Authors' Amazon Awareness 174
Geoffrey.landis writes "Many book lovers were surprised this week when Amazon.com removed books from the publisher Macmillan from the shelves (later restored), including such popular imprints as St. Martin's, Henry Holt, and the science fiction publisher Tor. But readers shouldn't have been surprised, according to the Author's Guild. The Author's Guild lists a history of earlier instances where Amazon stopped listing a publisher's books in order to pressure them to accept terms, dating back to early in 2008, when Amazon removed the 'buy' buttons for works from the British publisher Bloomsbury, representing such authors as William Boyd, Khaled Hosseini, and J.K. Rowling. In response, the Author's Guild has set up a service called Who Moved My Buy Button to alert authors when their books are removed from Amazon's lists."
Amazon's actions have generated ill-will on the parts of many authors, who — being authors — are only too happy to explain their viewpoints at length. Two such examples are Tobias Buckell's breakdown of why Amazon isn't the righteous defender of low-prices they claim to be and Charlie Stross's round-up of the situation.
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is one party in a two party negotiation. If they don't like the terms of the negotiation, they don't have to accept them. Are they supposed to sell books no matter what the terms are? This is a lot of hot air about nothing. It's simple, really. If authors don't like their publisher, if publishers don't like Amazon - they can go elsewhere.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting aside the fact that Amazon is the 800lb gorilla in bookselling business who currently controls 80-90% of eBook market, the problem has arisen due to Amazon's insistence that authors should submit to restrictive contractual terms in order to be allowed into the Kindle store -- i.e. making the book exclusive to Amazon, negotiating a special low price, and worst yet, making Amazon the publisher.
Prior to the iPad's announcement Amazon's terms for ebooks were 70/30. That's 70% going to Amazon. It's nothing short of a robbery.
I'm sorry to say this, but it is a very sleazy company.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
...Prior to the iPad's announcement Amazon's terms for ebooks were 70/30. That's 70% going to Amazon. It's nothing short of a robbery.
I'm sorry to say this, but it is a very sleazy company.
That's the one good thing about competition. It tends to force change on monopolistic pricing and "sleazy" agreements. Of course, in the case of Apple(iTunes) and Amazon(Kindle), we're talking about two 800-pound Gorillas going at it. Should be a good fight.
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Apple will probably win in the long run because, on the whole, they make their products enjoyable to use. It used to be enjoyable to shop at Amazon, but convenience was eclipsed by unwanted force-feeding. Still, I am enjoying the fight. As soon as Google gets seriously involved I imagine it will become the next big spectator sport.
Everyone: take a drink every time someone uses the word "monopoly" in this thread.
Better than competition: No publishers. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Better than competition: No publishers. (Score:5, Interesting)
"Why have publishers?"
Because the authors want them. They provide useful services.
You might want to read some of the links in the article. They contain information about where all the money goes and why authors use publishers.
Good discussion: (Score:3, Informative)
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MOD PARENT UP! Link is extremely informative!
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I wrote three technical books in college. Please explain to me how I could possibly use writing a book in 1986 (which wouldn't be published until 1987) to help support myself in college without an advance from the publisher. Please explain to me how I could have possibly afforded to hire an editor when my yearly income was $10,000.
Also please explain to me why having a publisher give me an advance before I started writing is worse for me than going through a process that requires me to put thousands of do
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30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal (Score:5, Informative)
Do some research. There are authors out there that made way less than 30% of sales, while the publisher took a big chunk. I was just reading a published author that has had over eight books published. On some of them, he got .50 cents per book. On others, he got a flat rate and no royalty fees at all.
If an author dumped their publisher, went with Amazon, and happened to sell a lot of books, 30% wouldn't be a bad deal, in my opinion.
See the above statement. Who do you think are stirring the pot here? Authors or Publishers?
Yes, there is very much an RIAA type of situation here, where the publisher often does promotion and advertising, but a big name could write a book and go straight to Amazon with it.
Now they could get their own servers, marketing team, etc, and go it on their own. How much time and money do you think all of that will cost?
Amazon isn't spotless in the situation, DRM and all, but a lot of publishers treat their authors like the RIAA treats its artists.
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I”m sorry?? Amazon’s work in selling these e-books is next to nothing.
I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all that’s left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!
There are authors out there that made way less than 30% of sales, while the publisher took a big chunk. I was just reading a published author that has had over eight books published. On some of them, he got .50 cents per book. On others, he got a flat rate and no royalty fees at all.
Have you ever heard of ad populum [wikipedia.org]?
It’s faulty logic. Something worse does not make something bad OK. Just like if your limit for badness is <=1, and it’s at 0.7, then telling you that it could be 0.3 or 0.0, does not make 0.7 > 1.0!
Let
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Im sorry?? Amazons work in selling these e-books is next to nothing.
I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all thats left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!
Why don't use then? You'd make a killing and save the poor Author's guild at the same time!
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Re:30% for an author wouldn't be a bad deal (Score:4, Insightful)
I”m sorry?? Amazon’s work in selling these e-books is next to nothing.
I can have a online e-book shop set-up by tomorrow. And a author upload service on the next day. Then all that’s left, is moving money back and forth! You must be kidding!
That's up there with "Rock Stars don't do anything difficult- I could do that if I wanted to!". Why don't you then? Undercut the big players, offer lots to the authors? Make your millions?
I'll tell you why- if you set up an e-book website, it'd flop. There's more to being a mega-retailer than just writing a web-page and setting up a money transfer. Advertising, promoting, negotiating with publishers and authors, maintaining partnerships... the website itself is no more significant than the shop-front is for a jewelery shop- it's everything else that makes the shop, not the bricks and mortar.
Plenty of people do try and fail- only the ones who are good at all that other stuff survive. Amazon have, Apple have, lots haven't. It's their talents in all these other niggling little areas that enables to act like the juggernaut-bullies that they are.
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Yes but you'll have a hell of a job making that the 8th most visited site in the US like Amazon is. People should know by now, having an online store has nothing to do with the software, and everything to do with marketing. 30% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill? (Score:2, Insightful)
You obvoiusly know little to nothing about the relationship between authoring a book and publishing a book.
Book's most often require editing, fact checking, layout, artwork - even hiring a set of on the cheap professionals this will cost thousands.
You also seem to not grasp the simple fact that E-books are not yet a signifigant part of the bookspace - read the nuimbers and you'll notice that it's about 1% of the book market.
Going to Amazon with a e-book and having no physical book is dropping the vast majo
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This writer seems to disagree with you http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2009/10/kindle-numbers-traditional-publishing.html [blogspot.com]
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Nope. You can't.
That you think this is possible just disqualifies you for the discussion.
You're ignorant. Anything more you say will just be more drivel. Done.
Re: Epic Fail on RTFA? Or Amazon Shill? (Score:4, Interesting)
Book's most often require editing, fact checking, layout, artwork - even hiring a set of on the cheap professionals this will cost thousands.
Or you can go down to your local college and higher a couple people for next to nothing and end up with the same quality.
It's sad, but unfortunately the trend seems to indicate that you're right. Many publishers used to do multiple levels of editing, detailed proofreading, etc. The process in some sense required it, because you had to move from a typescript page (or even handwritten) by an author to a typeset page, and in the process, things had to be checked. Nowadays, even large publishers have cut out many stages, and some appear to do little more than dump the text from a computer file into a layout app, do 15 minutes of design, and get ready to publish. If there were errors, the author has to catch them. And I've seen a number of cases where proofs don't seem to matter -- things that an author corrects in proofs go uncorrected in the final copy, because it's too much of a pain to go through those corrections in detail and make changes in a format that is often different from the application the author is using (or the one that is being used to track changes).
Designing, typesetting, and making a book used to be so much more labor-intensive and time-consuming in the past. Yet I look at such books published decades ago all the time, and generally the quality is quite high. Why is it, then, that I see more poorly-designed books these days with typographical errors on every page?
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Designing, typesetting, and making a book used to be so much more labor-intensive and time-consuming in the past. Yet I look at such books published decades ago all the time, and generally the quality is quite high. Why is it, then, that I see more poorly-designed books these days with typographical errors on every page?
I'm horrible when it comes to spelling but I come across errors all the time while reading newer books so that leads me to beleive that publishers really don't do anything magical that some random English major couldn't do. Better yet hire 2 or 3 people and pay per error corrected or something like that...
But I forget my place.. We can't improve or make anything cheaper if it hurts big media...
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Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon is one party in a two party negotiation. If they don't like the terms of the negotiation, they don't have to accept them...
You're missing the point. Amazon didn't merely say "we don't like your terms, so we won't sell your e-books." What they did was say "We don't like your terms on one item, e-books, so unless you accept our terms on that we won't sell anything else of yours, either, no hardcover or paperback, sales, not just electronic."
They were trying to use their market dominance in one area to allow them to dictate prices in another area. And not for the first time.
This why monopoly is bad.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless, Amazon is absolutely right to negotiate with the price-gouging publishers any way they see fit, using any leverage they can. The publishers are trying to use their exclusive rights to the books; why shouldn't Amazon use their exclusive rights to their store? They are not harming the market, or keeping anything from being sold.
Re:So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that Amazon has nothing even near a monopoly on books, whether electronic, paper, or audio.
Except this is clearly not true. Think about it. After Amazon says "we don't like your price on e-books and so we won't sell them," what is their motiviation to not to sell Macmillan paper books; an unrelated product? What do they gain from this?
Up until they disagreed with e-book pricing, they had no problem with Macmillan products, so it's clearly not a case of them not liking their prices on paper books. So what exactly do they gain by what appears, on the surface, to be an economically unjustified decision? If the market were indeed completely fungible, as you suggest, this would only reduce their sales volume. It would put no pressure on Macmillan, since their customers would just buy from somebody else.
The only reason that they would attempt to muscle Macmillan into accepting their pricing terms on e-books by refusing to sell paper books would be if they do have some degree of monopoly power (or, at least, they think that they have power). You say "negotiate using any leverage they can," but there simply isn't any leverage there unless they are market dominant.
Here's a rule of thumb you might consider: When a company uses market dominance to set pricing terms, it pretty much never is a good thing for the consumer. Even if it looks good on the surface.
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Maybe Amazon doesn't have a monopoly per se, but it's still using its size to put pressure on companies to set prices how Amazon wants them. Amazon is doing the same thing Wal-Mart does. Wal-Mart doesn't have a monopoly on selling shirts, or binder paper, or whatever else. But it's such a huge retail channel that makers of products pretty much cannot afford not to do business with Wal-Mart. Amazon is definitely in a similar position to Wal-Mart, especially in the book market.
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It is anti-free market.
If I want to buy from you for $10 and then resell at $5, that is a free market if I'm willing to take the hit. You get your money and I get my customers. If you come to me and say that I have to sell at $15 because you found someone else who wants to sell at $15 and you don't want my business to undermine their business, I have every right to keep selling at $5 or, horror of horrors, drop you because you ain't worth the pain. Pure and simple free market principles. I know my customer
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA:
"I don't like to do business with people who, apparently as far as I can tell, think sucker punching you when they disagree, even if they have the right to do it, is the way to go about this."
I found it affirms my opinion of the situation. YMMV. As in many of these type of debates, your opinion is balanced against a very small subset of idealists who will let moral issues influence their business dealings.
That's what.
Kill the DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
This is another reason I loathe DRM. Amazon is apparently the sole distributor of the authorized electronic version of these books. They apparently have unquestionable control over whether or not they'll even be available for purchase, and they can revoke ownership of the books remotely without people even noticing (viz the 1984 kerfuffle).
When I buy something, I want to own it. I don't want to license it at the whim of a service that dictates what I can do with it. That's just ridiculous.
Re:Kill the DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
There's an idea: enforce the calling of things by their proper name. i.e. making it illegal to use a "BUY NOW" button in these cases and force them to use a "LICENSE NOW" button instead. False advertising and all that jazz?
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Buying a license is still buying something.
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But when they sell you a book, they don't tell you that they're selling you a license and some ground up dead tree.
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Well, I’m all for it. But first we would find someone with the power and money to actually push that trough courts and parliament.
How would we do that?
Re:Kill the DRM (Score:4, Interesting)
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The problem is that "rent" often implies ongoing payments. "License" doesn't, and people are used to it from driver's licenses, hunting, fishing, etc.
"Buy License" would be most descriptive.
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When I buy something, I want to own it. I don't want to license it at the whim of a service that dictates what I can do with it. That's just ridiculous.
Generally speaking, I agree with you, but I'd say there's a notable exception. If I could choose to buy (and own) product A for $X, or I could choose to license product A for $X-Y, licensing might be a viable alternative in certain situations. Kind of like renting a DVD movie or console game, only with more straightforward (I suppose) DRM. DRM that, of course, by being a licensee rather than an owner, I'd be explicitly agreeing to be "managed" by.
Similar to the difference between buying Windows licenses
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Nonsense. This is about big corporations that screw content creators being done harm.
If I want to support a smaller author, I will go to one of the literary
conventions where they are forced to market their own work and buy the
book straight from them personally.
Free Market? (Score:2)
...If Amazon can dictate terms to book publishers in this fashion, do you think that Apple could pull a similar stunt with RIAA members?
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Uh, true free market economies will have monopolies. Anti-trust laws make the market less free. Something to think about when someone gets a bug up their ass about a politician being "Socialist."
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Anti-trust laws make the market less free.
Aye you've got a point, wasn't trying to be too pedantic, but I suppose I really meant "the incarnation of the free market as it currently exists in the USA." Which means we've got oligopolies instead, but I'm just saying that if Amazon can swing it's weight that effectively, isn't there a problem then that business regulators should be looking into?
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Almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention. The anti-trust laws were written to break up monopolies that had been created by government intervention in the market.
Nice to think so, but it's not true.
Anti-trust laws were written to break up the big 19th- and early 20th century trusts-- essentially groups of large businesses collaborating to drive smaller ones out of the market so that they could set prices-- for example, Standard Oil's agreement with the railroads, which was not merely that the railroads would give them low prices (that's standard business practice), but that the railroads had to agree to not give smaller competitors good prices.
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Re:Free Market? (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost all monopolies are the result of government intervention. The anti-trust laws were written to break up monopolies that had been created by government intervention in the market. Some of the classic examples of "essential" monopoly were created by the government. When electricity and telephone service first came on the scene most cities had many competitors selling either. The government stepped in and decided to make both of these regulated monopolies.
[Citation Needed] because I don't think you have any clue what you're talking about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Bell#Formation_under_Bell_patent [wikipedia.org]
The telephone (and telegraph) markets were consolidated by Bell Telephone/AT&T.
Following a government antitrust suit in 1913, AT&T agreed to the Kingsbury Commitment in which AT&T would sell their $30 million in Western Union stock, allow competitors to interconnect with their system, and not acquire other independent companies
AT&T did everything but that last bit. They kept buying up telephone/telegraph companies until the government came back again in 1934 and set AT&T up as a regulated monopoly.
I'm not sure why the "all monopolies are the result of government intervention" meme lives on.
During the hey-day of laissez faire economics, "classic" monopolies sprouted up left and right.
The government didn't create railroad and boat shipping monopolies.
The government didn't create the oil production/refining/distribution monopoly .
The government didn't create the monopoly in the telecom market.
I realize that facts are inconvenient to your ideology, but they won't go away.
In case that was all too long:
AT&T built up a monopoly in spite of the government's attempt to prevent it and before the government officially sanctioned them as one.
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Governments did pass laws and implement policies that favored Standard Oil over competitors.
Most local telecom monopolies were created by local government policy... AT&T then bought the local monopolies creating a national monopoly.
You appear to think that only the Federal government intervenes in the market to create mono
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Additionally, it is curious that the oil monopoly seems to have never re-formed, yet the telecom monopoly tends to re-form every time it is broken up.
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...If Amazon can dictate terms to book publishers in this fashion, do you think that Apple could pull a similar stunt with RIAA members?
If the RIAA members weren't previously colluded in the organization we call the RIAA, yeah. As it stands, it comes down to who's the biggest monopoly (or oligopoly, in the RIAA's case), and the music industry is far bigger than the online music distribution industry so Apple's fucked.
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In a true free market, Amazon, the organization that the government gives special privileges to by calling it a Corporation, would not exist.
So, the current situation doesn't resemble a conceptual free market. And historically the instances of one entity being able to control large portions of an economy without resorting to some sort of coercion (via laws or organized crime) are few.
Anti-trust laws are intended to prevent monopolies.
Here, however, nobody is preventing the publishing and sale of a book. A
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Holding a dominant position or a monopoly in a market is not illegal in itself, a monopoly is said to be coercive when the monopoly firm actively prohibits competitors from entering the field. In this case authors have many choices regarding publication: traditional publishers, self-publication; Publishers have choice over to whom they sell their
Re:Free Market? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the whole premise of the article is a fraud anyways, since amazon already caved to McMillan [themoneytimes.com], which will now set the price of e-books on amazon.com, and already sharply raised amazon's previous pricing. So tell me, who is dictating terms here?
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If Macmillan had been a public company, th
How is it not preventing this (Score:4, Informative)
Not that I've read TFA, but isn't this what free market economics is supposed to prevent?
Yes.
Which it is.
Unless you've been under a rock, Apple is doing a book store. And Barnes & Nobel is too, along with the nook reader... Why do you think Amazon *had* to capitulate?
free market economics works just fine but it doesn't fix things instantly. Over the long run though things will be fixed and arrive at a natural state. Regulation always serves to create an artificial plateau of being that you'd never find otherwise...
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What confuses me is this: isn't having a distributor dictate the price of an item to a retailer called "price-fixing"? Isn't is illegal in the US? If I understand correctly, Macmillan and many authors are upset that Amazon want to sell at a reduced retail price while still paying the *same* wholesale price. Shouldn't that be allowed in a free market economy (as long as they aren't selling below cost in order to force out smaller players)?
So why did Amazon have to capitulate? Clearly they have to buy the
You are confusing collusion with fixing (Score:2)
What confuses me is this: isn't having a distributor dictate the price of an item to a retailer called "price-fixing"?
You are confused about the term "price fixing". That refers to a number of companies all agreeing to a fixed price, so customers in a market have no choice but to pay that price for some particular good.
But here's the thing. While one company might decide to "fix" prices at $15, there is nothing in the model that lets companies set pricing to stop another company from saying "Hey, why not
That does not equal regulation (Score:2)
Free markets require regulation. Why? Because, as the saying goes, your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose. "Free" should not be equated with anarchy.
But you can achieve that effect without overall regulation, by ONLY regulating companies recognized as true monopolies, and even then with a light hand - or enforcing laws which make literal attempts to connect fist with nose illegal. Rule of law is important but regulation is a whole different kettle of fish.
I am not one to say you can real
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Free markets require regulation. Why? Because, as the saying goes, your right to swing your fist stops at the end of my nose. "Free" should not be equated with anarchy. If your freedoms abridge my freedoms, there is a problem.
Whatever the colloquial meaning may be, the term "regulation" in an economic context does not include basic enforcement of property rights. The one thing common to all free markets is that property rights are always strictly enforced (a.k.a. the Non-Aggression Principle or NAP). How they are enforced varies; it is possible—some would even say necessary—to ensure their enforcement non-aggressively, i.e. without a government, by relying on the purely defensive use of force in immediate self-defens
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There's a difference between being a monopoly and just being an influential player. There's no law against using your influence, if you're a company of any size- except if you're in a monopoly position.
The fact that Amazon isn't a monopoly should be thoroughly highlighted by the fact that Macmillan beat them on this one- Amazon caved because their competitors were offering better terms. If they were a monopoly, that wouldn't have happened.
It's all about the money (Score:4, Interesting)
And to think that I helped Mary Ann North become rich paying $.75 per paperback. Of all the parties beating their breasts in outrage over this issue the only ones I have any sympathy for are the authors and the readers.
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If as an author you can't write, then you should be in a different job.
Uh... everyone seems focused on amazon but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I do respect the right of authors to make some money, but when an ebook is twice as expensive as a cheap paperback version, there's something highly wrong.
All of that makes me think they actually are trying to kill the ebook market, where "they" means publishers. Amazon of course is not clean either, and they obviously have been taking advantage of their public policy to look like saviors, that they are not.
tldr: ebooks are way too expensive. Anything above 3-4$ for an old book or 4-8$ for a novelty is just plain insane. It's not like they require a lot of infrastructure. Oh and of course the author should still get most of the money in that grand scheme. But I doubt it's the case.
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They still have to PRODUCE the original book that becomes an ebook.
This requires:
an editor, proofreader, any cover art, conversion to ebook format and some quality checks, oh, and an author to spend near a year working on the book.
Hence, they want new books to cost more. It's called "return on investment." The publishers also want older ebooks that have made the costs back tobe LESS than Amazon's mandated 9.99.
Publishers deserve to make some money, too, because they do a great favor for us all: They redu
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You know I keep seeing all this about about production costs, such as editors. I don't buy it honestly. The last few "new release" books I bought to read had horrible editing and I can't imagine they were proofread either. The quality of what's considered top notch writing has tanked considerably over the years, and the editing process for most fiction publishers at least doesn't seem to catch even the most glaring errors. No, I think the old publishers are just afraid that they're going to get cut out.
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an editor, proofreader, any cover art, conversion to ebook format and some quality checks, oh, and an author to spend near a year working on the book.
Wow. Isaac Asimov must have been born in like the seventeenth century!
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Do you have any idea how much work goes into producing a book? If you want a book that was just published recently you should be willing to pay the price. If you're not then vote with your wallet and wait for the paperback or for the copyright to expire (yes we need to fix that, I know.)
Sadly authors don't get the lion's share of the money, but they get a LOT more for the first runs (hardback, ebook, etc.) than the residuals from cheaper paperbacks once the book gets older.
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Do you have any idea how much work goes into producing a book?
I Am Not An Author, so no, I have no first-hand experience with how much work goes into a book.
However, I assume that compensation for that work is (and has always been) built into the price of the paperback versions. If none of the people who did all that work were compensated for it, that would mean no paperback versions.
I also assume that paperbacks cost more to produce than e-book versions, which don't require smushing a force with blades
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"Paperback: Work to produce original content + cost to physically print.
E-book: (Same) Work to produce original content.
I'd assume the E-book would still be much cheaper."
Your assumptions are incorrect. It costs money to create an e-book just as it does to print a paperback. You have all of the same costs of a paperback (as you noted) plus the conversion to the various e-book formats which then have to go through various editing stages to be certain nothing was altered.
More importantly, there is essential
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I'd think conversion to e-book formats would be trivial considering that the publisher has the source text. I'd hope that formatting it to fit a screen would cost less than shipping and producing literally tons of paper.
Even if e-books cost more to produce, as you say, there is no market for them. If I were Kindle-selling Amazon, I'd want to jump-start that market with lower prices rather than let it remain a niche market.
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And besides, devices like the kindle do not lend themselves to very specific layouts by the publisher; they allow you to change font sizes, and the text reflows automatically. Like HTML the publisher doesn't spend lots of time pouring over kerning and leading, making sure that white space rivers don't appear and that text flows meaningfully around any illustrations. You just don't have that much control in an e-book.
There is no way production costs on an e-book are higher than any printed form. Printed f
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Keep in mind that what was being argued about was *not* the price of *old* ebooks. What was being argued about was how much Amazon would charge for ebooks on the day the hard cover was first released.
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The hard cover price war you mentioned basically got well below the normal "loss-leader". A hard cover with a $30 cover price wholesales at roughly $15, and the store is losing $5 on each book sale to get you in the door, with the eye on making money on anything else that the buyer might get on the same visit. Amazon did lose money on ebooks of best sellers until last week, with the intent of earning a larger market share than it could before.
I agree that the price of ebooks should go down when a paperba
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Alright, you seem about as close to an expert as anyone around here.
What would be a reasonable price for a non-DRM eBook?
And if it's bought directly from the author instead of through a publisher?
Why not use eBooks as a marketing ploy along the lines of hardcovers? I.e. include one for download with the hard-cover version.
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Are the rates you quoted % of list price, % of wholesale price or % of retail price?
If a retailer, after paying the normal wholesale price for one of your wife's books, drops the retail price to the wholesale price, does this increase your cash flow from increased units or decrease it from some wacky royalties of retail price clause?
From my perspective, what Macmillan is up to feels like some of the dirty tricks Holywood pulls to cut down on the amount of royalties they need to pay after the fact. I really
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That may be true for the YA market. For technology books, and AFAIK non-fiction in general, royalty rates in contracts are on net (after reseller discounts), rather than on gross. That certainly was the case for the two I signed, and I did a fair amount of research to determine that this was, indeed, the norm. Reseller discounts can run as high as
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Amazon wants to sell eBooks, and cheap books sell better than expensive ones (big shocker, right?).
I know that's the end goal, but I don't think that's the motivation behind their current fight with the publishers.
Having read one of the linked author's statements, I think he's being very short-sighted. He talks about how his books sell an order of magnitude less in eBook form than they do in print. But that's because the market is still small...only a small percentage of readers have eBook readers. As people have pointed out in previous Kindle discussions, the initial outlay of money is substantial and
Amazon sucks anyway. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amazon sucks anyway. (Score:5, Informative)
Why? I value my time and I like to spend it doing other things. Amazon makes it incredibly easy for me to purchase the books I want, new or used. In fact, I have a few books that I could not have found if not for amazon.com.
I see amazon, like any other store, as my agent who aggregates the buying power of consumers to negotiate a price from manufacturers/publishers. I applaud whatever they do to get prices down for me. Authors' rights? That's for them to defend, not me.
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GP is talking about people who don't want to buy from Amazon for some reason or other. The point being, rather than bitch about Amazon, if you are inclined to do so, just go elsewhere.
BTW, most bookstores would be happy to special order any book you please. Moreover, rather than limit yourself to your "agent's" evidently skewed and limited selection, you could search the entire internet for titles and have your local shop obtain it for you.
Heck, even your local library will often special order books and
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See, I used to think this. And while it's true, there's also a flip side to physical books.
Here's a story for you from my own life. My family were avid book collectors. Around about the time I was 18 we easily had two thousand books in the house if not more, collected over my life, and the life of my Mom, and Grandmother. The problem was, around about then we sold my grandmothers house so she could have some more money in her retirement to live on. The place we moved was smaller and we simply no longer
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There can be only one? Since when? (Score:2)
Not to shadow Amazons draconian pressure tactics, but if I want a product bad enough, I will find another reseller, maybe even a B&M. A "who moved my buy button" service? Are you kidding me? I wasn't aware that there was but one bookstore left in the world.
When retailers and e-tailers realize that people do not take kindly to being screwed with when the want it and want it NOW, AND the fact that I can and will spend the extra 87 cents to buy it from someone else to avoid bullshit, perhaps they'll sto
Authors versus consumers it is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Saw this debate start earlier this week on Schlock Mercenary's site http://www.schlockmercenary.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/04/dear-mister-bezos-are-you-still-all-mad-and-stuff/ [schlockmercenary.com]. Seems like the author found the discussion heading away from the self-righteous line he wanted and killed it.
Don't think he realized how many of his readers are consumers who want the best price for something.
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While Amazon handled their end badly, I still pull for them in the battle. Macmillan is basically trying to kill e-books with the price point they are forcing on the market.
And isn't that Macmillan's choice? If consumers want e-books, and Macmillan tries to kill them, people won't buy Macmillan's books. Authors and readers will seek out books from other publishers, if the e-book market grows. It's their choice as a publisher about how to run their own business, even if you (or Amazon) doesn't like it.
Amazon at least realizes that it makes no sense to have an e-book go for the same price as a physical book (if we could only get them to remove the DRM now).
What Amazon thinks makes "no sense" may not be what the publisher thinks makes "no sense" or what you think makes "no sense." All of these parties get to choose their strategi
Prepare to Troll in 3... (Score:2, Informative)
Forgive the AC login, but I need to remain behind it as I work for Barnes & Noble. Also, Disclaimer: I work for Barnes & Noble.
With any ebook reader that you can attach to a computer, you have control over the ebook you've purchased. With a certain oddly named ereader in particular, you can move the ebook to your computer. Yes, it does still have DRM, which is regrettable, but you have control over the file. The Kindle is a licensed device where you view licensed content, and their Terms and Agreeme
Authors Guild burned up a lot of respect for me... (Score:4, Informative)
When the President of the Authors Guild went on a rant about how text to speech was infringing on authors "audio rights".
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?_r=1 [nytimes.com]
I won't go into the arguments, but suffice it to say I sure as hell don't just automatically trust whatever the authors guild is trying to push. Even if you think he's right, was this issue SO important he had to write a very public article about it in the NYT?
On the other hand, Amazon isn't the must trustworthy company in the world either. The incident with 1984 on the Kindle comes to mind. This incident only makes it crystal clear that the Kindle is essentially like renting books, not owning them. It's just kind of amazing that the entire e-book world is rife with anti-consumer paranoia.
The entire e-book industry is doomed to failure unless they're significantly cheaper than the paper version. How many people really want to buy a book on technology platform for only a little less? We all know these are essentially throw-away devices. In 2 years there will be some Great New "gotta have it" book reader platform that'll make anything right now obsolete. In 5 years Kindles will be essentially worthless and people will turn their noses up at them like it's a Palm Pilot. Meanwhile the paper book holds essentially the same value as it did 100 years ago. So which medium should I buy? If I don't need a new version of a recent book, I can get a used copy on Amazon for next to nothing, or deeply discounted. The e-book I can't re-sell, easily loan to a friend, etc. Inferior technologies can only compete on price.
Don't get me wrong, I love technology. I just consider "paper books" to be technology (a competing technology of course). Newer doesn't mean better, and it's difficult for electronics to compete with paper when the content is completely static.
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For me, this is the crux of the issue. I've read the linked blogs (and a few others - interesting reads) and the author's points are clear and pretty well spot on - except that they are largely thinking of e-books as dead tree replacements. To an author, they decry DRM but mostly on the grounds that it impedes sales.
But DRM changes the entire picture. If someth
Does Amazon Marketplace work with blocked books? (Score:3, Interesting)
Am I wrong or doesn't the "Available New and Used from $nn from these..." Marketplace Sellers listing still work when Amazon themselves won't stock the book?
There's still a very competitive new and used book marketplace,.
I know. Not for ebooks.
"cheap" $9.99 books? (Score:5, Interesting)
Stross writes:
I'm so confused. Here I am with a paperback that says $7.99 on its back. An ebook costs a fraction of that to manufacture and the paperback's price also includes all the amortized costs (like paying the author!) in its price, so how the fuck is $9.99 "cheap"?
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$9.99 compared to the $29.99 hardcover. In theory, the ebook price will drop to match the paperback's when the book is out in MMPB.
In practice, Macmillan and others won't bother.
Well written analysis of this issue (Score:2)
E-book consumers aren't that happy either (Score:2)
For what it's worth, it's generated ill-will on the part of e-book consumers, too, many of whom feel this whole thing is yet another instance of the continued cluelessness over e-books that they've had to endure for the past ten years, and who feel that authors and publishers are deliberately ignoring them or misrepresenting their positions.
A couple of examples:
"Maybe we should be hurting the authors" [teleread.org] by Ficbot
"The Amazon/Macmillan blow-up: An e-book lover's appeal for understanding" [teleread.org] by me
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