Have been wondering about the sense of entitlement the Internet encourages i.e.
On the Internet people don’t just expect Free, they expect Free on their terms and with lots of customer service.
Note that it’s not about users being wrong or evil – it’s about them being trained to expect a lot without paying anything.
Ran into this gem of an example of just how much the Internet can distort user expectations.
There’s a complaint about Calibre, an excellent software program. Keep in mind that this is a free program and one of the best ebook conversion and ebook management programs available.
Please dont see me as ungrateful, I have a lot of respect to you the creator of the program for making something like this and keeping it free.
However it pisses me off firstly the way my books are imported into the GUI and secondly the fact it makes copies of these books in a total useless file structure (at least for me)
In plain english, why? It gives me the impression that you think that we are all stupid and cant organize our files our own way.
Afterwards the user checked up on the FAQ, which talks about how the point of Calibre is to have a better searching and sorting system than anything users could come up with, and added this -
sorry mate but I think that is rather arrogant…your so-called efficient directory actually costs me a lot more time because I have to track down books by author,
There are tons of examples like this -
Another good one is iPhone Apps where users are upset and give bad reviews because a $1 or $2 app hasn’t gotten any free updates in months.
Why there’s conflict
Let’s consider the Calibre case -
- The Calibre developer is pushing a better way of sorting and searching i.e. non-hierarchical tags.
- However, users have decades of experience working with Folders and get upset when something does not fit with what they are used to.
The source of the conflict is that users are trained for years to an older, different form of organization.
The second example with iPhone Apps is more interesting -
- The developer probably feels that selling a game he spent months working on for $1 or $2 is enough of a bargain.
- Users are upset because there are developers generous enough (or they are making enough money off of their apps) to keep adding free updates for a $1 app.
Here the source of conflict is almost exactly what we will see more and more with eBooks and eReaders.
The Internet is a double-edged sword
While the Internet lets you reach a huge audience at very little cost it introduces significant problems -
- It’s really, really tough to defend your position.
- There is the perception that there are no costs i.e. users tend to assume it’s costing you nothing to produce and sell your product.
- There is a very strong ethos of free and open.
- There is infinite competition.
- There is a lot of desperate and/or stupid competition.
It’s easy to be a user and develop an unrealistic sense of entitlement.
- It starts off as – We should get more bang for the buck.
- It moves on to – We should get some part for free.
- Then it’s – Everything should be free.
- Finally you get – It’s free but my time spent on it is valuable so you should be keeping me happy.
What more can a developer do than give away his software for free?
Perhaps listen to rude complaints about his program.
Users are not to blame
In a very competitive system, where any idea can be introduced and perpetuated, the ones that will win are sometimes ones that create unrealistic expectations.
Consider two companies competing for customers -
- Company 1 says – my program is $10 and it’s really good and the price lets me earn a good living.
- Company 2 says – I care so much about you, and programming should be done for the joy of it, and your time is valuable – so here’s my program for free.
It doesn’t matter whether Company 2′s argument is sustainable or accurate – it’s just so much more appealing that users will tend to believe it.
Enough instances of this in enough markets i.e. music, news, and so forth, and customers really start believing that everything is free and they are doing creators a favor.
In a competitive environment there are always one or more companies that are glad to let customers develop this sense of entitlement.
Should we worry about the same sense of entitlement taking over Books?
We shouldn’t be worried about the sense of entitlement of the Internet taking over books – we should be worried about it destroying books.
It already is.
- You can get ebook versions of new book releases for $10. However, online users are already asking for lower prices.
- You and your family can read that one $10 ebook all at the same time - Users still want lending and the ability to sell their ebooks after reading them. Users still abuse the family sharing system to share books with friends.
- Users want companies to invest money into creating eReaders and converting books and setting up infrastructure, and at the same time they want those same companies to be open and not try to make back what they’ve invested.
It’s this gradual creeping towards a more and more unbalanced scenario that’s worrying.
The hope is that there must be some point at which users become reasonable - Perhaps it’s $7 instead of $10 and lending once instead of no lending.
It’s a false hope. There are very few readers forward thinking enough to understand what $0 ebooks will do to authors and reading.
Is there a defence against $0 ebooks?
As publishing gets more and more competitive we’ll get -
- Companies that want to make money off of customers in other ways.
- New Publishing companies that are desperate.
- Old publishing companies that are desperate.
- Authors looking for a foothold.
Worst of all – we’ll be left with no company that has any sort of defensible position.
Competition will be intense as the winner will have the promise of a huge reward, or in the case of some companies - the promise of more customers who can be monetized down the line.
That means companies and authors are going to keep cutting each other down.
That means books will lose all their value unless we do something drastic.
Perhaps the simplest solution is to recognize the Internet as the root of the problems and step away from it.
At this point we need Apple or Amazon to take over with their platforms. This might sound completely crazy – However, if you think about it, we do need a benevolent dictator and an eco-system completely detached from the Internet.
The case for a benevolent dictator and for exiting the Internet
Amazon and Apple have established channels of good intent and set-up good platforms. We can use these to do a few important things.
We can create a channel of good intent -
- People pay for books with money, and not with personal information or some unknown way.
- We leave out all the people who just don’t believe in paying for books.
- We establish an equilibrium – $2 ebooks are just as ridiculous a proposition as $25 ebooks.
- We keep the people who value reading and are willing to pay for it.
Interestingly enough, buying an ‘expensive’ $259 Kindle or Nook might be the best way to filter users to create a channel of good intent connected to good customers.
We can establish a fair break-up -
- The platform gets 30% or so.
- The wireless provider gets a 10% cut.
- Publishers and authors get the remaining 60% to share amongst themselves.
That 60%, or even 50%, is very good. Publishers shouldn’t get greedy and lose everything.
Perhaps most importantly, we can keep out the ideas that threaten to destroy books.
Last few questions
What’s the lowest price point for ebooks at which quality of writing will not be affected – Is it $10? Is it $5? Is it $0?
What would authors peg it at? What would readers peg it at?
Do people really care about authors or books? How many?
Filed under: thoughts Tagged: | future of books, lack thereof
I’m new to the kindle 2, bought 1 for my mom and me. But I have been buying books since the Zodiac Tapwave, and e-books were available for it, through ereader.com. For me $10 for New Releases and $6.50 for releases a year+ is the sweet spot. In my opinon anything under $5 never gets read on my kindle 2, anything $5 and over will always be read, I seem to value them more, I havent read any of my free books yet.
thanks – that’s useful information.
I agree with Catrik. The same applies for apps on the iPhone. I’ve deleted so many free and $1 apps on my iPhone because they were crap – most of the apps remaining on my iPhone are ones I paid more than a $1 for. And switch11, you have a point about leaving out people who don’t believe in paying for books. These people will ultimately ruin it for all – I’ve seen it before with other online services that I’ve subscribed to. Companies need to be more willing to give ‘bad’ customers the flick rather than penalising all customers with downgraded services.
In the late 80s I became a licensed manicurist in Southern California. At that time, acrylic nails were all the rage. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a nail salon. Too many of them were run by Oriental immigrants working two and three people on one state license and charging practically nothing for their services. Too often, you got what you paid for.
I learned to work with a new/different product that gave a better finished product and I’d perfected my application in school. I decided to build my practice on this product rather than the acrylic nails. I charged a little more for this than acrylic nails. The shop owner told me no one would switch because it cost more. But I told her, if I can get people to try them, they will stay with them, and they will tell their friends, because they will have fewer broken nails and they look ten times more natural than acrylic. I wore them myself and rarely wore polish, so everyone would see how great and natural they looked. Almost a quarter of my clientele were the result of people commenting on my nails when I out running errands.
Slowly, I increased my prices as my clientele for this product grew. My clients TOLD me I should charge more. It normally takes a year to 18 months to build a full time semi-stable nail clientele. I built mine in six months, charging twice as much for new full sets and 35% more for fills and regular care appointments. I cherry-picked my clients and maintained a waiting list of new people waiting for one of clients to move away or, literally, die so they could have one my standing appointment slots. Or, for someone to fail to show up for that standing appt one time too many or gripe about things simply because they felt they had the right, not because they had a legitimate complaint. When I left the business, people literally cried.
My point is this. If you give stuff away or charge too little for it, people take advantage of the product/service and the people who provide that product/service. If you charge too much, you get the other end of the spectrum who treat you like a servant with complete disdain.
You want the people in the middle. The people for whom it is just a bit of a stretch to pay a fair price and are prepared to sacrifice a bit to have access to a quality product/service. You cater to them by providing a quality product and quality service… and you ignore those on either end of the spectrum. The ones who want caviar at sardine prices and expect it to be served yesterday on a gold platter… and don’t expect a civll thank you if you come anywhere near meeting their self-centered expectations.
I am frequently appalled at the reviews on iTunes for iPhone/iPod Touch apps. Paid 99 cents, but the product is “completely over-priced.” I’ve even seen free apps savaged. It was freakin FREE, you ingrate! If you don’t like it, delete it and shut up, already. Good grief.
I hope they don’t reduce the price of the Kindle below $200. Amazon is entitled to a fair profit for the quality product they’ve designed and created, and if it becomes too inexpensive, the people who will not appreciate that will complain. We save our money to buy Apple products. Because we are snooty? No; because we like to spend our time computing rather than throwing things at our computers because they are frozen, slow, or virus laden. I’d rather spend less money over the life of the machine, than save money at the beginning and be constantly throwing money at it trying to get it to do what I bought it to do and keep it running. Call me stupid if you like, but Apple products just work, consistently and with far few erproblems.
The authors are also entitled to a fair price for their talents. People think authors make tons and tons of money. They generally don’t unless they are the lucky few who sell a gazillion copies of almost every book they write. Most make PENNIES on the dollar, I do not exaggerate, on each and every book sold and that’s if they are in hard cover. Most free books are either outside the copyright limit and/or the publisher is hoping to get enough good reviews and chatter going to boost the full price book sales volume.
Yes. I look for the bargains too. But I don’t begrudge an eBook selling for $10 or $15 if it is a good book, particularly if it is one I’ll want to read more than once. No. I won’t buy many books in excess of that price point. Simply because I don’t have the discretionary income to do so.
There is a balance to be found, that sweet spot where you price out the “riff raff” but the filthy rich aren’t interested in bothering. I hope Kindle will follow Apple Computer’s lead. Provide a superior product, focused on providing the best possible experience and Customer Service and the best value for the dollar. If they do, they’ll find I am as loyal a customer to them as I am to Apple and Toyota. These are the two companies that we sacrifice to own because we’ve got better things to do with our time and money than fussing with them all the time and being “nickel and dimed to death.”. Our Camry(s) run forever with practically no maintenance costs, even when ten and fifteen years old.
A quality product is worth a little sacrifice. People who don’t appreciate that can find lesser quality goods for cheaper prices in all sorts of places. Let them go. Better to have a smaller number of dedicated customers that appreciate what you provide and will remain faithful, than gobs and gobs of people who don’t and will flee at the first bargain basement “shiny object” that hits their horizon. In some things, you DO “get what you pay for.”
I think there are several things going on, not just a sense of entitlement.
Yes, users tend to get a sense of entitlement. And I don’t agree it’s not their fault – if some of us can take the time to remember that when we get software for free we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, others should too. We should also remember that in any sufficiently large user base there will be some serious idiots, so this is somewhat to be expected.
However, I believe that some of the things users are asking for, such as lower prices (not free, just lower) and the ability to lend and borrow books, are not about a sense of entitlement, but rather, that the user has certain features they are used to with their present system (dead tree books) and that they don’t have a great desire to give up, so they’re being specific about what features they want and at what price point they’re willing to buy.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a consumer to say “I like to lend and borrow books with my two sisters, so that’s important to me and I’m not switching to ebooks until we can do that with ebooks.” I also don’t think it’s unreasonable for a consumer to say “I’m willing to forego the ability to lend and borrow books, but if I’m going to give that up I expect the price to be lower to compensate me for the loss of that ability.” Amazon has made some direct statements to the effect that they believe ebooks should cost less because of the associated restrictions, such as the inability to resell the ebook.
Then there’s the pricing. While I think we all agree that for a publisher to charge $25 for an ebook just because that’s the current hardcover price is stupid, why is it not reasonable for me to say that I’m reluctant to pay $6.50 for an ebook when the current paperback price for it is $6.50 also? As the ebook publisher and retailer have cut out costs of paper, printing, shipping, store rent, stocking staff, cashiers, heat, water, lights, cleaning staff, security, and losses due to theft, I feel that if I am going to accept the loss of rights that is associated with using ebooks, I should be compensated with a lower price. If the publisher or retailer chooses to continue charging the same old price, they’re trying to fleece me and I have little incentive to buy at that price.
The article asks, “What’s the lowest price point for ebooks at which quality of writing will not be affected – Is it $10? Is it $5? Is it $0?” The answer is, it depends more in the balance of money distribution than on the total. Let’s pretend that a book today costs $10 on paper, and the author gets $1 of that, the other $9 being split by the publisher and the retailer. If instead the author sells an ebook for $3 via a major retailer, but cuts out the publisher, gets $2 for themself, and the retailer takes $1, the author actually could earn twice as much on an ebook that costs less than a third as much as the paper book it replaces. (This isn’t a total fantasy scenario, by the way – while I simplified the numbers for argument, I have a similar case with my own book.)
So, while I expect that ebooks will probably hurt the traditional publishing path in the short term, I believe that they will actually encourage more authors to publish in the long term by enabling them to more easily market directly and take a larger cut of the profit. I hope that associated editing services will come along in the meantime to help keep up quality, or that publishers will learn to live with a smaller cut of the profit which they’ll earn in exchange for lending their editing services and good name to the author. (e.g. a Baen scifi book could sell better for being more likely to be good than a scifi book sold direct by author.)
thanks for all the comments.
Tom, agree with your paperback example.
However, consider your $3 ebook example. That free pricing model is going to kill books because every other will be cutting prices and trying to make up for it on volume.
We are on the same page – any price over $5 per ebook is OK in my mind. It’s the people asking for $2 prices and the authors trying to get volume off of $3 prices that will ruin it.
As an author it is easy to make the mistake of thinking going from $10 to $3 doesn’t have big repercussions – but it does.
You’re playing the lottery with prices that are that low and the house always wins.
Many of your arguments seem to just not pay attention to economics. You will sell more at a lower price. You may not make more money by selling at a lower price because of your costs.
Also there will be bad quality books that come out and people will pay for them, they will get frustrated and not buy more of them. There will be free books that get people to buy later books.
My point isn’t that the publishing world isn’t changing, it is that it will change and change in the long term based on what people want, not based on what writer and publishers want. They can kick and scream all they want, but in the long term, it will change based on what people want. Some publishers will give the people what they want and some won’t. Some publishers believe that what they are doing is what is “best” for the people. But people will show those publishers that they know what is best for themselves by not buying their work.
This might results in a lowering of the quality of books, but I really doubt it. People have been complaining about that forever. But people actually read and write more now than ever. It may not always be great, but we verifiable have more books release now than at any point in history. So there is not a crisis to the greater reading world. There might be one at the standard publishing world, but that is not the same thing.
Like your conclusion – that might very well be true.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens if the Publishers die out.
Will authors and independent publishers be able to fill the gap? Don’t know.