allegedly), but I see what my son reads. And how he reads, and he decidedly did not want an e-reader for his reading needs.
I just wish I could buy books printed on hemp like God intended.!
Just let Ebooks die already (Score:1, Interesting)
They wont take off. 10 years have passed and for some odd reason consumers are ditching DRM invested files for the real thing they can resell or lend to a friend and wont need a $300 device with a crummy screen.
I like technology. I really do, but the whole ebooks thing is bad. Just use pdfs that are not drmed.
Re:This just in... (Score:4, Interesting)
To make it worse, he has no excuse. The music industry does, they were the first to miss the boat on digital content. The movie industry should have caught on, but somehow didn't. The publishers should really have been able to figure it out; they had fair warning and opportunity and, seemingly, just couldn't connect the dots.
Big Content screwed up and is on the way out no matter how much they complain. Books are absolutely here to stay, but the profit model is shifting. Hopefully the huge economies of scale afforded by e-Books will allow the authors to profit more than under the current model. In any case, Amazon is sure to come out on top for the near future.
Re:iPad (Score:2, Interesting)
I noticed that pictures advertising the iPad always have the New York Times front and center. I think a deal has already been done between Apple and News Corp.
Re:9.99 isn't CHEAP for an ebook you don't own (Score:2, Interesting)
You can loan it to one friend, once, for two weeks. You both need to own a Nook to do it.
Not exactly the same as loaning it around to all your friends, or family.
Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
How is this NOT price fixing? They use licensing semantics to do an end run around the idea, but in the end it's price fixing. Last I heard, anti competitive practices like that are illegal in the United States.
Re:What about the power part? book don't need them (Score:3, Interesting)
What about the power part? real books don't need them!
You have to ask yourself how much energy it takes to produce a book. Certainly they contain quite a bit of energy [metro.co.uk]...
Re:9.99 isn't CHEAP for an ebook you don't own (Score:5, Interesting)
In music, of course, this revolution has come and gone, but-- I don't like downloading MP3s. I buy CDs, a good chunk of those used, either online or at the place down the street. I think of this as an 'automatic backup' of sorts. My friends, particularly the ones still in their 20's, think I am insane. "But dood, yo can get itoonz in like one click!" they say. Those are the people who will probably buy an e-book. They can buy it while they're on a bus or something. Very convenient.
* In publishing, not only do the big publishers know exactly how their stuff is selling (like what is sold, what is returned, what is stolen, what enters the second-hand market...), but they buy information they don't have so they know what their competitors are doing, too (e.g., a company called Monument Information Resource sells this). But not just that... publishers also occasionally sample bookstores to get a third view of that data. And, of course, there's lots of fraternizing between companies because employees switch jobs all the time. Anyway... they know what's going on, even at the piracy end. They are very clued into this by now.
Let's do the math. (Score:5, Interesting)
eBook: $10.00
# times you can loan: 0
# years you can own: probably 10
Resale value: $0.00
Paperback: $7.00
# times you can loan: personal best, oh, about 10
# years you can own: personal best, 34
Resale value: personal best, $27.00
Yeh, I can see how eBooks are undercutting paperbacks.
Hardcovers? Who buys hardcovers?
Not a New Concept (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:"Murdoch Wants" (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if you want to keep putting that out there. Because a little further down you get to:
Men, on average, knew more than women, all other factors being equal
And it's apparently dramatically more than women. 45% vs. 25% "knowledge level high." That's inconvenient.
Re:Prices (Score:3, Interesting)
Almost as common are books that bleed money and end up in a bulk recycler by the thousands
Part of the advantage of ebooks is that you avoid the wastage problem. Ebooks are always "on demand" - you never have to do a 10,000 run "on spec", only to sell 200 and ditch the rest.
Even so, I'd consider 25% off the physical pretty good - and better than you generally see when comparing eBooks to paperbacks, implying that profit margins on eBooks are higher than on their physical equivelant.
Re:"Murdoch Wants" (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, news junkies are better informed about various political hot topics (because that's what the survey measured) than people who don't give a damn, and the show that they watch is pretty much irrelevant. If you don't like Fox's opinionists, watch CNN. And vice versa. Odds are, you'll be just as well informed.
A solution (Score:4, Interesting)
1) If you want to charge me $15 for an ebook, I would like to get the ebook immediately, followed by the real printed book in snail mail. Don't care how long it takes to arrive, as long as it does.
2) If you want to charge me $15 for a paperback, I would like to be able to register online somehow and also download the ebook.
ie: the ebook costs practically fuck all to duplicate and distribute. Leverage that advantage and turn it into a bonus.
I will not pay $15 for an ebook, ever. Especially if it's festooned with DRM. I will wait until the paperback is out (of course, I'm in Australia, where we get royally fucked because of bullshit book distribution laws, so it'll be more like $22 for the paperback, but still).
Re:Let's do the math. (Score:1, Interesting)
In my experience, cheaply-printed hardcovers will last for about 50 years of moderate use. Better ones will last far longer--I've got quite a few 80+ year old books in my collection, and most of them look pretty damn good. My oldest is ~160 years, I think (I don't really try to get older books, but that one was a curiosity and, as it turns out, hasn't been printed since. I really ought to submit that thing to Project Gutenberg...) Paperbacks will last 5-50 years, I'd say, depending on the quality and assuming they're being read from time to time and not just sitting on a shelf. Mass markets paperbacks can't really take more than a half-dozen readings, unless they're very thin or you're really careful with them.
I do. I like the larger print, and for classics it's often worth it for extras you (sometimes) don't get in the cheap paperbacks. I never buy them new, though, unless they're on the bargain rack for $4 or so. Generally pay about 1/2 to 2/3 the price of a new paper back for them, used or on sale.
Re:Most books cost less, dead trees cost more (Score:3, Interesting)
It's nice to be ripped off ;)
I always thought that Cisco should almost give you those books for free, to make more CCNAs so it would be a no-brainer for companies which hardware to buy as finding support would be easier. But in the real world...
Anyway, all technical books are like that. MCSE from MSFT is 40 quid each.
tired of these old fucks whining (Score:1, Interesting)
seriously, is there anything these old media fucks won't whine about in the internet age? honestly, i cannot wait for the all to die off.
Re:This just in... (Score:4, Interesting)
For once Murdoch has a point.
Amazon wants to kill paper books and gain a monopoly on ebooks.
The low prices are are designed to kill off the competition - much like MS offering better deals to OEMs who did not sell BeOS.
I agree ebooks should be cheaper than paper books, but how long do you think they will stay cheaper once Amazon has us all locked into Kindle? How long will you be able to buy books once you only read on a device that has DRM - pay per read or rent by the week is quite possible.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Interesting)
Stephen King tried this. And it didn't work. Because he didn't get enough money at the end of each chapter, he stopped writing the story. Thereby screwing every single one of his fans who DID pay up, because they paid for an incomplete story.
Now, if a best selling author like King couldn't make this model work, what makes you think it's viable?
Re:This just in... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Capitalism" as we know it was an industrial philosophy. It was devised in a time where value came from physical objects, because physical production was expensive. This was a time where a physical object had one purpose and one purpose only, and its value came from how well it fulfilled that purpose.
But look at the computer sitting in front of you. Chances are, you've spent more money on software than on the PC itself. The true value of a computing device comes from its configuration, because physically it is a general purpose device with the potential to do anything but the ability to do nothing. Software adds value to it.
No, this doesn't make sense in an industrialist-capitalist context. Something non-physical with value?
But consider AutoCAD, which costs three or four times the price of the PC it runs on. It took millions of man hours to create, and save millions of man hours every year for its users. If it sold at it's physical "value" it would be free. If it was free, Autodesk would go out of business and wouldn't write any more software. No materials or environments updates means no more AutoCAD. Which means people go back to pen and paper. Value is lost for everyone.
But going back to eBooks, there is still competition. Amazon UK has 451 books on "Ruby on Rails", for example. Copyright protection keeps prices high enough that a new entrant can afford to launch a book, while the reality of competition means that people are undercutting each other as much as they can afford to in order to get the needed market share. The market has reached equilibrium, and these books add genuine value by costing the same as about 3 man-hours of programming time, but being the product of thousands of man-hours for authors, proofreaders, typesetters etc and saving the buyer lots of time. Value is created, and the creators of that value must be rewarded.
HAL.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Interesting)
It was AFTER he broke all records by writing the ebook "Riding the Bullet", so I don't think you can say there was no demand or that the lack of e-readers was a barrier to success.
The difference was, Riding the Bullet was complete, and relatively cheap. And it made King a TON of money.
The Plant was done chapter by chapter. Even when the fans had a 75% or better payment, he increased the price and the audience disappeared. Then he stopped updating the tale.
All in all, he showed that the latter model (as advocated in the post I originally replied to) just doesn't work.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Interesting)
Like Custer's valiant last stand at Little Big Horn, how America is at it's root a "Christian Nation," and that the pilgrims and the indians got together and sang kumbaya on the first thanksgiving?
No, history has never had to be factual. [amazon.com]
Re:Price??!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Edison model different (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly what I think will happen with books: nobody wants to set out to deliberately kill paper books but in the future I would imagine that only very popular "classic" books will end up in physical, high quality bindings and that the cheap paperback novels of today will be replaced by electronic media simply because eBooks are cheaper to make and more convenient.
And it will revitalize the market for fiction by eliminating the compression of the midlist -- authors whose books sell consistently but not rapidly. Because e-books don't have to compete for physical rack space in stores against 'blockbusters' and have no inventory costs, e-books by authors can remain "in print" from their publication date until their copyright expires.
The same also applies for scholarly works, which generally have low print runs because of their slow sales and high inventory costs; e-books will allow a work to remain available indefinitely, and on-demand printing will be able to satisfy needs for an actual physical book.