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Ebook link roundup: pricing commentary
While I don't think we'll be seeing lower prices in the mainstream ebook market soon (because publishing is an industry that moves with the speed of snails on valium), we are seeing more talk about how the pricing is ... odd. Including, in some cases, from publishers.
Simon & Schuster reports increased profits thanks to digital sales: Simon & Schuster’s operating income before debt and amortisation (OIBDA) more than doubled to $7m. The publisher said it was driven by lower shipping, production and returns costs because of the increase in digital sales. So they've admitted that ebooks cost less to produce! Wow! And it's only taken them, oh, eight years or so to realize this fact, which the ebook-buying public figured out in approximately 2002.
Frasier Speirs has some lovely things to say On Ebook Pricing. He points out how he expects the pricing to break down:
He continues: So what happens if I feel I'm being ripped off for the ebook? Do I buy the paper version? No. I just move to the next item in my list of "books that sounded interesting". Maybe I'll come back to yours but that list contains, at current rates of consumption, about two years worth of reading. It'll be a while until I get back to you.
His post is related to Nik Fletcher's In Which I Make No Apologies for Calling Bullshit on Ridiculous eBook Pricing: I’m all for artists, movie producers, publishers, writers and other content creators being paid for their expertise. ... However, when you’re no longer smashing together some (entirely physical) pulp, pressing ink onto it, and shipping it some place, the idea that a premium should apply simply fails logic. The idea of paying substantially more for a digital copy of the exact same text can only be one set up by a publishing house who’ll next year announce stagnant eBook sales - most likely as a result of people looking to buy digital texts thinking “Screw this, I’ll buy the paperback cheap” or resorts to nefarious means.
Shatzkin points out that The subscription model for ebooks hasn’t emerged yet, but it will: The proposition to the consumer will be that for a price (let’s say: $50 a month), they can read all they want from the content pool. In turn, the retailer divides 70% of that money (or 75% or 80%) among the publishers in proportion to how many “pages” (a somewhat arbitrary but internally consistent measure) of their material have been read.
Which I think that yes, there is demand for, and as soon as someone works out the royalties logistics, it'll explode onto a dozen sites--but $50/month is way too much, unless you can *promise* me 24/7 reading material by authors I like. For $50/month, I can buy my own ebooks thankyouverymuch. But I'd be willing to pay $10/month for access to new-to-me & interesting books, even with the awareness that I won't care for most of them.
And one more, from the Copyfight blog, about the LimeWire P2P lawsuit which doesn't directly relate to ebooks (authors & publishers don't have an equivalent of the RIAA to go after filesharing sites), but contains a few quotes that are soon going to be just as relevant to ebooks as they are to music:
EbookAnoid has a couple of articles about The real value of an ebook, Part 1 and Part 2: ...value is set by scarcity and production costs with a margin for profit. But ebooks have no scarcity value, unless we consider each author to be so unique that no other author can be substituted. ... first edition, first printing, in fine condition of a print copy of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is worth significantly more today than when it was first published ... Yet that same book, in ebook form, will never increase in value because there is nothing unique or scarce about the bytes that comprise the book.
This means the formulas publishers use to decide on book values are deeply flawed for ebooks (which those of us *paying* for ebooks had noticed, quite a while ago), and that as the tech gets simpler & more available, publishers are increasingly trying to compete with free content. Fortunately, Cory Doctorow has some thoughts about how In the digital era free is easy, so how do you persuade people to pay? They include:
Buy this or you'll get in trouble
...because it's the right thing to do
...because you're supporting something worthwhile
...because paying money will deliver high quality
...because it is convenient
...because your devices won't play the unauthorised version
...and you'll get more features than you would with the unauthorised version.
Of course, the ones publishers like most--"or you'll get in trouble" and "your device won't play the unauthorized version"--aren't incentives to buy; they're just incentives not to pirate. Setting a price that overcomes the nuisance value of those is the next step toward making actual sales.
Simon & Schuster reports increased profits thanks to digital sales: Simon & Schuster’s operating income before debt and amortisation (OIBDA) more than doubled to $7m. The publisher said it was driven by lower shipping, production and returns costs because of the increase in digital sales. So they've admitted that ebooks cost less to produce! Wow! And it's only taken them, oh, eight years or so to realize this fact, which the ebook-buying public figured out in approximately 2002.
Frasier Speirs has some lovely things to say On Ebook Pricing. He points out how he expects the pricing to break down:
He continues: So what happens if I feel I'm being ripped off for the ebook? Do I buy the paper version? No. I just move to the next item in my list of "books that sounded interesting". Maybe I'll come back to yours but that list contains, at current rates of consumption, about two years worth of reading. It'll be a while until I get back to you.
His post is related to Nik Fletcher's In Which I Make No Apologies for Calling Bullshit on Ridiculous eBook Pricing: I’m all for artists, movie producers, publishers, writers and other content creators being paid for their expertise. ... However, when you’re no longer smashing together some (entirely physical) pulp, pressing ink onto it, and shipping it some place, the idea that a premium should apply simply fails logic. The idea of paying substantially more for a digital copy of the exact same text can only be one set up by a publishing house who’ll next year announce stagnant eBook sales - most likely as a result of people looking to buy digital texts thinking “Screw this, I’ll buy the paperback cheap” or resorts to nefarious means.
Shatzkin points out that The subscription model for ebooks hasn’t emerged yet, but it will: The proposition to the consumer will be that for a price (let’s say: $50 a month), they can read all they want from the content pool. In turn, the retailer divides 70% of that money (or 75% or 80%) among the publishers in proportion to how many “pages” (a somewhat arbitrary but internally consistent measure) of their material have been read.
Which I think that yes, there is demand for, and as soon as someone works out the royalties logistics, it'll explode onto a dozen sites--but $50/month is way too much, unless you can *promise* me 24/7 reading material by authors I like. For $50/month, I can buy my own ebooks thankyouverymuch. But I'd be willing to pay $10/month for access to new-to-me & interesting books, even with the awareness that I won't care for most of them.
And one more, from the Copyfight blog, about the LimeWire P2P lawsuit which doesn't directly relate to ebooks (authors & publishers don't have an equivalent of the RIAA to go after filesharing sites), but contains a few quotes that are soon going to be just as relevant to ebooks as they are to music:
- "[W]e inadvertently went to war with consumers ... [and] consumers won," - Warner Music head Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
- "We can [compete with free]. We have to. It's just that we have to be creative and add value." - Universal Music CEO Zach Horowitz
- "Burning and ripping are becoming a greater threat than P2P." - RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol
EbookAnoid has a couple of articles about The real value of an ebook, Part 1 and Part 2: ...value is set by scarcity and production costs with a margin for profit. But ebooks have no scarcity value, unless we consider each author to be so unique that no other author can be substituted. ... first edition, first printing, in fine condition of a print copy of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls is worth significantly more today than when it was first published ... Yet that same book, in ebook form, will never increase in value because there is nothing unique or scarce about the bytes that comprise the book.
This means the formulas publishers use to decide on book values are deeply flawed for ebooks (which those of us *paying* for ebooks had noticed, quite a while ago), and that as the tech gets simpler & more available, publishers are increasingly trying to compete with free content. Fortunately, Cory Doctorow has some thoughts about how In the digital era free is easy, so how do you persuade people to pay? They include:
Buy this or you'll get in trouble
...because it's the right thing to do
...because you're supporting something worthwhile
...because paying money will deliver high quality
...because it is convenient
...because your devices won't play the unauthorised version
...and you'll get more features than you would with the unauthorised version.
Of course, the ones publishers like most--"or you'll get in trouble" and "your device won't play the unauthorized version"--aren't incentives to buy; they're just incentives not to pirate. Setting a price that overcomes the nuisance value of those is the next step toward making actual sales.