Posted on 03/14/2012 6:41:33 AM PDT by Help!
The case centers on Apple's move to change the way that publishers charged for e-books as it prepared to introduce its first iPad in early 2010. Traditionally, publishers sold books to retailers for roughly half of the recommended cover price. Under that "wholesale model," booksellers were then free to offer those books to customers for less than the cover price if they wished. Most physical books are sold using this model.
To build its early lead in e-books, Amazon Inc. sold many new best sellers at $9.99 to encourage consumers to buy its Kindle electronic readers. But publishers deeply disliked the strategy, fearing consumers would grow accustomed to inexpensive e-books and limit publishers' ability to sell pricier titles.
Publishers also worried that retailers such as Barnes & Noble Inc. would be unable to compete with Amazon's steep discounting, leaving just one big buyer able to dictate prices in the industry. In essence, they feared suffering the same fate as record companies at Apple's hands, when the computer maker's iTunes service became the dominant player by selling songs for 99 cents.
As Apple prepared to introduce its first iPad, the late Steve Jobs, then its chief executive, suggested moving to an "agency model," under which the publishers would set the price of the book and Apple would take a 30% cut. Apple also stipulated that publishers couldn't let rival retailers sell the same book at a lower price.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
that second link does seem like a smoking gun with apple and macmillan colluding to support the agency model.
This is about apple wanting to be the only download store.
that second link does seem like a smoking gun with apple and macmillan colluding to support the agency model.
This is about apple wanting to be the only download store.
The traditional role of publishers was to filter out the dreck from what was worth reading, and to help promising authors improve their work via editor suggestions. That model will change with e-books.
There is no reason a print book should cost LESS than an ebook.
I have been expecting this for a while.
Well, I guess their monopoly didn’t exactly work since Barnes and Noble with their Nook among others also charge the same low ebook prices and do well.
They figured out that if you sell at a lower and reasonable price you make up the difference in sales volume, something I learned in econ 101. This is why many hardbound best sellers are only on the shelves at full price for a short time before they are deeply discounted and yet they still make money on them. With ebooks, their production costs are a small part of the cost of hardcover books. Apple and the publishers are making a bid to up their cut of the pie while incurring few additional costs.
BUMP
How much does it cost to have a book printed in large quantities? Let’s say I think I have the new great novel (or just 500 pages of my FR ranting) and I decide to publish it myself. How much would it cost to have 10,000 (or 100,000) 500 page hardcover books printed? How about paperbacks? I’ll deliver the print ready files in whatever format needed and I’ll bring the trucks to the loading docks. I’ll even wait until it fits into a normal printing schedule so it’s not a rush job. I just want to know how much the raw printed copies cost in mass production (not print on demand) quantities.
Except that everything I've read says that Amazon was losing money on their ebook sales. It was a loss leader for them. So if they were pressuring publishing companies to sell them books at a loss, and then selling those books at a loss, they were a deflationary pressure.
I agree it seems goofy that ebooks should cost more than paperbacks. On the other hand I'm starting to really appreciate not having to find more shelf space!
Everything I've read from people involved in publishing makes me think Amazon wants to replace the big publishers. Is that bad? Maybe, maybe not, but as both a reader and an aspiring writer, I want lots of publishing houses.
Amazon looses money on the Kindles, but not on the books.
I am sure that quite a bit of the above occurs. But it has become clear to me that another role for publishers has been to enforce progressive censorship. Certain thoughts are just not allowed in the dominant publishers. As an example, Robert Heinlien was not allowed to publish his science fiction classic "Red Planet" without registration and licensing of all personal weapons.
Yes, there are some small conservative publishers.
The Hunt for Red October caught fire on a fluke. Tom Clancy could not find a traditional publisher.
Our own Travis McGee (Mathew Bracken), despite a proved and successful self publishing track record, cannot find a traditional publisher.
For general reading like novels, history, etc I love my Nook. It is much more portable and handy and if I want to switch from one book to another it is a breeze.
Now, for textbooks and technical material (I am an IT professor) it is not so great and for those I prefer my traditional hard/soft bound books. I’ve had students who have tried etexts and most were not very happy with the usability.
http://blog.ipublishcentral.com/category/authors/ishani/
“Amazon was buying eBooks from publisher for about $13 and selling the same eBook, at a loss-leader pricing, for $ 9.99 for reading on its Kindle eReader device.”
This is consistent with what I’ve read elsewhere.
They did do that for a period, hoping to drive the price down from the publishers when they first colluded with each other, but not for long. Other wise they would have dropped e books.
Project Gutenberg offers over 38,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.
I'm currently reading all the Barsoom books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It's awesome.
Another publisher that I find to be extremely consumer-friendly is Baen Publishing. If you're into Science Fiction, they have a lot of titles for you. They also have a good sized free library. I strongly recommend books from the 1632 series, of which, you can down load the first few for free. These books are not DRM encumbered, because they do not believe their customers are thieves.
There was a power outage in my home last night. It was real dark. All I had was a handgun, a candle and a Bible. The trade off in the long run spells disaster. JMHO though.
Perhaps of interest.
All? Or just the first five? The later ones are still under copyright in the U.S., and I thought that Gutenberg was pretty good about honoring copyrights.
The page turning time needs to be faster and the bookmarking method needs to be better. I remember times when I had every finger on one hand marking a page I was referring to, plus a pen, a pencil and another smaller book used as an emergency bookmark. Maybe a full PC screen with windows to multiple locations in the book would help too.
It's not the electrons in the ebook, or the paper and glue in the printed book, that you are paying for. It's the intellectual property. I need 2 to 3 years to write 250,000 words of deathless prose in the form of epic novels.
My 560-page dead-tree books cost very little of the retail price to produce. You might as well ask why I charge $20 for a "three-dollar book."
You are paying for the two or three years of my life, spent in a tiny writing closet, to produce that novel.
I agree with you. Ebook format works pretty well in a linear “text” like a long novel, where you are not constantly flipping around and referring to charts, graphs, photos, references etc. So for me, e-novels are just fine. But e-texts and e-references, not so much.
(My reference books also wind up highlighted, underlined, dog-eared, sticky noted, and “improved” in many other ways. The second time I use a reference book, I can glean the critical information in 1/4 of the time.
I don’t know how the solve this with ebooks.
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