At the same time, it’ll be interesting to see if the big publishers hang on to the rights, and what their value will be—in an era when so many kids are growing up with experiences radically difference from, say, Holden’s. Remember, if the rights really continue to matter a lot, it’s the big guys who’ll have the resources to buy them up. Even though Vonnegut and a lot of others published through Rosetta, the big houses are more hip now about the e-value of old properties.

Who knows what’ll happen? Damn hard to predict, with all the factors plugged in. Thanks for your own thoughts, Kirk!

David

The confusion goes back to the Rosetta/Random House suit in 2001:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA102891.html

So, it’s entirely possible that some new digital publishing startup will eventually acquire the digital rights to Catcher in the Rye and other classics that are still in copyright and in print (and therefore outside the scope of the Google Book Search agreement).

I tend to give your doomsday scenario a lot of credit in that it captures who exactly is in power. Amazon and many other e-book retailers have been fighting a valiant fight to bring down the prices for e-content. They can easily win (low cost distributors) were it not for something that us 9.99> boy-cotters have been coming up against. The dreaded “individual value” crowd who continuously demand that they determine the price of content while criticizing and demonizing any sort of organized consumer consensus seeking to force <9.99 equilibrium price on e-books. These folks even go as far as lambasting Bezos himself who has publicly stated that “9.99 prices for e-books are perfectly sustainable.” Until consumers can agree that an e-book should be priced less than 9.99, the publishers will have the upper hand, unless pirates are dealing the cards.

It has to be a volume game. Sell the most books possible at the lowest price.

I see the likelihood of me buying paper books ever again as low. I love my ereader. Once they have some waterproof ereader, I can even read in the bath.

I want my favorite authors to get paid. I want the books now. When it is sitting there digitally waiting, I will not wait a year for an official ebook. I am not the only one. It seems the publishing industry is blind to the success of itunes and .99 tunes. That was a game changer. Sure, there is still music piracy but there are millions of songs being sold.

Second, major publishers for the most part are currently setting the price of ebooks the same way they set them for print books – charging retailers a fixed percentage of the list hardcover price. Amazon is choosing to sell many ebooks at a loss. I’m not sure what publishers easily can do to stop Amazon from volunteering to take a loss.

Finally, of course, the publishers won’t do the one easy thing they could do to make ebooks worth a lot more: sell them without a DRM. They want to charge the hardcover price without giving consumers the same value (and saving themselves a pretty penny in distribution and production costs, too). Allow ebooks to be shared and resold, just like hardcovers.

The hardback/paperback publishing model is not based on the cost of hardbacks (although they cost a bit more, the cost differential is tiny compared to the price differential) but on market segmentation. With eBooks, there is no hardcover/softcover physical difference to play with. I personally think it makes sense to set a higher initial eBook price and reduce it when the paperback comes out, allowing eBook readers to get the book. However, I recognize that many eBook buyers complain bitterly about the high cost of eBooks. From Sourcebook’s perspective, it might look easier to simply delay the eBooks rather than put up with customer attacks at the high price point.

Rob Preece
Publisher, BooksForABuck

With so many ebooks to choose from, why would anyone buy a P book?

Of course, the converse is also true. Some do care about the physical form. As I understand the publishing world, current hardcover press runs are 10-50K books. They tend to come out 6 months to a year before the trade/MMPB is out. They make a lot of profit. That’s a press run that sells to less than 0.02% of the US population. You can make a lot of money selling cream.

What backlist? That’s what Google intends to steal!

But many of today’s readers care more about words than about where they appear. As e-book tech improves, this is just going to be more and more common an attitude.

No easy answers here. It’ll be fascinating to see how things shake out.

Thanks,
David

But truth be told, a better-formatted e-book isn’t worth the full price they charge for hardbacks. E-books are paperbacks. Little more.

So publishers have options:

a) delay the e-book until the paperback release, and be happy with the $9.99.

b) release the e-book with the hardback, but charge full hardback price, until Amazon get’s sick of subsidizing (and when would that happen? A messed-up economy couldn’t do it), then drop the proce when the paperback arrives.

c) make the e-book worth more during the harback release (get clever, formatting guys!), and talk Amazon into charging more because it’s worth more, then revert to default formatting when paperbacks arrive.

Amazon has only a single option: get us addicted to the e-book, then do what publishers want. They can’t subsidize forever. Only a government can do that.

As an ebook reader, I like having the ebook out early, but publishers probably don’t cater to me. They do lose an occasional, low-profit sale, since I may forget about a title by the time it’s an ebook, but I doubt they lose much sleep over that.

There is a fundamental problem when the publisher doesn’t produce a quality ebook, or when they don’t price it appropriately. If they release it simultaneously with the hardcover, and price it similarly, I expect first-class production values for that price. I’m a lot more forgiving if they release it after the MMPB at a rock bottom price to cover their long term inventory.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

Nowadays there seems to be more focus on fantasy, sci-fi, etc. Part of this may be that the tech-minded are among the biggest fans of e-books. But could it also be the influence of the Net on society as a whole? Hardly science here. And, of course, in regard to popularity of modern classics, I myself hope you’re right!

Thanks,
David