Comments on: What’s going to happen when eBooks go to $14.99?

By: switch11

switch11 — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:57:10 +0000

Zeke – all the numbers are random guesses. 40% decline due to a 50% price increase is not as unlikely as we would like it to be. People can get the same books for free from a lot of sites.
If they decide they don’t want to pay 50% extra and that they don’t want to wait 7 months then sales will go down. Perhaps by as much as 40-50%.

By: Zeke

Zeke — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:04:58 +0000

Are your percentages pulled up from thin air?
While I could buy into the fact that e-book sales could decline (per e-reader sold) in favor of other options… every eye is on the upcoming boom of e-readers. I can’t see slightly increased book prices affecting e-reader sales to so great a degree (a 40% decline in sales). In general, e-readers are purchased for convenience, home library reduction, and portability. Most e-readers purchase more e-books than they previously purchased paper books.

If you’re simply saying that 40% of people everywhere will decide not to buy an e-reader, the number is meaningless and incorrect.

By: Lauren Albert

Lauren Albert — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:54:35 +0000

You missed an option–some will go out and buy a used copy of the paper book and the publisher and author will make nothing. If I have a choice between a reasonably priced digital book and a used paper book, I would choose the former. But I’m not likely to pay for a digital book that costs more than a good used copy or a cheap new copy of the paper version since I can’t: lend it, sell it, or donate it when I’m done. Like many people, I wait for the paperback to come out so I will simply wait for the price of the digital copy to come down if I don’t have a better option. I’d rather buy a digital copy all around (money for authors, environmental factors, space issues) but I’m unlikely to pay $14.95 for a digital book when I can get a copy for $10.00 including shipping and then, when I’m finished with it, can donate it to the Charity bookshop downtown. The publishers have every right to name their own price–it’s a free market. But it is not always to their benefit to raise prices. We’ll see.

By: James Willis

James Willis — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 11:47:18 +0000

As you’ve alluded to at the end of your article, here’s another distinct scenario: Authors start dumping their publishers and go indie, or sign with publishers with an intelligent e-strategy. At least enough of them do to start changing the industry.

What’s clear to me: the genie is out of the bottle and is not going back in. Publishers who are totally invested in print and propping up print sales are the equivalent of buggy whip manufacturers when railroads sprung up. Moral: this train is coming down the tracks fast, and publishers like Macmillan will be road kill if they don’t change strategies.

By: switch11

switch11 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:13:49 +0000

A very, very good point. Publishers are trying to work with eBooks the way they work with physical books – it’s like using an electric chain saw without turning it on.

By: signine

signine — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:25:50 +0000

@DEBSMITH,

While your points are all valid, most of us are aware that publishing is a low-margin industry. The arguments that you’re rehashing are the same that were used against illegal digital content delivery for music and video, but I’m confused as to why you’re applying the “making the content is expensive” argument in favor for raising the prices of legally purchased ebooks.

The basic problem with your comment is that you’re starting from an assumption: that publishers are losing a significant amount of money due to electronic purchases of text instead of physical purchases. This is the same argument publishers themselves are making, but so far all are unwilling to provide the hard numbers; we’re forced to take their word for it or assault them from the land of speculation.

That said, let us speculate! The big argument publishers are using is that eBooks could take a substantial amount of money away from hardback purchases. This is illogical for a number of reasons. The owner of a $250+ Amazon Kindle is not likely to be impoverished and unable to afford first-run hardbacks, but neither are they likely to purchase them. They have purchased an expensive electronic device for the purposes of being able to instantly purchase and read books at their convenience. The form factor is also a concern, many kindle owners I know purchased them out of concern for the number of physical books they own, and a desire to consolidate their collection. We also have the point that a kindle user may not care about a first run and would have purchased the paperback. We can even further speculate and talk about the costs and environmental impacts of electronic delivery vs. traditional print, and make the publishers look like evil soulless corporations hell-bent on the destruction of the world’s rainforests. We could do all of those things, but speculation and opinion are just that.

In my opinion, publishers would be better served by not allowing Amazon or Apple to directly market electronic versions of books on the day they are published in hardback, but rather allow them to download an exclusive ebook copy of a hardback they have purchased via a redeemable code at first, and then begin marketing the ebook in the typical sales lull between hardback and paperback publications.

All of that said, I think it’s really just marketing FUD to decrease Kindle market penetration for Apple to steal the ebook market with the iPad. There’s no reason for the price hike and the publishers know it. Apple stands to be the only one profiting from this nonsense.

By: Doctorwinters

Doctorwinters — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:42:11 +0000

I’ve heard debsmiths argument a lot but it doesn’t explain why ebooks should cost as much or more than paper versions

By: Adam Shields

Adam Shields — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:15:22 +0000

There are very real, and expensive costs to ebooks. But a lot of the costs come because publishers still don’t really know what will sell and what won’t sell. Only about 20% of books really make money, about 40% break even and about 40% lose money. Most industries where 40% of their product lost money would have failed a while ago.

The other big issue is the variety of places people can spend content dollars. Books compete against movies, tv, music, internet access, computer games, etc. All of them have some of the same issues in predicting what content will sell and what will not sell.

In economics, value is not on the creation but on the willingness of the buyer to purchases. If there are not any buyers willing to purchase at the costs of the producers the industry either changes or dies.

Publishers and other producers (like steel in the 1980) try to argue that there is inherent value in what they produce (essentially this is related to the Labor Theory of Value – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value).

Ebooks are one method of lessening the costs in the system. Going with digital distribution is cheaper than physical distribution. The changes in computerized layouts and editing are lowers the costs of production. The issue is not really whether we should pay for content, except for a very few almost everyone knows we need to pay for content. The argument is really whether publishers can lowers their costs to a point that people are willing to continue purchasing. Someone will, many will not. Many publishers will not exist in the next 10 years.

By: Bob Floyd

Bob Floyd — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:49:37 +0000

A good read by author Jerry Pournelle:

http://www.chaosmanorreviews.com//oa/2010/20100208_col.php

By: Fred Coulter

Fred Coulter — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:59:18 +0000

It’s interesting that Baen Books (a major SF publisher) publishes it’s books in Hard Cover books for $26, and simultaneously publishes the book in multiple electronic formats without DRM for $6.00. I wonder how that effects other publishers.

(For those who want to fact check, the book I checked was the first book published in February 2010, Live Free or Die by John Ringo.)