As you say the whip hand is with the traditional publishers/distributors, not to mention the big stores. This is a triangular vice that has a grip on the market that is unhealthy and monopolistic. And, as I mentioned in my post, is seriously short sighted and frustrating for the first explorers of this new ebook adventure that will soon become a global market.
I appreciate your point of view and understand completely where you are coming from.
Until this vice can be loosened, I would like to see if there any any innovative sellers finding a work-around for this through the use of something like purchase credits that can be earned by buying books. These credits could then be used as the equivalent of real currency when buying other books – resulting in far cheaper books while the cover price appears to remain high. Or other similar back end methods rather than the front end discounts that get the ire of the power triumvirate.
Regrettably all of the participants in the distribution chain will suffer from this shortsightedness when the reading public turn to illegal methods in frustration.

Howard
Dublin
Ireland

many traditional publishers price eBooks high because they don’t want to offend Barnes and Noble or Borders (or the big box stores) by undercutting their paper sales. As long as paper remains the dog, eBooks will remain the tail that gets wagged

Are you saying that the ebook market is so small that it can be slapped around? But if the ebook market is so small then why would the “big bosses” care how ebooks are priced? Or are they just very selectively shortsighted? (Any way I try to look at it they just seem very, very stupid.)

I actually agree with you about the pricing (which is one reason I price my books affordably). However, I think several people on this loop have already correctly pointed out that the eBook world isn’t that much different from paper. We publishers pay distributors about 50% for their efforts in selling our books, and we’re not allowed to price them lower on our own shops (otherwise the distributors drop us).

Again, I’m not saying $20 isn’t too much. I’ve pointed out before that many traditional publishers price eBooks high because they don’t want to offend Barnes and Noble or Borders (or the big box stores) by undercutting their paper sales. As long as paper remains the dog, eBooks will remain the tail that gets wagged–at least for the traditional publishers.

Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com

I am the new owner of an iPhone and have been searching for ebooks over the last two weeks to read on it. I am completely flummoxed at the pricing of ebooks and to add to that I am repeatedly coming across current newly published books where the ebook is significantly MORE EXPENSIVE than the paperback version !

What on earth is going on ? I am a capitalist and a commercial director of a hitec business. I believe in profit and as a wanna-be writer I also believe that writers must earn a fair shake.

Let’s get real guys. The retail price of a book includes a significant percentage that goes to the shop owner, to cover his profits, his staff wages, his light and heat and his rent, and also to the distributor(s) in the chain between publisher and seller. This percentage is usually in excess of 60%.

I see parallels here with the ‘head in the sand’ music industry that has been and will, deservedly, continue to bleed income to copiers. I see the same blind effort to screw as much money out of the readers before the inevitable explosion of e-reading occurs and before the parallel explosion of hackers who will start distributing these books free on torrent sites happens.

Is there no one in the publishing industry who can lift their head up and see the big picture ? High prices are suppressing the whole development of market. One might almost think that the publishers are PURPOSELY trying to suppress the ebook market because they feel they are making bigger profits from paper books – and it is supporting the millions of corners books shops. This would be fine – if it were not for the fact that there is an inevitable momentum in the progression from paper to ebooks. It is as strong a momentum as from Vinyl to CDs to MP3s. It cannot be stopped. It CANNOT be stopped.

Whether is be reading on the Kindle, the Sony ebook reader or on mobile phones such as my iPhone. This is the future (no not 100%, there will always be a market for paper books, but I see an 80:20 mix 20 years down the road). So the sooner the publishers get their head around this future marketing model the better.

Average decent people do not want to waste their precious and valuable time searching for illegal copies of books any more than they want to do it for their music. They have a natural tendency to want to pay a fair price. The music industry are still driving ordinary people in their millions to illegal download sites because of their crazy prices and complete lack of awareness of the ‘added value’ principle.

If the publishing business goes the same route then they will find that the same thing will happen to them. Ordinary people are not stupid and if the publishers fail to wake up in time they discover a huge portion of their readers will be subscribing to torrent sites, and they will be fighting a rear guard action they will inevitably lose.

Publishers need to start now – drop prices to a sensible level, promote their writers and their own names. If they do this and pay attention to the principles of added value – they will develop a solid readership base that is happy and willing to pay reasonable prices. If they do this they will keep the torrent sites and the hackers in the shallows and will generate the maximum earnings for themselves and their writers.

I don’t mind one bit paying a FAIR price. But I am not a complete fool and willing to pay 20 dollars for a book that is available on the high street for 10 dollars.

Most ebooks of leading ‘quality’ writers should in my view be priced at between 5 to 7 dollars, with recent publishings of best sellers at 10 dollars. That is my absolutely upper limit and I believe it is MORE than fair considering there is NO PRINTING, NO DISTRIBUTING ! and very limited web based distribution. Only marketing remains and that is quite small spread over a decent readership. Non best sellers should be prices at approx. 5 dollars. Of course this is only my broad-brush view. Specialty sectors must be priced differently.

Am I holding my breath ? nope . . .

Howard
Ireland

Fiction as words, be it on paper or on the computer screen, satisfies a very human need that most of us don’t get with a movie, video, or whatever, so I don’t fear it will disappear entirely.

With the current state of business and the smaller number of readers, I do expect that fiction’s market niche is too small for brick-and-mortar bookstores to remain viable, and the conglomerates will pull out of publishing leaving it to small companies.

As to understanding ebooks, all most people want to know is what they are, how to read them, and where to buy them. The technical stuff isn’t that important.

With so many people texting, etc., ebooks aren’t that big a stretch.

What people want is orthogonal to whether they understand something or not.

From the quote above I sense that you might think that e-books are “electronic versions of p-books”. That’d be quite incorrect. The current state of e-books is like when TVs came out and pretty much the only thing on was people sitting and reading stuff as if the TV was inherently videofeeds from radio shows. And many people said TVs wouldn’t become popular since the non-audio part was more or less pointless, and therefore radios would do just fine.

I fear we won’t se as much public experimenting with e-books as with TV in its youth (mostly because the former isn’t broadcast like the latter), but you’d better believe that e-books are by their nature more or less completely different from p-books. (And note that I’m talking about the generic formats here, not about any particular books.)

Then the conglomerates bought almost every publisher in existence so that they had a publisher who specialized in hard covers and one in paperback so they bought the rights to both at the same time. Many of these publishers then merged and merged again.

Since massmarkets followed hard covers back then, the pattern remained because publishing is hopelessly traditional.

Having both formats at the same time would also probably annoy the bookstores which make more on hard covers, and publishers never want to annoy bookstores.

Also the two formats have a nice synergy. Dick Francis publishes a hard cover. Months later, a massmarket of his last book shows up followed by yet another new hard cover followed by a reprint massmarket paperback. Every bit of publicity each book gets feeds into the next book’s sales, and new readers are pulled in by the cheaper version.

This sells books.

As to the timing of ebook editions, there is no real pattern established industrywide.

As to understanding ebooks, all most people want to know is what they are, how to read them, and where to buy them. The technical stuff isn’t that important.

With so many people texting, etc., ebooks aren’t that big a stretch.

I know most of these books are too expensive, and so are some ebooks. I agree with that point.

I can’t afford hard covers, either, so I read them at the library, or I wait until I can get them as an ebook or a massmarket.

People were complaining that they weren’t hearing from the people in publishing so I thought I’d take some time to answer some questions you were asking because I’m a publishing news junkie of many years with a fascination for the business and a strong background in epublishing. That does not mean I agree with most of what the publishing business is doing.

Now, how about some Brussels sprouts dipped in chocolate?

You took hours to find music on the Web? Wow. I’ve never done a music search, but it has to be something pretty darn obscure for me not to find it with Google within five minutes.

It took me less than half a minute to find the album as good quality mp3s on google, but that wasn’t a very legal download. After a few hours of searching for some place to buy it legally I gave up. (I also asked the artists and their record label, but haven’t gotten any response yet.)

Hard covers aren’t about milking.

OK, I’ll take your word for it, but why aren’t paperbacks released at the same time in that case?

lots of folks know about ebooks these days. No one had even heard of an ebook when I started ten years ago before Stephen King “invented” ebooks by putting one of his novels online. Very few people I talk to have never heard of them.

Yes, people know that there are “some kind of ebooks” (at least among the people I know, since I’ve been talking about it so much since ~1990), but that doesn’t mean they understand ebooks. Heck, one could even say that some makers of ebook devices don’t understand ebooks, e.g. when they use non-hyperlinked indices or artificial/dynamic page numbers.

E.g., if an older reader with one of those big magnifying glasses meant for reading thinks of using the magnifier with an ebook he/she clearly hasn’t understood the concept, whereas if he/she independently figures out that the font size must be adjustable then he/she “gets it”. (And if the font size can’t be adjusted to humongous then the ebook device maker clearly doesn’t get it.)

And although many know of ebooks I still get lots of poorly hidden curious glances when I read a book on my phone in public.

The premier indie epublisher for sf is Double Dragon. Their books are available in all the usual venues.

Baen has some ebooks at Fictionwise, but they aren’t free.

You took hours to find music on the Web? Wow. I’ve never done a music search, but it has to be something pretty darn obscure for me not to find it with Google within five minutes.

Hard covers aren’t about milking. Hard covers are more prestigious for the publisher and author, they go into libraries, and they are reviewed by the newspapers and magazines which won’t look at trades or massmarkets. They also get a bit more shelf space and visibility in bookstores, and they remain on the shelves longer. The average paperback is lucky to have a month of time on bookstore shelf before its cover is ripped off, and it goes into the garbage. A hard cover will be there for many months.

I’ve read that one of the shifts coming in publishing will be a return to trade and massmarket for most newer writers instead of going to hard cover. This will be particularly true for literary fiction.

Believe me, lots of folks know about ebooks these days. No one had even heard of an ebook when I started ten years ago before Stephen King “invented” ebooks by putting one of his novels online. Very few people I talk to have never heard of them.

Not everyone is buying them, though. But we have so few readers today that’s not surprising.

Sure prices are high, but new is better for the writers and what you like to read.

If you can’t afford new, you can review books. Lots of review sites will give you all the books you want if you are willing to review them. Heck, putting an occasional review on your blog will have publishers tossing books at you like panties at a Tom Jones concert.

I mentioned Webster’s word of the year on my writing blog, and they offered me my choice of their catalog if I’d review them.

Ebook sites aren’t cheap to operate, and with the complexities of security and the costs of credit cards, etc., they are increasingly hard to operate. The standard argument “it costs nothing to sell ebooks” is totally wrong.

Hmm.. I’m operating a website for a chain of hotels (you can make reservations and pay for them, and edit reservations you’ve made, and it actually does lots more that I won’t go into here). The system was neither easy nor free to build, but it’s quite cheap to operate. A simple webstore is much, much simpler and cheaper to operate and virtually free to create.

I can’t really recommend particular sites because I don’t know what you like to read.

Sci-fi, but I’m very picky when it comes to books… er.. well, I’m picky about pretty much everything (except about chocolates, of course).

Baen isn’t an indie publisher.

Hmm.. for some reason I thought it was, so I just went there to look for e-books. Unfortunately many baen books are not available in a digital format. I looked through all e-books of authors K-Z, and I found exactly one interesting book that I’ll probably read after I finish reading Ender in Exile.

The way to thank us for the pleasure we give you is to buy the book, not steal it.

If you’re referring to what I wrote about searching for music today then what are you smoking if you think searching the net for hours is pleasure? I’d rather have been coding that time and used the money from that to pay 10 times the list price of the whole album. And don’t even start with the dishonest “copyright infringement is theft”-rhetoric. (If you feel the need to discuss/debate the issue you can contact me at [my surname]@iki.fi, but let’s keep it off this thread.)

One of the reasons for the high cost of some ebooks from some publishers is because they don’t understand ebooks

Now isn’t that the understatement of the year? However, to their defense (well, sort of) we should admit that most readers don’t understand e-books either. People in general are very unimaginative when it comes to new things. First they are outright hostile to any change and claim that they’ll never need or even want X, but once they get used to X they realize they wouldn’t want to live without it.

While I often have no problems seeing these Xs years and years before they become mainstream (and I’m sure there are many people who see them years before I do) I’m really bad at understanding how to transfer this knowledge to others. I’ve realized a long time ago that just telling about these Xs works with only an extremely small percentage of all people, and the rest would have to be convinced somehow and I don’t have a clue how. (I find it all quite frustrating. I.e., that the world is lagging behind, that so many people are causing this without even knowing it, and that I’m quite incapable of doing anything about it.)

many of the best selling books are published first as a hardback and then later as a paperback

As a tangent to this I’d like to point out that I really, really hate having to wait needlessly for something. I find it very annoying when the author says that “the book has been ready in its final form for 2 months already” and it still isn’t available anywhere, and when it becomes available somewhere it’ll still take weeks before my local book store gets a copy to give/send to me, even though I placed my order half a year ago. With e-books one could have shorter time-to-market delays and once it’s available it’s available immediately worldwide.

I understand that the “hardcovers first” is a milking strategy, so some publishers/stores will probably try to do the same thing with e-books (perhaps treating them as paperbacks). How common is this now? Anyone following the e-book vs. p-book release schedules?

Anyway, I’m sure an opposite milking strategy, like with movies (i.e., first comes a plain version, then some extended version(s) and perhaps a directory’s cut or with additional “extras”), would work much better with e-books, too.

The epublisher I was talking about, at that time, was a very successful epublisher both financially and critically, and I was impressed by its businesslike behavior.

Big publishing is a tradition-bound business that makes little sense to other businesses, and change comes very hard. The book distribution system was created during the Great Depression and has changed very little since although the returns system bleeds money and is wasteful in many ways.

The distribution costs are a constant frustration for many of us in publishing, but the big guys won’t change things, and Amazon, Walmart, and some of the chains seem to hold most of the power about price.

The book conglomerates’ sheer ignorance about ebooks and their belief that paper books will always be the major distribution method has allowed Amazon/Kindle to take a 66% profit off the top for little more than providing storage space on their system.

Things like this makes me want to bang my head against a wall and howl because none of this is good news for publishers, authors, or readers.

And, yes, I think new books are best, but I’m a writer. We make our money on new books, and our new book sales determine whether we can sell our next book.

All those new readers we are supposed to get with a used book do dang little good if the publisher won’t buy that next book, and our sales figures are so poor no other publisher will touch us.

These days, most big publishers aren’t willing to allow an author to develop an audience through a series of books. It’s one book, and you’re out of there.

Some of my friends have been successful with giving away free ebooks, but that’s only if it’s the first book in a well-established series from one publisher.

In my case, this wouldn’t work since I write single titles in a number of genre, and I have a number of different publishers.

At best, I can only offer free short stories which I do.