This is a question that comes up again and again when reading all the posts and articles by authors and publishers claiming that $9.99 is not a sustainable price and that $14.99 is the minimum price point to sustain books.
At some basic level Publishers are not selling a product when they try to raise prices from $9.99 to $14.99 – they’re selling an idea. They expect readers to buy this idea and start paying 50% more for books.
Are readers really going to buy the idea?
It’s got to be an amazing idea and amazingly persuasive to convince readers to pay 50% more for every eBook they buy for the rest of their lives.
Let’s start with the unknowns that underlie eveything - the real cost of publishing books and a sustainable price for eBooks.
Is $9.99 a sustainable price for eBooks?
We don’t know. We can only infer things from how authors and publishers behave -
- Indie authors are willing to give away their books. Zero is obviously not a sustainable figure.
- Smaller Publishers are willing to sell books for $3 and $4. Perhaps this is a sustainable figure – Are these small Publishers thriving or barely surviving? What is the quality of books?
- Some big Publishers are selling their books for $9.99. How are these Publishers doing?
- Other Big Publishers want to sell books for $14.99. Why do these Publishers need a $14.99 price?
Which one of these prices is sustainable? What’s a reasonable ebook price?
Publishers have ensured that no one really knows what the cost of Publishing is. It’s a black box so when they claim $14.99 is a necessary price we don’t really have the data or insights to know whether they’re lying or whether they really need $14.99.
Is $14.99 about books or about Publishers?
What exactly do Publishers mean when they say $14.99 is necessary to sustain Books?
- That $14.99 is necessary to save books.
- That $14.99 is necessary for books to flourish.
- $14.99 is what they are comfortable with.
- $14.99 is critical for them to stay in their comfort zone.
- It’s needed to ensure physical books don’t become unsustainable.
Publishers are obviously talking in terms they think readers can relate to – However, what is the real reason Publishers want $14.99?
Are Publishers being honest? What about to themselves?
It’s amusing that the less necessary Publishers become the more rules they want to enforce and set -
- Digital distribution comes into place and Publishers want to set DRM and restrict sharing.
- Books become cheaper and more easily accessible and Publishers want to raise prices and delay ebook releases.
- Books get features like Text to Speech and Publishers want to kill them off.
Are Publishers being honest to all of us about their role and their importance? Perhaps they aren’t even being honest to themselves.
Publishers aren’t gatekeepers any more because anyone can Publish. They aren’t risk aggregators and venture capitalists because the costs and risk have been reduced immensely.
What is their role? Are they reduced to the role of a shared enemy for readers and authors and platform owners? Are they simply the last obstacle to the rise of a bright new Publishing future?
Will people pay more for Beautiful Arguments?
We have had some of the best writers (arguably) of our generation rant and rave against eBooks and talk about the importance of high eBook prices and eloquently praise paper and ink.
Those are beautiful words. Perhaps if they were bound into a book they’d be worth $14.99.
However, are the arguments so beautiful that they make every single $9.99 book worth $14.99?
It’s a very important question. Publishers and published authors are working under the assumption that they can undo the $9.99 price point that is anchored into readers’ minds. They actually think that they can publish a few articles and beat their chests and wail about the death of books and it’ll just magically transform everything.
The most beautiful argument in the world is worth nothing
An argument’s utility to people is ZERO.
Publishers and their allied Authors can craft the most beautiful argument in the world and conjure up an image of puppies drowning and pandas going extinct and kittens being stomped under boots if we don’t pay $14.99 for books.
It doesn’t matter – Most people are not going to buy it. The only readers that are going to be swayed are those who fall for the argument and start believing it’s true (not many because readers are generally smart people) and those that don’t care about $5 extra per book.
That leaves the vast majority who will not go for $14.99.
It’s quite simple – A $9.99 eBook is worth the money and a $14.99 eBook is not. Tagging on $5 extra isn’t justified no matter how pretty the argument or how flowery the language used to argue it.
Instead of words it’s time Publishers used hard facts – Show us the ledger books and the real costs and why $9.99 worked for 2 years and suddenly doesn’t work now.
Filed under: publishing Tagged: | beautiful arguments, fight for $9.99
Well said.
Extremely well said.
I’m a Kindle early-adopter and a stalwart paperback buyer before that.
$6.99 is my ideal price for a book. I won’t argue (too much) with $9.99 for a new book, and I might happily pay more if I thought the difference was going to the author.
I just can’t get past the fact that the cost of producing an ebook can be less than a print edition, but more than that the ridiculous print-book-distribution model (of consignment and endless returns) goes away, not to mention the cost of paper, glue, shipping-books-from-the-chinese-printers, and trucking the book to my door.
It’s not a price we’re used to. It’s not a price we’ll buy.
And if stories of dying polar bears and rising sea levels can’t stop people from spewing greenhouse gases into the air, I can’t imagine what argument publishers (in New York, where everything is expensive) can come up with to get people to buy this beautiful argument.
“Scarcity determines value.” Are ebooks becoming more common? Follow the logic thread. Goodbye, $14.95.
Publishers should read one of their history books about the demise of buggy whip manufacturers. The buggy whip people based their business model on the way it has always been done. Publishers are doing the same thing. They can change or they can die. But as of today, the genie is out of the bottle, ain’t going back in and yesterday is not coming back.
Long live the $9.95 ebook.
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“Those are beautiful words. Perhaps if they were bound into a book they’d be worth $14.99.”
“Publishers and their allied Authors can craft the most beautiful argument in the world and conjure up an image of puppies drowning and pandas going extinct and kittens being stomped under boots if we don’t pay $14.99 for books.”
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This was a great article. Publishers (and allied authors) should read this. But they wouldn’t want to understand it…
What do you get for $14.95?
I already have a lower price point because I can’t share, sell, or give away an ebook. The lower prices – $9.99 for a “hardback” vs $15 – 30 justify that. $14.95 doesn’t when I can get the physical hardback for that or less (I buy more frequently from Amazon partners than Amazon because they are cheaper). Or for free from the library. One of my favorite authors has a new book coming up and the price has been raised to $14.95 for the Kindle version. I won’t be buying it, I’ll wait a few weeks for an Amazon partner to resell it for a fraction of the price.
Book sales have been falling for years as fewer people read. The new e-readers have gotten people excited about reading again, do they really want to discourage that?
Economics 101 states that taxing something discourages its use. Adding $5 to the price for no good reason is a tax and will discourage book purchases and make people angry at the publishers.
A bunkobon size Book costs normally about 5 dollars or less in Japan and it’s a paper book, not an ebook.
Certainly, taxing and other systems are different in US and Japan. There must be, however,something seriously wrong though, if US publishers can’t deliver an ebooks at $10.
With ebooks, publishers don’t have to pay for printing and delivery costs, yet they have to charge twice the price that Japanese publishers offer their cheap paper books at?
Maybe, they think they have to maintain their old facilities and they are charging extra for that. Nonetheless, the time has moved on, it’s time they have ditched their old way of doing things.
Here is an example:
“The end of the world and hard boiled wonderland” in Japanese language:
世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド〈下〉 (新潮文庫)
Buy from Amazon
costs 530Yen
530/89 = about 6 dollar
The same title in English language:
Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World
costs $12.5
I see similar tendency with books written by English authors as well.
After posting this:http://ireaderreview.com/2010/02/28/will-readers-pay-more-for-books-because-of-a-beautiful-argument/#comment-11744
I got really curious and compared the prices for “something wicked this way comes” by Ray Bradbury
Here is an result
An out of print paper back:
http://ireaderreview.com/2010/02/28/will-readers-pay-more-for-books-because-of-a-beautiful-argument/#comment-11744
11 used from $7.22
In print paper back:
Something Wicked This Way Comes
3 new from $17.9
In Japanese language:
何かが道をやってくる (創元SF文庫)
Buy from Amazon
777yen 90 = $8.6 paper back
Wonder just how heavily books are taxed in US…
NetCat its even worse here in Spain as continuing giving examples of book prices here “The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1) by Patrick Rothfuss” is being sold in Spain for 21€= about 28$ hardcover edition and there is been almost a year (May 2009) since it was published and yet there isn´t a paperback edition.
And there isn´t still a date for paperback as for today and I bought it at amazon uk for about 12$ including delivery.
The problem is there is a limit of 5% discount for books and the books have the lowest tax of 4% ’cause they are culture. This is nationwide so you wont ever see a price difference between a store and another more than a dollar or two (distribution and transport cost between one and another).
By the way all the bestsellers hardcover are priced between 17-22,50€ = $22,95 – $30,40 (1€ = US $1,3569 as of 1st march 2010).