An open letter to Dominique Raccah

I’ve been so pleased with so many of your decisions at Sourcebooks, like releasing Georgette Hayer backlist with spiffy covers and such high quality bindings that I’ve received letters from people thanking me for letting them know about them. There’s that upcoming Kinsale, too, that makes me giddy to the point of twitching.

But today’s news about ebooks? Oh, no. It’s a big ol’ clusterfuck of head shaking forehead pounding with a side order of, “Oh, honey.”

Sourcebooks is issuing 75,000 copies of “Bran Hambric,” a sizable print run in this economy, and has arranged a substantial marketing campaign and book tour for Mr. Nation.

“It doesn’t make sense for a new book to be valued at $9.99,” said Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks, which issues 250 to 300 new titles annually. “The argument is that the cheaper the book is, the more people will buy it. But hardcover books have an audience, and we shouldn’t cannibalize it.” An e-book for “Bran Hambric” will become available in the spring, she said.

Richard Curtis, Mr. Nation’s agent, concurs on holding back the e-book edition. “We don’t want to undercut the sales and royalty potential of the printed hardcover,” Mr. Curtis said.

While filing my teeth and chewing on digital media for my daily nutrition could make for some awesome seminar presentations, I have to say, COME ON NOW AND I MEAN IT.

 

Book CoverAs an ebook consumer, I already agree to take on significant limitations when I choose digital media. I can’t share or lend it. I can’t in most cases give a copy of the book (unless I feel like Waiting for Fictionwise) to someone I think might like it. In some cases, as with Kindle, I can’t even guarantee that I’ll be able to download and reread the book more than six times.

Yet I choose digital media because it works for me, and I liek it. So why am I being penalized because I don’t want to buy the hardcover, and should therefore wait six months or more for the digital copy.

LISTEN UP. If you read nothing else but the following paragraph, then please know I mean what I say here:

I WILL NOT BUY A HARDBACK BECAUSE YOU WANT ME TO, BECAUSE IT’S BETTER FOR YOUR REVENUE STREAM.

I WANT EBOOKS. I WANT DIGITAL BOOKS. I DO NOT WANT HARDBACKS.

YOU CANNOT MAKE ME BUY THEM. YOU ONLY COST YOURSELF THE REVENUE OF MY PURCHASE.

Didja get all that? Seriously, my jaw dropped so hard when I read this article, I’m going to get TMJ from the WSJ.

Robert Gottlieb, chairman of Trident Media Group LLC and Ms. Coulter’s literary agent, said he doesn’t allow any of his authors’ books to be published simultaneously as an e-book when he can prevent it.

“It’s no different than releasing a DVD on the same day that a new movie is released in the movie theaters,” he said. “Why would you do that?”

Mr. Gottlieb, I’ll be honest: I’m embarrassed for you.

Films on DVD and feature films in theatres are NOT the same as digital books and hardbacks. A more apt comparison would be DVD and VHS. VHS, by the way, would be the hardback.

I fully admit that the format questions and the price questions about digital books are still up in the air.

But making this decision is insulting to a growing segment of the fiction buying readership, and, to be frank, ignorantly based on faulty logic. You encourage two things by delaying digital releases of book titles: piracy and ire. I’m not going to pirate books, but I am going to remember that somehow, my digital purchase of your book is of lesser value than a hardback purchase, despite the fact that I buy more books and read more books than most people.

In all things, one should listen to Sarah, in this case, Sarah Rotman Epps of Forrester Research:

“Publishers are in denial about the economics of digital content,” said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps….

Although e-books account for only 1% to 2% of total book sales, as measured by dollars, they are one of publishing’s few bright areas. Ms. Epps… estimates that by year end there will be more than three million dedicated e-reader devices in the U.S., with two million sold in 2009.

Yes, 1-2% is not a great amount, but it’s the only one that’s growing at such an exponential rate. Look at the IPDF statistics for heaven’s sake. Are any of your other revenue streams flooding like that one? In this economy, I doubt it.

I probably should not take decisions like this one so personally, but I am holy hopping angry. It’s insulting to me that I should be dictated what format I should buy, and should be penalized for preferring a different format.

This decision was poorly made and poorly defended. I’m a big fan of your company, and I’m looking forward to seeing you all this week at RWA. You are one of the companies that seems to approach publishing, specifically romance, a little differently, offering up exceptional romance titles long out of print for new audiences to discover.

Digital books are also a new audience, one that should be fostered and treated as equal to those who read paper books. I wish you held us in the same respect as you do your other readers.

 

Categorized:

Ranty McRant

Comments are Closed

  1. Kat says:

    An ebook book does not function like a print book. An ebook has no cost beyond formatting, as the cost has already been factored in (i.e. editing, marketing, etc.) to the cost of print versions.

    One more thing to add to Meljean’s comment about this. I may be wrong, but I would assume there has to be substantial cost involved in developing and maintaining the infrastructure required to produce and distribute ebooks.

  2. Kat says:

    I also think ebook advocates are a little sensitive about this issue. I’m not sure why ebooks must be available on the day of release when I can’t get my mass market paperback until months or a year after the hardcover comes out. You don’t want to pay the cost of a hardcover? Then wait like everyone else.

    Now, stopping the practice of publishing first releases in hardcover is another issue. (And for what it’s worth, this is rarely done in Australia. First releases for prestigious titles are usually in C-format paperback.)

  3. Teresa C says:

    I think that someone needs to do some marketing research.
    From my travels on the internet, I have noticed the following:
    People have a format preference, and trying to sell them a different format is an uphill battle.
    Whatever format a person reads, is what he/she reads. A person who prefers HC format, will only buy another format, when HC is not offered.
    Trade paper readers, only buy Trade paper, unless Trade is not offered.
    MMPB readers, only buy MMPB. Heaven forfend you ever expect them to buy anything else.
    E-readers, only buy e-books, wherever, and however they can.

    So, a Publisher delaying a digital edition, only delays the revenue stream from those digital editions. The digital editions was not a lost HC Sale, as an e-reader will never buy in HC. I think the reverse is also true, a HC reader will never buy an e-book.

    I do think, that the longer a publisher delays a cheaper edition, the more sales are lost to the Library and UBS sales, resulting in a lost sale.  0% of $25 is still less than 10% of $7.99.

  4. Meljean wrote

    BUT to treat ebooks as pure profit now and depending on print sales to cover production and editing costs will be a self-destructive practice for any publisher.

    Very good point.

    A publisher should consider the ebooks in their cost structure, and the more successful the ebook format becomes, and the larger the percentage of total sales, the larger the proportion of the costs those sales must cover.

    Still, the cost of e-book production must be substantially less than the cost of producing a traditional book.  Paper costs, shipping costs, storage costs, and all those stripped books have to add up. 

    From what I have heard at my local RWA chapter meetings, authors are not necessarily getting a larger royalty percentage on ebooks than they do on paper—which I think is rotten.  The publisher saves, the author suffers?  Not a good model, but epub also allows for greater competition, so maybe competitive pressure will force publishers to compensate authors fairly when it comes to ebooks. 

    There are so many complicated issues involving eBooks—things like reversion of publishing rights.  It was pretty standard to allow rights to revert to the author if the publisher had the book out of print for a certain amount of time.  The author could later market the book to another publisher.  But with epub, is anything EVER out of print?  A publisher might do nothing to promote an author or her works and still hold the rights.  These are the kind of things that RWA and other author groups should address in a proactive fashion.

    No matter how complicated or difficult or, to some of us who still love paper books and physical bookstores, painful it might be, epub is here to stay.

    Off topic?  Oh, yeah.  Well, uh, nevermind.

  5. Kat says:

    Whatever format a person reads, is what he/she reads. A person who prefers HC format, will only buy another format, when HC is not offered.
    Trade paper readers, only buy Trade paper, unless Trade is not offered.
    MMPB readers, only buy MMPB. Heaven forfend you ever expect them to buy anything else.

    I see what you’re saying, Teresa C, but it’s my understanding that not every book comes out in hardcover. (Correct me if I’m wrong because I may well be!) So we’re only really talking about prestige titles that publishers think they can sell as hardcovers. I usually buy mass market, but I can be persuaded to buy different formats if they’re available earlier. I did it for Ward, Kenyon, and Crusie/Mayer.

  6. Amy! says:

    @Kat

    One more thing to add to Meljean’s comment about this. I may be wrong, but I would assume there has to be substantial cost involved in developing and maintaining the infrastructure required to produce and distribute ebooks.

    Google “marginal cost” or “marginal cost of production”.  Unfortunately, I can’t find a good layman’s explanation.  The brief version: the marginal cost of production of a digital artifact is zero (or so close to zero as to make no difference).

    There are overheads associated with the production of entertainment (movies and music as well as fiction).  For fiction, the overhead is the part of the advance that isn’t recovered, some part of the salaries of editors and proofreaders (and salesdroids), office space, various other materials, but all of that is fixed by the time the book is ready for sale.

    For a digital release, there are (effectively) no further costs.  For music on a CD, the per-unit cost (marginal cost of production) is whatever it costs to create the CD, create the label, and copy the music onto the CD; similarly for DVDs.  There is no standard physical format for digital books (‘cause they’re very small, comparatively, so creating a custom format would have an unsupportable marginal cost without adding any functionality).  For a physical book, the cost is paper, press rental per unit, ink, glue, etc.  Many publishers no longer own presses and binderies; they hire it done (because it’s cheaper—lower marginal cost of production).  Publishers take a risk every time they print a book: the result of a print run is a stack of physical artifacts, that cost money to make (and will cost money to store (and since the seventies there hasn’t been an inventory tax exception for books)); to recover that money they have to sell the product.  If they don’t sell enough to break even on the print run, they lose money—without considering the overhead costs for editing, proofreading, etc.

    If a publisher established their own ebook store, then they would have an additional overhead cost for the maintenance of servers, and salaries of techies, and cost of network connection, but again, when there’s more than one item (book) delivered by this system, it can’t easily be treated as part of the marginal cost—this is particularly true for ebooks, which typically weigh in at under a megabyte (often well under).  That’s invisible, on a modern hard drive.  Marginal cost of digital downloads is effectively zero (it’s slightly greater than zero, but only very slightly; we’re talking fractions of a cent).  This is the reason that the sue-your-customers lawsuits are always expressed in terms of “lost revenue”, which is at best hypothetical, as it depends upon the strength of the acquisition motivation versus the cost of (legal) acquisition.  If they sued for actual damages, they’d not be able to afford a minute of a lawyer’s time (not at $2.00 a minute).

    But publishers mostly don’t run bookstores for their physical books, and why?  Because (dedicated) bookstores do it better.  If your city had one bookstore per publisher, how would you find anything?  That doesn’t change for epublishing; publishers will end up transferring (one) digital copy, and the (online) bookstore can sell it over and over and over and over and over and over and over.  Assuming that the publisher paid the full cost of transmittal of the original copy … it’s just negligible.

    So … ebooks are priced (if they have anyone pricing them based on analysis, rather than the PR idiots who seem to want to price them based on what they had for breakfast or the phase of the moon) on an expectation of n sales to cover the (fixed) overhead costs (but in fact only a portion of the overhead costs, because the print editions are also priced to cover those costs, and those prices are based on analysis of returns or the publisher stops doing business).  This is, for forward-thinking publishers, rather liberating … but some of the dinosaurs, clearly, find the idea of a marginal cost approaching zero to be at best disturbing, and contrary to the laws of … profit.

  7. Teresa C says:

    I usually buy mass market, but I can be persuaded to buy different formats if they’re available earlier. I did it for Ward, Kenyon, and Crusie/Mayer.

    Kat, I think you are probably the exception that proves the rule, in that you aren’t married to a format. I don’t think anyone knows how many people simply don’t buy a book, because it isn’t in their preferred format. I do know that there are books that I haven’t purchased, simply because they did not come out in a digital edition. 
    And, I know that there are books that I own multiple paper copies of, that I purchased in digital, as soon as I knew that they were available. If I could buy all of Linda Howard’s backlist in digital format, I would be a happy camper (it is so lovely to know that I can re-read McKenzie’s Mountain at the drop of a hat, it makes me smile.)

    Don’t even get me started on the Audiobook versions of beloved books.

  8. Kat says:

    Thanks, Amy! Those are great points which I admit I hadn’t thought of when I posted my previous comment. I suspect the immediate cost/profit equation isn’t the only thing Sourcebook considered when it made its decision. I’m told Amazon takes a good loss in pricing ebooks below $10. This is clearly not sustainable. And from a publisher’s perspective, it seems like part of a plan for Amazon to set a market price that it can later ask/force publishers to meet, whether the costs bear it out or not.

    I’m not saying Sourcebooks is right, by the way. I’m just saying they may have valid business reasons (which, of course, ebook readers may or may not agree with).

    I don’t think anyone knows how many people simply don’t buy a book, because it isn’t in their preferred format.

    In the absence of such data, isn’t it understandable that Sourcebooks would want to minimise the possibility of ebook sales cannibalising hardcovers? There’s a reason hardcovers, trade and mass market don’t all come out at the same time. I think Sourcebooks is trying to figure out where ebooks fit into that timeline (based on Dominique Raccah’s comments on Twitter).

  9. Casi Nerina says:

    I’m with you.  I live abroad and English books are expensive here.  When I go to the store books that are 7 or 8 dollars at home are the equivalent of 14 to 16 (or more) dollars here.  I love to read, and if I was at home my collection on my ereader would no longer fit in the library room, that’s how many I’ve bought in 10 months. 

    Yes, they definitely need to treat us as equals.

  10. Kaetrin says:

    Hear Hear Sarah!

  11. Suze says:

    Wow, what a discussion.  I’m flip-flopping as I read the comments, but my thoughts are circling around these truths:

    – I will buy hardcover for a book that I just absolutely cannot wait for (Patricia Briggs Bone Crossed), but I resent having to do so.

    – In most cases, I don’t mind waiting for a more economically feasible version to come out, but I really don’t understand why anyone except libraries want hardcovers at all.  They suck in every way except for durability, and ability to keep orderly on library shelves.

    – When a series goes hardcover, it generally starts to suck (Hamilton, Kenyon, Brockmann).

    – When I read a hardcover book I get from the library, I generally don’t buy a cheaper format when it comes out, unless it’s one I know I’m going to re-read a lot (Briggs, Bujold).

    – I have been known to buy the hardcover, then the paperback, then another copy of the paperback.

    – However, I have run out of room, and so have bought an e-reader.

    – DAMN the formats!  I’m not enjoying book shopping anymore!

    – I’m shopping differently now, and not to the benefit of publishers.

    – I don’t buy books on impulse anymore, because I’d rather have it electronically.  However, it’s so tedious browsing for books in different e-stores that by the time they’re out at a price I like in a format I can use, I’ve forgotten about them.  And because I can’t browse by author like I do in a physical bookstore, I’m missing books by authors I like but have slipped my mind.

    – So I’m buying fewer books over all.  Which is good for my credit card, but sad for me and my authors.

  12. Casi Nerina says:

    @Suze

    – I collect hard covers from some of my favorite authors, and when I lived in the states I would buy the ones I couldn’t wait for.

    – See point one

    – I agree with this to some degree, but I still enjoy reading Hamilton (Laurell right?) and Acheron was a great climax to Kenyon’s series, now I want to see the next one. 

    – I don’t buy it after I read at the library either, unless I know I’m going to want to read it over and over.

    – I currently have four copies of some of my favorite books – Hardcover, 2 paperbacks, and an ecopy.  The hardcover to keep the two to read and loan out, and the ecopy was bought once I moved to Korea, because my little apartment doesn’t have enough room.

    – I didn’t want to have exorbitant shipping home costs so I bought one before I ran out of room.  I’m still going to have a whole box of books to ship home. 

    – I only buy one format.  If it doesn’t exist I skip it and I’ll wait until I can buy it paper copy. 

    – I always try not to benefit the publishers.  They don’t need any more money.

    – Author websites are a wonderful thing.  I’ve bookmarked all of mine, and keep a file where I list the upcoming release dates (at least by month) so that I can catch up and keep up.  Though, admittedly some of my authors don’t have websites, or they aren’t updated often enough. 

    – I’m in the same position.

  13. Theresa says:

    I hate hardback books.  Most of my books are paperback but I’m buying a large number of ebooks as well.  I enjoy reading an ebook on my laptop more than I enjoy reading a hardback.  For me, reading a hardback is just not an enjoyable experience – I dislike the format and I can’t exactly explain why.  I do buy some hardbacks – primarily nonfiction and biographies.  However, I hate when my authors switch from paperback to hardback (you know who you are).  I understand that “in demand” authors do that but I’d rather pay more for a book and get it in the format I want than have to wait for the paperback.  I feel the same with ebooks.  Let me, as the consumer, pick the format.  You’re just going to delay my purchase and annoy me (and potentially lose me as a reader if the author is borderline) if you force me into your prescribed format.

  14. Casi Nerina says:

    Oooo.  I like that solution.  Let the reader pick any format all at the same time.  Hard, paper, trade, all the various e versions.  That would be nice.

  15. G says:

    I think a lot of what is being said here is silly. My preferred model would be a free e-book with my HC. Until then, I will pay HC prices for what I want to read faster. For those who are saying that folks have”preferred reading modes”: be serious. Would you pay HC price for your MMP? If not, then money is an important aspect and having cheaper models come out later is the correct answer. If waiting makes you not buy a book, then I guess that you don’t buy a lot of books.I am an accountant and saying that digital books have zero marginal cost is completely ingenuous: redefine marginal cost to include overhead then. Note that royalties, to author and especially to seller (I believe Amazon takes more than 50%) are already part of that marginal cost.
    I would like to see how authors can survive without the “dinisaur” apparatus of the advance and that is part of the structure surrounding real books- those things some of you think are obsolete and not needed. Those structures are what are supporting e-books.
    Once again, I think we should have a free e-book with our HC, then let it come out at 50 cents less than the cost of the comparable book (to make up for the cost of paper:)) with the TPB or MMPB.

  16. Edie says:

    This is a hard one for me. Ideally I wish they would do away with hardcovers all together, I think I have only brought five new in my book buying lifetime – and that was only cos I knew I could onsell them and get most of my moola back. But in Aus, there is actually not a major market for hardcovers..

    While I can understand the rational in considering ebooks the same as MME, I am with a lot of other people on the fact that I think 90% of the market for ebooks would not buy the hardcover anyway, and probably 90% of the people who are going to rush out for the hardcover are very unlikely to actually buy it in ebook.

    And while there is a rant going on about mainstream books, can we mention the horrendous DRM and the absolute stupidity of the muddying of international e-rights?
    These days I can’t even buy the darn ebooks anyway as I am excluded for being in oz, yet the majority of the publishers here that release a limited number of romance books are behind the eight ball on ebooks. Aussie Harlequin doesn’t even have ebooks as far as I can tell.. sigh

    Rambling rant now over.. lol

  17. Casi Nerina says:

    If waiting makes you not buy a book, then I guess that you don’t buy a lot of books.

    Everything else you said I can agree you have a right to say.  Except that.  Part of it is simply the ambiguity – how many is a lot for instance. 

    However, the bigger part of it is how do you get from A to B?  waiting means no buying, so therefore we must not buy many books?  Perhaps its that we buy so many books that we forget the ones we didn’t buy when we wanted to wait?

  18. Jocelyn says:

    In my perfect world they would release paperbacks and ebooks together, and then do a small print run of hcs for collectors.

    Totally agreed. I buy hardcovers for my auto-buy authors pretty frequently, but I’m much more likely to sour on an author if I have that “do I really want to spend $20+ on this novel?” moment.  I’d still be buying all Charlaine Harris’ new novels if they came out in paperback right away, but I decided I didn’t want to spend twenty bucks to read about Sookie getting the snot beat out of her again, and talked myself out of buying anything else by that author ever again.

    You know why?  Because I know that by buying hardcovers, I’m getting ripped off.  I’m willing to pay that extra cash for a novel I seriously can’t wait for, but I’m not happy about it and I’m always looking for a way to talk myself out of it.  I don’t like the format (hard to carry, hard to read in bed). 

    Honestly.  There is no hardback market to cannibalize.  There’s an impatience market to profit from.

  19. MichelleR says:

    I don’t buy print books. Oh, I don’t mind winning them like I did in the recent raffle, and Amazon Vine sends them for review, but I don’t really purchase them and don’t need to between my Kindle and the shelves of TBR books.

    I buy lots of e-books, often on impulse, and with no real set limit, because these are my luxuries and everybody deserves 1 or 2 of those. That means that I will read a review and if it’s glowing or it sounds appealing, I will immediately purchase the Kindle version. It’s not about saving money, but about convenience and immediacy.

    It’s not an either/or. No Kindle version, 99% chance of no purchase. I might think about it for a few seconds. I might put the book on my wishlist as a reminder, but it falls into the category of either a lost or delayed sale.

    There have been times recently when I haven’t put the book on my wishlist for reminder and could not recall a title. If someone doesn’t mention that title again, I’ll never even have an opportunity to check back.

    It seems logical to me that, like the grocery store that puts little items by the register, that pubs would cater to impulse buyers, and want people to have access to the book when it’s fresh in their minds, rather than have them be in a Borders two weeks later and unable to recall a thing or have it show up in the mail after the initial interest has faded.

  20. ShellBell says:

    I only buy hardcover or trade priced eBooks if they are heavily discounted, otherwise I go to the library. When I utillise the library I probably won’t bother buying the eBook when it finally becomes available for me to purchase.

    Publishers and etailers logic is incomprehensible when it comes to the pricing of eBooks. Lora Leigh’s Maverick and Dangerous Games are two examples of eBooks that I won’t be purchasing. Both are available only from Mobipocket at US$14 each while the paperback and kindle versions are less than US$10. Both also have geographical restrictions so even if I did want to get totally ripped off by Mobipocket I couldn’t purchase them anyway. I no longer feel ripped off by the pricing as I no longer buy the eBooks at hardcover and trade prices. I borrowed both books from the library and whilst I did enjoy the books I probably won’t bother purchasing them as eBooks so lost sales for Lora Leigh.

    I recently tried to purchase Johanna Lindsey’s new release at a discounted price only to get pinged by the pitiful ‘geographical restriction’ excuse on checkout resulting in yet another lost sale.

    I used to spend a minimum of US$100 a month but not any more, probablt not even half that now. While publishers and etailers are slowly but surely driving me away from eBooks, I’m not heading towards the shops to purchase the paperbacks, I’m rapidly heading towards my local library for free reads.

  21. Kat,

    I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it.  How can Amazon take a good loss if ebooks sell under $10? They don’t have to store them.  They don’t have to order them when they run out, pack them in a box with padding, and ship them (free if the order is $25 or more).  They don’t have to take damaged returns or restock them. The cost for having them available for download must be negligible.  Unless their price from the publisher is more than $10—which I don’t see—how is that possible?  If they can sell a trade paperback for $7.99 and make a profit—which they obviously do—AND ship for free when there you buy four of them—how could ebooks under $10 be a loss-leader?

    Maybe their profit margin on e-books is smaller, but I don’t see how they could be realizing a loss on ebooks.

  22. Kat says:

    How can Amazon take a good loss if ebooks sell under $10? They don’t have to store them.

    My understanding is that Amazon is selling ebooks for less than the price that they’re buying them from publishers. And I think that’s what’s most troubling for publishers—that consumers now expect a sub-$10 price point for ebooks that publishers may or may not be able to sustain in the long run.

    The problem that I see publishers having with dirt cheap ebooks is that when they overtake print books there’s going to be an expectation that dirt cheap prices will be sustainable. But if ebooks eventually have to bear the bulk of the overhead costs of publishing, then I can see why publishers might not feel such prices are a good idea.

    Amazon, on the other hand, wants to move Kindle units and gain as much market share as it can while the market for ebooks is still developing and growing so that when it’s time to consolidate they have enough market power to influence if not dictate the outcome.

  23. Mass market paperbacks sell in the $7.99-$8.99 range all the time.  (Let’s not even get into the Sam’s/Costco/Wal-Mart discussion!)  Why would Amazon have to pay more than $10 for the ability to sell an e-book, when, if we assume that 50% markup number, they are only paying $4.00-$4.50 for a paperback?  That just doesn’t add up to me. 

    Very confusing.

  24. Kat says:

    Maybe it’s to do with economise of scale? I have no idea. But the fact remains that Amazon is taking a loss on ebooks to sell it below $10. As consumers we might think this is a good thing because it puts publishers under pressure to reduce their costs/mark-ups. But you can see why publishers wouldn’t be too happy about it.

  25. Hmmm….  Economy of scale has to do with the fact that, to a point, it is cheaper per item to make many items than just a few.  Once the book is edited, the type is set, the press is going, it is cheaper per book to print 100,000 than to print 100.  Ebooks avoid both the printing costs AND the shipping costs completely.

    If Amazon’s cost on e-books is truly more than the cost of a paperback book, then there is some piece of the puzzle missing.  I would love to hear from a publisher why that would be true.

  26. Sandia says:

    Sorry to all the authors out there but the more I read about the publisher’s attitude towards the consumer, the more I’m tempted to look on the torrent sites for free stuff.

    Makes me want to rebel – why should I pay for it if you continue to try to screw me on pricing because you incorrectly believe that I am the same consumer that will buy a HC book? 

    I just don’t get why publishers don’t understand that a majority of ebook sales comes from a completely new segment – who can just as easily disappear.

  27. Lyron Bennett says:

    Got to say I am totally unimpressed with this article in every way. It is personal, and frankly very, very silly. The only decision a publisher has is when to release it and this is a format that needs experimentation not to be made rigid for the, frankly, e-clique people that post here. I’m very disappointed. I always thought you guys were WAY smarter than this.

    Here’s a mean way of making my point. I know that in tennis shoes everyone’s happy that its a race to the bottom, right? That’s why there is unilateral support for sweat shops? I mean, the whole goal of capitalism is to get products to be as cheap as possible, thus its got to be good for the world that people make products for as cheaply as possible regardless of the way it destroys the integrity of the process. Seriously, mean metaphors aside, we need to be having a conversation about how to support authors, not a conversation demeaning people who are trying to save authorship from the race to the bottom. We need experimentation, we need to find the balance between pleasing the people who post here and pleasing the VAST majority of book buyers who buy print books, we need to listen to people like Dominique when they go out on the limb. We need actual conversation not articles that read “THE WORLD IS ABOUT ME, THUS ALL PUBLISHING SHOULD BE DONE JUST FOR ME.”

    Again, this website is usually so smart (and entertaining) but this was totally off the mark.

  28. G says:

    Hear, hear Lyron! I have been amazed reading these comments.

    I buy a lot of books. I support writers (most of whom eke out a living-see Scalzi et al’s posts on advances/royalties).

    I deeply regret when authors I love leave writing because they can’t afford to live in poverty. When I climbed out of hand to mouth, I made decisions. One of those was to buy HC certain books, to replace PBs with HC in some cases. I know the royalty difference between HC and PB. I don’t steal books (or music). I don’t expect either to be free.

    And what I meant when I said that one doesn’t buy a lot of books if one can’t wait to buy in PB, is that there is no way I could afford all the books I read in HC. Nor could I get them all from the library (if I were in the US now) because although I frequented and supported my library, I read more widely and faster than they can stock. I learned to “trage” my desires both to purchase and to purchase in HC long ago. Nowadays I get to buy more HC and I am happy with that. But I still buy in PB. If I don’t care enough to get it when it’s in PB, I don’t care enough.

    Books are not bubblegum. I won’t read crap because it’s easier to get (ok, I will, but that’s because I am an addict. And I will generally read a crap magazine before a crap book).

    Am I really so different than the other real readers out there? And I define that as: “people who read more than 8 books a month”. And most of us read more than that, I think. We buy most of the books in the US, I have read. And I don’t need them all on reader or to beggar authors to get them faster.

  29. Kat says:

    Makes me want to rebel – why should I pay for it if you continue to try to screw me on pricing because you incorrectly believe that I am the same consumer that will buy a HC book?

    But I’m not sure that’s what publishers intend to do. Part of the price of the hardback is the fact that you get to read the book first. You pay a premium for the quality of the binding as well as the timing of the release. You’ll still get the ebook eventually—just not on release day. Whether you wait and buy a legal copy or decide to read a copy from elsewhere is your decision, much like I can decide to wait for the mm paperback, or buy a used hardback from the UBS, borrow it from the library, or hang around Borders for 2 hours to read the book in its entirety.

    I do think it’s a valid point to say that some readers may well turn to illegal downloads if ebook releases are delayed, and that’s something that publishers have to weigh up.

    Again, I don’t necessarily agree with Sourcebooks here. But I think this is the right time for publishers to be experimenting with what they can and can’t do, and what the market can and can’t or won’t bear.

  30. Suze says:

    The only decision a publisher has is when to release it and this is a format that needs experimentation not to be made rigid

    I don’t understand what this means.  I’m pretty sure a publisher has to decide more than when to release a book.  Also, I get the impression that release dates are greatly impacted by when a book can get fit into the schedules of a limited number of printers.

    Pricing should be based on real numbers, not experimental imaginary ones.  Harlequin, who probably does more market research than any other publishing company on earth, seems to have come up with a business model that takes paper and e-books into account, and it seems to be working for them.

    If Amazon is losing money on their e-books, why are other e-book stores adopting their pricing?  Why aren’t publishers looking at what Harlequin is doing and emulating them?  Most of all, why isn’t anyone able to plot out the costs of publishing paper books versus e-books so that people can make decisions based on real information, rather than stuff we’re guessing at.

    And G, some books ARE bubblegum.  Not every reading experience can or ought to be steak & lobster.  Especially if a person is reading 6 or more books a week.

  31. Pam says:

    I’d still be buying all Charlaine Harris’ new novels if they came out in paperback right away, but I decided I didn’t want to spend twenty bucks to read about Sookie getting the snot beat out of her again, and talked myself out of buying anything else by that author ever again.

    Yeah, what is up with that?  I had so looked forward to her last one, too.  My daughter thinks Harris is channeling Meyer and Sookie’s developing the Bella whine…

    Sorry about going off-topic.  I don’t feel qualified to comment since I don’t use an e-reader.  I am not passionate about format, only reading.  Every table setting should include a weight for holding a book open—easier with a hardback, BTW.  I read all my favorite authors in library versions first and choose my keepers from whatever is cheapest.  I would read ebooks, if I weren’t too cheap to buy a reader or likely to get gravy on it… 

    The one thing I don’t understand is commentators who are so passionately attached to their own favorite format that they seem to think that a) everyone shares their preference or that b) their preference should be treated as the primary format and all others should take a back seat.  These attitudes may be a function of age to some degree.  I suspect that the majority of hardback readers are older (and perhaps more prosperous and/or blinder), while the ebook aficionados tend to be dominated by the born digital generation.  Pricing and format dominance should evolve as demographics change, and, in the meantime, readers will vote with their wallets.  It seems like the marketplace model works best when things are in a state of flux.  In the long term, DRM issues are probably way more of a hot button for me.

  32. Edie says:

    I guess as a lot of us have leapt on the ebook ride with such glee, (in most cases, probably because we read wayyy more than 8 books a month) it is hard to be patient while the publishers experiment.
    I just think that sometimes publishers are cutting their nose off to spite their face with the pissfarting around they are doing with ebooks.
    I read similar articles to Kat on the Amazon thing I think, and it just makes no sense to me, I do not understand under what justification they can charge suppliers more for ebooks then they do for print books – where under the iffy system they are going to get returns and less shelf time.

    I don’t know any answers, but while the publishers sort themselves out, I will be spending the majority of my dosh at small epubs with much less hassle. And only buying known authors from the mainstream..

  33. Kat says:

    If Amazon is losing money on their e-books, why are other e-book stores adopting their pricing?

    I assume this is so they can remain competitive. It’s similar to airfare wars. When a new competitor comes into the market, or if a new market opens up, the airlines will price below cost to get people to try the service and hopefully gain loyal customers. Same here. There’s probably some wiggle room for Amazon’s competitors because the Kindle can only read limited formats.

    Good point about Harlequin. Do you know the % difference in ebook vs print prices? Because a lot of HMB books tend to be shorter than most other publishers’.

    As to pricing/costs, we’re guessing because we don’t know because we’re not publishers. I suspect the publishers do know their own numbers and are busy crunching them.

    Pricing and format dominance should evolve as demographics change

    That about sums up what I think.

  34. Jody W. says:

    I guess I don’t have a problem waiting for the reasonably priced ebook like I do an mmp. However, as many have pointed out, paper books without a legal digital equivalent gets pirated digitally anyway. That Sourcebooks book will be up on the torrents…how fast? Fast. The use of DRM doesn’t slow pirating at all. Paper-only makes digital pirating slightly more challenging but not impossible.

    I have about $100 in bookstore giftcards and have for months. I can’t bring myself to use it because I’d really rather do my reading on my Sony instead of adding hardcopies to our overflowing house. So even though the giftcards were intended for me, I think I’ll use them for the kids, who don’t have ereaders. Yet :).

    My 7 yr old begs to read on my Sony, where I’ve downloaded a few books and some Gutenburg texts for her. She thinks its awesome. She also loves paper. And audio books. And movies. And picking on her sister.

  35. Edie says:

    suppliers should read retailers.. sigh

    BTW I think it is not necessarily people believing ebooks to be the dominant format in any shape or form, or that they should be pandered to as readers above others. Though it could be a bit of being made to feel like a second class citizen due to being an ereader at times.

    I think a lot of the stuff on this thread is general frustration that the publishers are farking it up soo much, when publishers like Harlequin seem to manage to get it down relatively pat. That it also seems that the big boys are trying to shut the e-book thing down, (which is just the way it appears sometimes) so that when something is announced, you can get fired up, IYKWIM. 😉

    Spamword: I wish I had 86 answers for the problem of ebooks.. 😉

  36. Lyron Bennett says:

    @ Suze.

    Sorry, what I mean is that the only Publisher decision regarding an e-book, is generally not “if” they are going to do it or “how” (since they remain fairly boring text docs) but “when” will they be released. Sourcebooks is working on the things they can control.

    As for Harlequin the answer is simple. They publish a single genre, to a single audience. That pricing is going to work everywhere (just as pricing doesn’t carry across all kinds of non-fiction). Romance readers are a more digital breed, though not the same kind of digital folks worldwide. In Japan for instance, the #1 device for reading romance novels is the cellphone. The book the article was about was YA, there isn’t any reason to think Harlequin’s pricing would work, is there?

    And lastly all of the points revolve around the same question: what is an authors words worth? Unlike musicians who can fall back on the live show, an author is only worth what their words can be sold for. To have sustainable authorship in the 20th Century, we are going to have to keep their words valuable and it’s definitely not clear that the right way to do that is to immediately release a 9.99 ebook that might lower the number of $25 p-books you can sell for that author. Books are a passion, an art, a craft AND a business.

  37. Kat says:

    Edie, my guess is that they have a very streamlined process for getting print books out, and they can reasonably model things like returns and remainders. But they probably don’t have the same processes and calculations in place for ebooks, so they’re being conservative.

    I think you’re in Australia, right? My big ebook issue is why there aren’t more Aussie publishers releasing ebooks, especially for authors whose works haven’t been bought by overseas pubs. When I see no experimentation at all, I’m more likely to forgive pubs who take risks even if they don’t always go the direction I’d like.

  38. Lyron Bennett says:

    Just to clarify on my comments above, I think what Harlequin is doing is really smart and a great example of why they really get the people they publish for. I just am not sold that their model will work for other publishers in other genres. As we used to say to our interns, “every shelf is a different story.” Publisher’s will have have to learn the rules of digital one genre at a time.

  39. Kate Jones says:

    I have to confess that I still fall into the segment of the population that still wants the physical book—hard cover, paperback, flashcards, whatever.  That said, I’ve just started getting in to digital content (authors I want to try without owning the physical book,  etc.), and it has no less value or importance than the printed version.

    Seriously, what are they thinking?

  40. Henofthewoods says:

    I still by printed books when I can’t get the ebook, but I resent it. I am willing to spend as much for an ebook as for a printed book. I think I end up spending much more on ebooks, because ordering online allows me to ignore the total amount I am spending. Especially with the small epub housing, I end up paying more $/word than I might if I were handling the books. Some people spend cash faster than credit and some the opposite. Paypal, fictionwise, and mobipocket will bankrupt me eventually.
    If I am absolutely dying for a book in a series, I buy it in whatever format I can get. If I love it, I will fill it in to my ebook collection so that I will have the whole series in one place.
    Sometimes I specifically tell myself that buying two copies will help support an author that I like so she/he can keep writing more books for me. I do this more now that I make a grown-up salary than when I was a grad student. If I buy an author’s book on opening day and swell those sales, the publisher won’t dump that author. I don’t want my favorites to get dumped.

Comments are closed.

By posting a comment, you consent to have your personally identifiable information collected and used in accordance with our privacy policy.

↑ Back to Top