As reported at Dear Author from articles in the Charlotte Observer and the Wall Street Journal, Simon and Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy, Brian Murray, chief executive of News Corp.‘s HarperCollins Publishers, and Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Book Group all announced that they plan to delay digital book releases until months after the hardcover releases in 2010.
All you people who have digital readers (I’m raising my hand, too, here), it’s your/our fault. Reidy is quoted as saying:
Simon & Schuster CEO Carolyn Reidy said Wednesday that the rise of e-books has led to a “cannibalizing” of new hardcover purchases.
“We believe that a large portion of the people who have bought e-readers are from the most devoted reading population,” Reidy said. “And if they like the e-readers they are naturally going to convert because the e-books are so significantly less expensive.”
I don’t know how much more complex a bad solution they could come up with here, but sticking it to the customer in order to protect sales of a dwindling product is the most ludicrous thing I’ve heard in a long ass time. It’s boneheaded and short sighted and insulting. Basically we’re being told that our dollars are not acceptable as sales currency because we bought the wrong format.
I think the only proper way to answer a solution this insanely complex in its lunacy is… rhyme. Let me make this as simple as possible in this hypothetical response to the publisher’s insistence in pushing the hardcover on a digital book customer.
Do you like this hardcover book?
You should buy it! Look look look!
I do not like a hardback book
I will not read it, not that book.
I want to read it, yes, I do,
but not that hardback, no, thank you.
Will you buy it here, or there?
You can buy it anywhere!
This hardback book is just for you.
The only kind we offer you.
I will not buy it, here or there.
I will not buy it anywhere.
I do not want a hardback book.
I want to buy a digital book.
Would you buy it in a store?
If you buy one, will you buy more?
You can buy it here, or there.
You can buy it anywhere!
We only have this hardback book.
There are no others, if you look.
This hardback paper is for you,
and if you buy one, you can buy two!
I will not buy it in a store.
I will not buy one, two, or more.
I will not buy it here, or there.
I will not buy it anywhere.
I will not buy a single one.
Our transaction might be done.
I do not want your hardback book.
I want to read my digi-book.
We do not sell digital books.
We only sell the hardback books.
If you want e, you have to wait.
Until the hardback sales abate.
This digital is just a fad,
and in our viewpoint, very bad.
The only books are ones like these:
Buy in hardback, won’t you please?
I will not buy them, don’t you know?
This is why your profits blow!
I want to read your books, right now!
I want to read them anyhow!
I want to put them on a Kindle,
or Nook or Sony, and not be swindled.
I will not buy a hardback book,
not now, not later, you backwards crook.
Your clueless thinking blows my mind.
E-sales are climbing! Are you blind?!
See this finger, nice and high?
You can kiss my sale goodbye.
I’ll go online and find my book,
scanned page by page by pirate crook,
and you have lost all sales from me,
both now and in the future. See,
I do not want your hardback book.
I want to read my digital book.
Becca, lately they’ve been the same price as the hardcover. And at Amazon, that’s been around 9.99. Which I can deal with.
I’m afraid to see what happens next.
Okay, I just checked.
Hardcover price for Black Hills is 17.79 and ebook price is 9.99.
A classic case of biting the hand that feeds you. E book readers will turn to libraries, half.com, paperbackswap, etc rather than pay full price for a hardcover or wait months and months for the e release. Where are the profits then? Or royalties? Sometimes, I’m convinced the whole industry is swirling down the toilet.
Castiron:
40% of print books are pulped. New books. The cost of printing and shipping (and returning) and then pulping the books should be considered in the production cost. This would never happen to an eBook. Even after you pay all the people involved in the content the cost of housing, shipping, and material is much higher for the print format. Furthermore, publishing is the only industry I know of that encourages overorders on the part of their customers with the guarantee that stock that does not move will be bought back at the full price the retailer paid for it. Again, would not happen with an eBook.
Once the content is ready and formatted, the remaining cost is server related.
eBooks do not get into the resale/used book market. Both eBooks and HC get pirated so this is another bonus for the publisher. (Also an argument in favor of HC).
It is inconceivable to me that no one in the publishing industry can find a way to publish eBooks at a consumer friendly price and still make a tidy profit. Especially since several specialty houses are already doing this. And I agree with what several commenters have posted regarding sliding pricing. Offer it at the outset for a premium. Once the paperback hits, drop the eBook price. There will be some hard core fans who will pay the extra and some who won’t but they have the choice.
Does anyone have hard data on the ebook profits right now?
I know some published authors and, right now, their ebook sales are a tiny percentage of their overall sales. I also know that erotica makes quite a bit of money (in the thousands) for the writer and I assume more for the publisher.
Anyone know where to find those number?
I just blogged about this last night… it irritates me to no end.
For someone who was trying to use a movie theater/DVD analogy…. a more accurate one would be this:
Movie A comes out in BlueRay on March 1st, but because we want you to buy the blue ray version (and no we don’t care what kind of player you have or what format you prefer) we are going to hold the standard DVD format back for 3 months and it will be release in July. It doesn’t make sense because those without blue ray players are not going to buy that version and are just going to be annoyed with you! Likewise, as a kindle owner I am not going to buy the hardcover version under any circumstances. I am willing to pay anywhere from $5 to $15 for kindle books, even with the damn DRM. I find it hard to believe that publishers can’t find a way to profit off of ebook prices like that when they can profit off of paperbacks at 7.99 each.
Harlequin should be doing a happy dance right now. I’ve increased my Harlequin e-library ten fold. Obviously with this new development, that will only get higher. I really appreciate Harlequin’s stance that I am their customer, not a distributor. They cater to the reader’s interest and needs. I’m looking forward to Carina Press as well.
The digital publishers, Samhain, et al. have waited out print publishing and now have a great opportunity here. My book buying in your offerings has increased as well as Harlequin.
On a side note, when Craig Ferguson got his first copy of his hardback, “American on Purpose” (great book btw), He announced on his CBS Late Late Show that his publisher, HarperCollins, left out his Acknowledgments page. He seemed rather steamed about it. Not a shining moment for the publisher. I was able to read the Acknowledgments in the e-book version. You can’t correct those layout errors without reprinting.
Wow, that’s interesting.
I wish I had an ereader….but more than that, I would have loved for my children to have had the ability to get their school books on ereaders instead of packing around 50lbs of books in their backpacks daily….or having to worry about being able to get their course books needed for their college classes on time (and at a reasonable price).
Ebooks sales are going to outpace hardback and paperback book sales eventually, imo…it’s the wave of the future. They are so much more convenient for the multitude of readers, be that newspapers, school text books or novels.
My aunt (in her upper 60’s) just bought one and she loves it. Its easy to use and easy to read. She only wishes that more books were available…..she has the Kindle. Does she still buy Hardbacks?…No, but never did….Does she still buy paperbacks?…not if they are available on her ereader, yes if they aren’t…Does she care about the price…No, she’s retired with a good pension…..Does she still swap/shop at the Used Book Store…Absolutely.
I say let the competition work its magic. There are loads of ebooks out there to buy, lots of new authors to discover…and more to choose from all the time (imo).
More and more folks (even us old ones) are getting better at using the computer to find what we are looking for….including ordering ebooks from the authors publishing houses (and not just Amazon)….although I have to hand it to Amazon, they have made it very easy and provided a library so we don’t have to worry about losing the books we’ve bought….as an old timer, I don’t want to lose what I’ve paid for!!!
It will be interesting to see how the publishers deal with ebooks in the future. If they don’t provide what the client/buyer wants…they will lose sales….and when their profits go down…they will have to change their practices.
Readers will and do go elsewhere And find other alternatives!!! If there are 5 big block buster releases in a month and only 2 are ebook…and the ebooks out-sale all the others….Well, you get the picture….The Client Is ALWAYS RIGHT!!!
PS. I just packed up my books in my (spare) room so my daughter could move back home…and I had 758 books not including my TBR pile!!! The time for ebooks/ereaders is here….although I’ll never give up my hardback collections and favorite shelf-keeper paperbacks that I love to reread time and time again…..besides, I like having a book that doesn’t rely on electric or battery power….Hehehe.
Wishing you all a great Holiday Season!!!
There are very few authors I buy in hardcover, mainly because I started them that way, and I want to keep the collection complete.
However, most of my purchases are now digital and I won’t go out and buy new releases in HC just so I can read them. It’s not practical. Hubby has an ereader because he can’t hold books anymore. So now they are discriminating against the handicapped?
I will either wait until it’s out and cheaper, or better yet, borrow it from the library. I usually manage to get the new releases quickly because I request them as soon as they show up on the sight as on order. No money from me for the publishers, but it does help the circulation numbers at the library.
And yes, I can see pirating becoming a more expanded practice. I have the steps to do it but haven’t- yet. I hate the thought. But I can see it coming.
#
Roslyn – granted, I’m not any kind of expert on the ebook market but I’m finding that pretty dificult to believe. As others have mentioned, other eretailers like Baen and Samhain have no ereaders to market, manage to charge $5 to $7 per book (and with no DRM) and still seem to be able to remain in existence after a number of years, then I’m assuming that it is possible to make a profit off e-books. Granted, they are also publishers as well but then they do cater to a smaller niche market than the Amazons, Fictionwise etc.
As for the actual argument, I am one of those gimps who would buy a newly released book for hardback prices. But then I’m a sucker like that. Rationally, I am aware that it is ridiculous and I am pissed off with it and myself. It is the same thing as buying a hardback release because you’re too impatient to wait for the paperback. But at least with the hardback, it is a more expensive product to produce even if that isn’t the reason why you actually bought it. With ebooks, there’s no such justification/ability to self-delude yourself except that you’re a sucker. Which is not a great feeling.
So basically, you either have:
1. Readers who either won’t buy the book and will probably forget later down the line as, unlike with paperbacks, they won’t have retail stores to remind them; or
2. Readers who feel like gimps
I do take the point that we as consumers should be willing and happy with the decision to pay extra for an early release. However, the prevailing consumer culture at the moment is that we want something “extra” for our additional bucks/quids/pesos. Perhaps this is unreasonable but I don’t think that the publishing industry can really change this. And telling consumers that they are unreasonable is not really going to help matters except make them feel even more annoyed. And annoyed consumers means more elastic morals when faced with the temptation of a two minute google search plus pirate download. Is that right? No. But’s it’s human nature – again something that the publishing industry can’t change.
My feeling (and hope) is that when it starts to mature, the ebook market will start to offer better features with premium-priced ebooks – like special releases of DVDs. With the digital format, I’m sure a lot can be possible here. Perhaps additional commentary from the author, a novella or two thrown in, interesting footnotes on the history behind certain throwaway remarks etc etc. Any, a little optimistic point for the future.
But CD, epubs don’t have to split their money with anyone else. They ARE the retailer, and believe me, they do take a bath when they have to split with the third-party vendors such as Fictionwise. That was one of the issues Quartet talked about. If they don’t make it up in volume then yes, they’re screwed. When an epub sells a $5 book on their site, other than the split the author gets, they pocket 65%. Even after paying editors, artists, techies, etc.. they still have a nice profit. Let’s say a publisher sells a $5 book on Amazon. Amazon gets 50% (or more) and the publisher still has to pay editor, writers, techies etc… out of their half. Amazon is discounting the hell out of the books because they’ve discovered that’s a major selling point for the Kindle—people can get books cheaper. That’s great for Amazon and Kindle, sucks donkey balls for publishers and authors who get no cut in what Amazon makes off Kindles, and they get their cut from the price that Amazon sells the book for, not the actual price of the book.
This is why publishers are not making any money off e-books and aren’t particularly enthused about selling them. This might change if they had the capability to sell to the reader directly, but right now from what I’m hearing e-books make up less than 5% of their sales, and will continue to do so as long as they use third party vendors.
Unfortunately, this is going to start hitting epubs more and more as well. People like one-stop shopping. Rather than going from epub to epub to buy they would rather go to one place. Especially when that one place discounts the hell out of the books on a regular basis. This is why most epubs wait a few months before putting their books up at third-party sites. And some, Ellora’s Cave (?) doesn’t do third-party at all.
I love you. You’re my hero. This was GENIUS!!!!!! I have a Kindle and I LOVE it, and find myself reading a lot more than I have been because it’s easy, and when reading a series, I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll have the next book in my bag when I finish the one prior. Or if I’m not reading anythng in particular, I can scroll through all my books to see what I’m in the mood for.
No big deal. There are plenty of books in ebook format that I need to catch up on. I can bide my time until that expensive, heavy “space taking” hardcover is converted in to ebook format.
The more I think about this, the more enraged I have become. I switched to to ereading for a couple of reasons:
1. Eyesight. While it’s not bad with cheaters and plenty of light, enlarging the font size is a real help. You can’t do that with print published books, no matter how long you wait or how much you pay.
2. Finding the books. For authors I have been reading for years, I actually would go to the bookstores on the week of the lay down date. It became increasingly clear that the bookstores were stalling putting these books out. I actually would travel to 2 bookstores before giving up. I can’t afford to waste gas and wear and tear on the car. I bothered a sales person on occasion, when I had time. With Crusie, Mayers, Don’t Look Down, I made sure I bought the first week. After looking in 3 different sections, I gave up and asked. It took 15-20 minutes to find it. At the sales counter I was informed that it was great, the employees were reading the copies for sale. I paid $25.00 for a Used Book. I couldn’t find Gaiman’s Graveyard Book at all. He had many complaints and asked HarperCollins what the deal was and reported on his journal page.
3. The quality of the print published books is bad and getting worse. Books falling apart before finishing. Imposition so bad, I found a second books pages in the book I purchased with of course pages missing from my intended read. The ink on the cheaper paper bleeds and with middle aged eyes, this is a big problem.
Hatchett: You might consider making sure your new releases or soon to be released books, appear on your website. Before all this, I was looking forward to Robin Kaye’s new book. Couldn’t open Ms. Kaye’s website due to software issues with the CMS she uses, went to Hatchett and it wasn’t listed, At All. You want to sell books, you should at least make sure you advertise them on your own website. But then, I’m not your customer so who the hell cares. Not intended as a threat, just have come to believe the readers are Not customers and don’t require respect. Just show them the $$.
Amazon and Wall-Mart are not subsidiaries from hell. They know their customers and work to make them happy. People will spend more at their stores because they can find what they are looking for, when they want/need it and at a price they can afford. That’s just plain good business. Especially at during a recession.
Ok, because I am one of those technology-challenged individuals, please help me out here:
1) What is a DRM?
2) Can you download ebooks from any e-publisher on the Kindle or do you have to plug it into a pc? How do you buy them?
3) Which is better, the Kindle or the ones from Sony?
4) Can you find out of print books on the Kindle?
I found this thread very informative (with the exception of the questions above) and I do hope for everyone’s sake that your books will be available when you want and in the format that you want.
CrystalB:
1) DRM is Digital Rights Management. It’s basically electronic copy protection. You’ll find this on digital books as well as on digital music. It’s the publishing industry’s (and the music industry’s) way of trying to keep people from making illegal copies of books (or music) and pirating them on the Net.
Not all digital books have DRM. Whether or not a given book will very much depends on the publisher and on where you buy it from. For example, my publisher, Drollerie Press, sells books without DRM. But we also work with third party vendors, and if you buy one of our books from one of those third parties, you will still get a book with DRM on it.
In general it’s safe to assume that anything you buy off a major ebook vendor site such as Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Fictionwise is going to have DRM on it unless they tell you otherwise.
2) Can you download e-books from any e-publisher on the Kindle? Yes, but only if those e-publishers sell books via the Kindle store. The Kindle doesn’t automatically download books you buy off of any other site.
If you buy an e-book from some other site besides the Amazon Kindle store, whether or not you will be able to read it on the Kindle will depend on what format you buy it in. If it’s something the Kindle can display, you then have to get it onto the device. As far as I know this is possible, but I don’t know the specific details since I’m not a Kindle owner.
As to how you buy “them”—are you asking how you buy e-books in general? Because this will vary wildly depending on where you want to buy them from. The very short answer is that you basically need to go to whatever site you’re interested in and follow that site’s directions for making a purchase.
3) Whether Kindle books are better than Sony books is really not the question. 🙂 It’s possible to get the same book on both devices, and the only differences will be the differences between how the individual devices display the book in question. What will be “better” will very much depend on your preferences.
There are a whole lot of older posts on this site reviewing various models of the Sony Reader. You might consider looking for those and seeing what various guest reviewers had to say about them.
4) Yes, you can probably find out of print books on the Kindle if those books have had Kindle versions created. Same for any other e-book vendor. One of the big advantages of e-books is giving new life to out of print works. But it very much depends on if an e-book version has been created or not. If in doubt, do searches on Amazon and see if you can find the book you want.
Hope all this helps. 🙂
Anna,
Thank you so much for answering my questions 🙂
All of it helped, thank you 🙂
CrystalB, you’re very welcome! Glad to help!
I think, to answer the question about Baen above, that most of the money the company makes on ebooks is from backlist books. These are books that might even be out of print otherwise but by making them available electronically, Baen profits not only by still being able to sell them at only the cost of converting them to electronic files—since they already own the rights and all the production costs are past—but also get people interested in a series or an author so they buy the new book when it’s out.
I do think electronic books are the wave of the future. I don’t think it’s clear how yet—for example, I have a theory that readers that only read books are going to get pushed out of the market as soon as netbooks come down in price. But right now, the publishers are flying blind guessing where the profits will be in a volatile market. All they know for certain is that their hardcovers and original paperbacks are bringing in money.
I think the decision to delay an ebook like a paperback version of a hardcover novel might be shortsighted. It might have been better for them to simply price the ebook at the hardcover price but I don’t know if that would have gone over any better.
But right now, ebooks are a tiny fraction of their profits, so they’re trying to figure out how to build that audience and preserve what’s currently bringing in money at the same time.
Wow, I’m happy I read that comment stream before I posted, because my main concern – $9.99 e-books competing with hardbacks at double or triple the price – has been elaborated upon. If Amazon is taking 50% of that $9.99 without negligible equivalent cost of shipping or storage, how much can the author be getting when compared with a hardback sale(no really, does anyone have a firm number)? The argument can definitely be made that e-books are cheaper to distribute – but you can’t convince me that the intellectual property should be sold for less to those with enough $$ to spring for an e-reader. . . especially in a format more prone to pirating.
I can understand why e-reader fans would be ticked that they can’t get their preferred format at the same time that I pick up the hardback. However, I hope e-fans understand why I would be ticked if they snapped up the book at a fraction of the price, with a fraction of the profit going to the author. I definitely read ten books from the library or a used bookstore to every hardcover I buy new (though may I point out that the library and used books were bought new by someone) because otherwise I would be dropping more money on books than a crack addict would on drugs . . . But I still buy about 25 hardbacks a year from my favourite authors, because I want to keep their books in a tough form that I can re-read multiple times. Clearly with paperback quality and DRM restrictions, this is not generally something you can expect from those formats. I would be heartbroken if my favourite format was scrapped because someone else’s favourite format was priced low to sell Amazon’s Kindle readers.
I was relieved to hear that many people understood this point of view, and are willing to pay more than mass market prices for e-books, when the mass market is not yet available (whoever requested a 30% off the hardback price sounded like a damn Smart Bitch). But I have one more worry – where does the independent local bookseller fit in, as hardback sales drop off in favour of cheap e-books? I am willing to grant that Samhain and Ellora’s Cave might be the kind of smaller business I would like to support with my hard-earned $$, but I have the feeling that independent businesses are going to lose out as this format becomes more popular.
What suggestions do other Smart Bitches have on purchasing e-books from businesses that don’t undercut the author? Can anyone tell me which online stores treat their authors best? I would be very grateful for some tips.
I read a ton of ebooks, but I check them all out from my local library online—instant gratification, the library’s catalogue is much easier to browse than most ebook retail catalogues, and they’re mine for free for 14 days. So the price factor and release date don’t affect me anywhere near as much—while I’d prefer to be able to snatch a book off the library’s website as soon as it’s out in hardback, I can also place a hold on the library’s hardback copy of whatever new bestseller I’m dying to read.
When it comes to buying books, I don’t like shelling out money for something unless I’m getting a physical copy of the book to hold in my hands, that will last for years or (in the case of hardback) decades and always be readable (no worrying about changing formats, no need for a laptop or ebook reader in order to read it). I almost never purchase anything but mass market paperback for $$ reasons, but I’ll buy hardback for something that’s either a gift for someone else or a newly released title I must have NOW (or hardbound omnibus collections of comics. I love those enough to cheerfully pay through the nose for them).
The thing that I actually resent, as a consumer, is trade paperbacks. I refuse to pay twice as much to get a book in what’s still a paperback format, but lacks the convenience of being small enough to let me easily shove the book into my purse. I’ll pay $7.99-$9.99 for a MM, or $25 for a hardback in order to have a high quality copy of a book that will really last, but I flat out refuse to buy trade unless it’s academic non-fiction, I *need* it for research/for a class, and trade is my only option. More and more genre books, especially SF/F, seem to be coming out in trade rather than MM or hardback as new releases, and that’s when a book automatically goes on my “Eh, I’ll read it if I can get it at the library” list, because trade paperback prices are too high for an impulse buy, and if I’ve looked forward to reading/owning something enough to pay top dollar for it, I want it in hardback.
Well … Perhaps they will sell more copies of ebooks than hardcopies anyway. Plus they are much less expensive to reproduce as opposed to hard copies so I’m not sure why they are complaining so much.. It seems like they should make more money because they are cheaper to produce and they’ll get more copies sold, even if they are less expensive than the hardcover.
-Sylvia