Smart Bitch Test Driver Liz has a major beef with St. Martin’s Macmillan. Have a look.
How To Lose Sales And Really Enrage Readers, St. Martin’s / Macmillan Style
How do you take someone who loves Lisa Kleypas so much she read first person contemporary romance in hardcover and make her unable to discuss the shiny new release Tempt Me At Twilight without resorting to the type of language that requires the ingestion of a soap bar? (Because if this conversation included video, you would see the bubbles frothing out of my mouth right now. It’s entirely possible that steam is coming out of my ears, but I’m too blinded by anger to look.) As it turns out, it’s incredibly simple. All you need to do is show utter contempt for her most loyal readers through an astonishingly cynical cash grab.
Don’t believe me? Wonder if I also think we’re living in End Times? Oh, stay with me. You’ll need the soap too.
During the media blitz for Tempt Me At Twilight the price of $14.99 was floated. This led to the very natural assumption that the book was probably going to be a trade paperback. Since Lisa Kleypas’s last two books were hardcover – a great deal right? Then, when the loyal reader of Ms. Kleypas is offered the e-book at $9.99 (or $12.99 depending on your e-tailer) it seems like something you can swallow. Sure, it’s more than a mass market, but it’s not as much as a hardcover and you won’t have to wait a year to read one of your favorite authors. Ok, let’s buy it!! So you do. And then you go to Target to buy some Cheerios. Cereal is cheaper there and we’re all watching our money these days.
Wait – why is Tempt Me At Twilight on the shelf as a mass market? With a list price of $7.99? And a sale sticker making it $5.99? What the (buy extra soap, here’s where you start needing it) um, heck is going on here? You might, if you bought it from Sony, rush home to find out why Sony was cheating you. You might find that all the e-tailers have this price listed. In any other world, you’d return the overpriced product and stop shopping at that store. But e-books cannot be returned. You realize that Ms. Kleypas is most likely not making an additional cent due to this pricing structure but the publisher will be earning an extra $4 to $7 per e-book due to a deliberate increase in price for the right to have a copy of the book that did not need to be bound, shipped, shelved or returned and that cannot be traded, loaned or donated. Sure, we could argue about if hardcovers cost the same as trades cost the same as paperbacks but it’s pretty hard to tell me that a highly restricted digital copy is worth twice as much as a traditional paper copy released on the same day. In short, the publisher has extended a finger one does not use in polite company to e-book readers and author loyalists.
Here. Have another bar of Ivory. You get used to the taste.
The fluid pricing of digital books is a long-standing topic of much ire and frustration, as Jane at Dear Author wrote last December, and it’s still fluid, it’s still frustrating, and it’s still pissing otherwise devoted digital readers off.
I can’t stop myself from doing the math . . .
Assuming standard royalty rates of 8% for MM and 25% for eBook, if the MM was $7.99 the eBook would be $2.56 for the author to make the same amount of money. I know that this isn’t necessarily “the goal”, but it seems like a logical extrapolation to get a basic idea of what the “real” price of an eBook should be. No?
I mean, clearly the publisher should also factor in their profit margin and do the same math and then figure out what their pricing structure should be, but clearly the price shouldn’t be MORE than the printed book (which requires outlays for paper, printing, storage, transport, and returns that simply don’t apply to eBooks).
Alternatively, I’m happy to pay the same for “e” as for paper . . . and for the author to get more $.
I just have not seen the allure of the e-reader at all. I was all excited about them until I realized I couldn’t lend, give away, or sell the book. Adding the price of the reader itself, plus these ridiculous prices for a book that has to cost a tiny fraction of print editions, and I fail to see why anybody would bother.
I’m getting ready to go buy the newest Ilona Andrews, it came out yesterday. I will spend about $6 for it with my B&N frequent reader card. I will read it with enjoyment then take it down to FL so my sister can read it. She’ll be bringing books for me to read too. I’ll then decide to keep it, sell it, trade it, or donate it. After all, I paid for it, it’s MINE.
I just see e-readers as a very expensive rip off.
I had a very eye opening conversation with a HUGE NY times bestselling author at RWA National’s this year when I asked her why I couldn’t buy her new hardback on my Kindle until 6 weeks after it was released. She told me that Walmart has a low price guarantee and that they would not stock her new release if she allowed a simultaneous e-book release because Amazon has vowed to sell all hardbacks at $9.99 for the first 5 years of Kindle to gain market share. This left the author in a tough position. Walmart makes up a huge amount of her business so she chose to delay release of the e-book so she could be in Walmart.
As e-book sales increase, traditional book sales will decline, which means the cost to print, bind and ship a book will go up because publishers aren’t getting the large print run discount anymore. Who absorbs that cost? My bet is the author advance. Less up front for the author, but maybe a bigger cut of the e-pub cover cost, however the author has no control over the screwed up e-book print price in many cases (see above comments) which just aggravates loyal readers who will no longer buy author’s books. Its a very serious problem in New York and no one knows the right answer yet. It’s a watch and wait situation. Big name authors have the most to lose so it will be interesting to see how they navigate this new landscape.
Kalen wrote:
Assuming standard royalty rates of 8% for MM and 15% (?) for hardcover, if the MM was 7.99, the hardcover would be $4.26 for the author to make the same amount of money…. No, maybe not ;-).
Another logical extrapolation would be what price the eBook would have to be for the publisher to make the same amount of money as they would on the MM (or the trade paperback, for publishers who don’t do MM editions). Calculating that is a bit of a pain, though, given that right now the average NY publisher probably sells a lot more MMs than ebooks—do you make the ebook carry an equal share of the overhead/editing/design costs? a proportional share? forget the overhead costs and let the paper editions support it (which isn’t going to be a viable strategy when ebooks are 50% of sales rather than 5%)?
I’m refusing to buy this book in either format until the publisher drops the price. I know it’s not fair to the author, but I’ve given Kleypas plenty of money in the past.
I am a self-proclaimed techie. If I can store it on a little digital thingy, bring it on! But….I’ve hesitated on the e-reader because of the DRM, memory (ipod at 30G is too small for my music/video/movie library), and now the pricing issue. I was hoping that this stuff would be bottomed out for Christmas this year, but I guess not.
Guess the paperback stacking will continue on….as well as figuring out how to stuff 5 novels for 1 week of business travel. 🙁
I did say that the publisher’s profit margin would also have to be factored in.
I don’t think the equation works for HB, which is a whole different beast (I only buy HB for books that I know I’ll read often and will cherish; the added expense is worth it for the HB’s superior durability and for its “displayability”).
I’m unsure of what the right answer/price point is, but I’m DAMN SURE it isn’t more than the price of the printed book!
Now you know why I refuse to do e-books in any reader.!!!
come35???? I’ll let you debate why this is my word…LOL
Ummmm…I thought ebooks were supposed to be cheaper? Silly me! I won’t consider getting a reader.
Oh my gosh. I totally agree.
E-books should be cheaper or on-par with what you’d pay in a store. Like iTunes but for books.
That’s all I’m asking for.
And you’d think publishers would be wiling to go along with this in light of the whole they-don’t-have-to-pay-for-printing thing.
I’m with Kalen. I switched to ebooks for reasons beyond a ‘cheaper’ price for digital—convenience being the biggest factor.
I don’t mind paying the same for a MMpback, but paying MORE for ebook causes my hackles to rise. I’d really like to understand the *why* behind this backassed marketing strategy. If a pub can’t be bothered to price it comparably (or release it at the same time—another peeve of mine), I may not be bothered to come back and check later to see if reason has returned. I dang-well won’t be participating, so it’s entirely possibly they will have lost a sale. Even when the author is someone I enjoy as much as Kleypas.
I’ll probably even discover some mid-list author I could adore to replace that auto-buy author. There is so much talent out there, and many other authors who would appreciate the sale.
Sony particularly annoys me as they take sometimes as much as a year or more to adjust their “hardback” price to the available “paperback” price. And as you said, the difference is certainly NOT going to the author, which might make it more acceptable.
If the problem was with the distributors, Amazon & Sony, etc. taking the lion’s share of the profit, which I believe Amazon does at least, I could understand it. I checked the SMP site for this book. You can buy the ebook direct from the publisher. The cost, $14.00.
I will not buy this book, period. There are plenty of other books available to be read. I have bought quite a few e-books by authors I had not heard of and have been very happy. I’m off to read Craig Ferguson’s new book (hard back) in e-book format which I purchased at Amazon for $12.99. Sorry Ms. Kleypas.
This is an example of what I term “another nail in the coffin” that would be me buying an e-reader. I love books – always have, always will. I read primarily romances (although less than I used to), mysteries and SF/Fan with a small dose of urban fantasy and an increasing amount of nonfiction.
But over the last 5-10 years I have found myself reading more and buying less. I have been ruthlessly weeding my own collections and offering them for trade credit or swapping on several book swap sites. Not because I have no space, no. Because, as I looked around at all my books, I realized that most of them, especially the romances, were not ones I was even tempted to read again. Oh, I tried – and most of the time I tossed the book down and asked myself whatever made me think this was good and keepable?!
But I do use the library – a lot. More and more libraries not only offer the latest romance mass markets in paperback but also downloadable e-books. Why pay $6-14 for a book that I will in all likelihood not even be able to finish and then not even be able to give away to someone who truly wants to read it? I can reserve a book (hardcover, paper, audio) from any library in our four county system for a mere $.25. A real bargain! And if it is really good – and something I think I will actually re-read more than once – then I actually buy it.
I love my reader (Sony 505) and I love e-books. It stinks that I can’t lend them, but I’ll happily trade that for their environmentally-friendliness.
My opinion is that e-books should be equal or slightly less than the least expensive paper format on the market, whether it be hardcover, trade, or mass market. And I expect the price of the digital version to decrease over time, as cheaper paper formats are released.
E-books don’t have to be ridiculously inexpensive, but they should never, ever, be more than the list price of a print copy.
Just adding my voice to the multitudes who won’t buy a reader until this is fixed. An e-book should cost the same, or ideally less, than a MMP that I can take anywhere, including the bath or traveling in unsafe areas, without worry, that I can sell/trade/donate/loan, and that has the soothing feel of paper. The ONLY reason for me to want a reader is space, both in my home and in my purse. I’m not willing to pay a premium for that alone.
Sometimes it’s not even the publisher, it’s Amazon. I contacted a writer whose e-book was 9.99 while the paperback was 6.99 and told him exactly why I wasn’t buying it. That while I knew he didn’t set the pricing, his publishers did, and that I knew it wasn’t exactly fair to him, but maybe if the authors took their concerns to publishers, they might consider doing something about it. Especially as I sincerely doubted I was the only person feeling this way.
He wrote me back to say that Amazon itself had set the price on his e-books and there was nothing he could do about it and that maybe more people could take it up with Jeff Bezos.
I don’t know if that’s actually true, but he certainly seemed to think it was, because frankly the tone of his email to me was kinda cranky, and not towards me.
Whenever I find something cheaper in paperback than the Kindle I always tag it as “cheaper in paperback.” And of course, don’t buy it. I don’t know that it does any good, but it makes me feel like at least I’m doing something, you know?
This is appalling. Really it is. I have a Kindle and don’t even want to pick up a paper book ever again. BUT, I can’t do this. It’s insane. Why would I pay more for the ebook version? It doesn’t make any sense to pay more for something I don’t truly own.
Please, publishers, get your shit together and stop ripping us off!
For giggles I just checked Amazon’s price for the Kindle version. It’s now selling for $7.99. Maybe Amazon felt the vibe here. Sony still has it for $9.99, which is cheaper than the publisher’s list price for the e-book.
Why does the supposed 5% of book sales scare publishers? Their collective heads may need surgical removal out of their bottoms.
The authors really need to start paying attention as well. Life as we know it is changing.
I had my own “WTF?” moment with this when I went online to purchase Dawnbreaker by Jocelyn Drake today. HarperCollins is the publisher. The MM price is $7.99, the ebook price at Sony, Fictionwise and BooksonBoard is $14.99 retail. I absolutely do not understand the logic of this. If I buy the paperback, I get colored cover art and a volume with one has to presume higher production costs. The ebook is twice as much for less product.
How do we make publishers realize how upset people are over this?
Pratically, it is possibly still just cheaper to buy the ebook than try to get the paper book here in New Zealand. But just as a matter of principle, I’m unlikely to buy an ebook that is that much more expensive than its paper equivalent. Like everyone else, I become a lost sale. If I really want to read the book, I’ll go to the library.
I’m very sorry about what this means for the author, who also misses out on my sale, but this is ridiculous.
I really don’t understand how publishers can let this happen. it obviously doesn’t make sense that an e-copy of the book costs more than a paper copy!! i can’t believe no one in those publishing houses have brought it up!
I don’t get the ereader hate. If you like books, keep buying books. I don’t think the appeal of ebooks is price. I buy ebooks because physical books are completely impractical for me. Even if ebooks only cost $.50 less than the MMP, I’ll have the ereader recouped in cost in under a year, but I don’t care. It’s just my format of choice. iPods took off in popularity when they were $300-400 a pop and the songs were all proprietary and DRM festooned and not much cheaper than a CD. I’d rather own data than house an object.
However, $14.99 is too much for a book. If I wanted to pay trade pb prices, I’d read lit fic.
Just to clarify, I am not boycotting ebooks at all. I have been reading ebooks since February of 2003. 95% of the books I receive for review are in electronic formats. I LOVE ebooks… what I don’t like is the fucked up POV and practices from some “big gun” publishers out there. I’ll continue reading ebooks and supporting smaller indie epublishers … however, I am not touching overpriced ebooks any longer. The instant gratification factor is not so “gratifying” when you have to pay $4, $5 and even more for the “privilege”.
Exactly right. It’s horse shit. I’m so pissed off. Blech!
I don’t have ereader hate – I’d love one. but price is the main thing keeping me from getting one. The Sony Pocket is (marginally) affordable, but the inconsistent price of the ebooks is keeping me away from them. But then, I didn’t get my iPod until the price came down, and I use it more for audio books than I do for music, so the price of music isn’t an issue for me. But I won’t buy audiobooks at full list price, either: I either get them from audible or I rent them.
caligi, I could see the “recoup the cost” part if we actually got to own the books we bought. But we don’t. Not like a paper book. A paper book I can lend, sell, or trade. An ebook I can do nothing with but read on my one reader. If, say, I could share my ebooks with my friends, or even if they could download from me for a small additional fee that might be different. But paying the $$$ for the reader *and* paying $$$ for something I won’t own? No thanks.
I’m pretty techie by the way; make my living on the computer, love my digital camera and digital recorder. But I just don’t see the value of the e-book or the e-book reader at this time.
Can’t lend an mp3 either. Hasn’t hurt the iPod trade. It’s against copyright, but you could technically send your copy of an ebook to a friend. I don’t see why it’s any different than lending someone a book. DRM isn’t impenetrable.
In truth, I never lent or sold my stuff anyways. I hated never seeing it again or getting it back 5 years later in crap condition.
@chisai Amazon (or any other ebook retailer) only set the price to the extent that they sell it based on the publishers list price and apply any discounts from there.
@Darlene Marshall Yeah, Harper has been another house that’s guilty of the double the price for ebooks policy. They do seem to eventually drop it to the same as the MMPB, but only after it’s been out a while.
It would be nice if publishers would do like Baen. All books are $6 or less. No DRM. Tons of formats. Samhain is doing something similar in their store (MBaM).
The bookstore I work for sells the Sony Reader and this is NOT going to make it easier to sell those suckers. Aside from pissing off the people who already have ebook readers it discourages new buyers. Why buy a $200 reader when an e book costs more than a paperback? This is something I hope Sony and Kindle address when their sales suffer, maybe they can convince publishers to settle on lower and standard ebook prices.
Hmmm… I have a Sony reader and only buy ebooks for. I’ve never paid more than the dead tree version of the book. I always pay less, sometimes a lot less.
Between shopping around for the best price, and taking advantage of sales, specials and rebates, I can usually get ebooks for 20% or more off the list price (sometimes 30% or more). In fact, coolerbooks.com has their ebooks at 20% off list price all the time, though I haven’t bought any ebooks from them yet. But I have them bookmarked just in case.
Then there are the 27 ebooks that Harlequin and Mills & Boon are still giving away free. I’ve never walked into a dead tree bookstore when they were handing out free books.
http://www.eharlequin.com/store.html?cid=1317
http://www.everyonesreading.com/index.html
I have been buying e-books for almost 10 years now. I started buying at Baen, and they are the standard against which I measure other e-bookstores. Baen has none of the crap that infests most other e-bookstores: Baens books have reasonable prices, no DRM and no geographical restrictions crap. Did I mention no DRM?
They have the $15 for a month’s books as soon as they put that month up for sale at http://www.websciption.net
When I buy books other places – which means mostly Fictionwise – books without DRM are an easy sell. Books with DRM I tend to think at least twice about buying before I -perhaps – put them in the cart. Remembering migrating my book collection to a new computer tends to dissuade me.
I have even bought the occasional e-book at ripoff prices: Bad of me, I know, since that might actually encourage the publisher who use that sort of insane pricing. As well as that damned DRM.
As for the geographical restrictions crap – I may need a whole crate of soap for that too If I were to comment on that. (I am not an American and so fall foul of that – and ever more frequently of late, it seems.) Though those books always have DRM and often have bad prices, so perhaps I should look upon that as a money-saving device instead, as well as something to keep me from temptation.
Yes, MacMillan suck donkey gonads to put it politely, as far as this goes.
Great way to encourage people to scan and upload the books because they are pissed off, too.
I agree with some other commenters, though, if you do the double the price of the paperback, or more than the price of whatever version, I will not buy any version, ever.
Realistically, for most authors, don’t care too much if they never write anything again – there’s only a handful that matter much.
It is definitely the publisher’s fault in most cases, and where the ire should be directed.
I am only a very occasional romance reader, but HarperCollins certainly does the close to double pricing – they had a MMPB Year’s Best Science Fiction 14 at $14.99, a series that has been MPPB ONLY FOR FOURTEEN YEARS. No other edition, other than ebook, ever.
I’d bought the previous volumes, but now they’ve lost an annual purchase.
However, to give Amazon their due, when I basically said ‘this sucks’ on their website, although a little more politely and eloquently, they did match the MMPB price to the ebook price, so good for them.
As someone else brought up, almost no-one at all is interested in selling to Australians (and Australian publishers are even more useless than MacMillan – hard to believe, I know 🙂 )- maybe we are only a few percent of the market – and the publishers don’t care about this few percent, then fine, they will get the result that movies and tv did – getting perhaps the world’s biggest per capita english language media downloaders for free, as a result.
So, good to see some multi-genre criticism of such arseclownery. Well done! 🙂
While they maybe couldn’t care less about Australian readers, American romance readers returning their publishing digitus impudicus rather forcefully may hurt them.
It is quite bizarre that some major publishing entities have t heir business plan for the 21st century to be ‘sell fewer books, lose the mass market reader’.
Saw an analyst recently when talking about publishing say that they are basically in the business of selling paper – and with actions like this it would certainly seem to be the case – the content doesn’t matter to them.
This reminds me a lot of the DVD v. VHS pricing. For the time the two formats were running in parallel, the DVDs were always more expensive that the tapes, even though it’s much cheaper to produce DVD copies than VHS copies. That never seemed to produce the same amount of outrage, though, I guess because it’s less immediately obvious that the differing costs in paperback v. e-pub.
Actually, you can lend an mp3, and without breaking DRM. Most of the people I know, when they first bought an iPod or mp3 player, copied the music they had on CD into digital format. All that music is DRM-free, will play on any player or computer, and can be shared easily (probably not legally). I have an iPod nano and a Sansa Fuze myself, and I have never bought an .mp3 – I wait and buy new or used CDs, and copy the music from them. It’s usually more cost-efficient than buying the songs separately as .mp3s, and as far as I know, it’s legal for my own use.
I read and prefer ebooks, but I use my laptop, Project Gutenberg, and the freebies that come up now and then. I also use the public library for paper books.
I hope eventually that I’ll be able to afford new music and new books, and I have an ongoing list of authors and artists I’d like to support with my purchases when I can. Right now they’re a luxury, and if it’s not free or cheap, I can’t have it.
I used to work for a big corporation, at a level where I got to see what went on across departments. This leads me to believe that publishers are probably NOT doing this intentionally—it’s more a matter of poor communication between department and/or third party retailers.
Which doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed, and the the publishers should not stop “discussing” and start taking tangible steps to do so. And, getting a big machine to do something different is not an easy thing.
If everyone who commented here would instead send letters to stakeholders—the publishers and the retailers of ebooks and ebook readers—it just might help grease that machine.
I agree – it is wrong of the publisher to charge more for the e-book version and less for the print. But, it may be to help cover the extra legal cost involved with e-books. Not that I think they should – they have lawyers on staff or retainer.
Piracy of ebooks is a huge problem. Once a customer buys a file they can, though it is illegal, upload to a file sharing site and hundreds of people can download it for free. That’s money the author never sees. I’ve even seen them on ebay.
Someone suggested “renting” ebooks. But if you have an ebook reader – how does it know your “rental period” has expired. Also, the company that purchases the book to offer the “rental” only has to buy 1 copy.
Don’t think print books only are exempt from ebook piracy. It’s been done.
I’m wondering if they have to pay for some kind of proprietary technology that they’re hiding in the pricing structure. Like a fee to create files in the format of certain readers? (Like Toyota offering their hybrid technology to other companies at a higher price than they use internally…)
That’s the only thing that would make the pricing system currently used make financial sense. It’s either Proprietary Tech, or someone in high places has stock in papermills.
Actually, you can in a limited way, assuming you all have compatible readers . . .
Most places let you register multiple reading devices. Three of my girlfriends and I all cross-registered our reading devices and now four of us can share our purchases, because we have one joint account. Works like a charm.
@Barbara they have to pay a fee to the DRM provider if they use DRM. It’s usually figured as part of the distribution costs.
For example Adobe charges for their Content Server software ($6,500) which is usually owned by a distributor like Lightning Source or Over Drive. There is then a per transaction fee of $.22 for a permanent license which you get when buying a book or an $.08 fee for a temporary license like when you check a book out of the library. I don’t know if the distributors are charging this fee to the Retailer or to the Publisher. Nor do I know if they’re putting any kind of markup on that fee or not.
IIRC some of the other DRM providers don’t charge a transaction fee they charge a flat fee to the distributor to offer their brand of DRM.