If the record industry is any indicator, I bet it will only be token books or even out of copyright books that are $4.99. Remember when the music industry wanted the flexibility to price songs at $1.29, saying that some songs will be $0.69 also? It wasn't much of a surprise when an insignificant number of them are at the lower price.
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Amazon Reluctantly Agrees to Higher eBook Pricing
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If the record industry is any indicator, I bet it will only be token books or even out of copyright books that are $4.99. Remember when the music industry wanted the flexibility to price songs at $1.29, saying that some songs will be $0.69 also? It wasn't much of a surprise when an insignificant number of them are at the lower price.
If anyone actually gave a rip about saving trees we'd go back to using hemp instead of trees to produce paper. Hemp produces about four times as much pulp for paper per acre as trees. A new hemp crop can be produced every year, unlike trees which require 20 years to mature.
Oh you must be new to the internet and the culture of entitlement that has grown along with it. So many of these dolts posting and bitching about $14.99 eBooks have zero knowledge of the cost structure of books (hint, almost none of it is in the realm of producing the physical copy) and expect everything to be handed to them for $.99 or less. It's really pathetic.
Personally I've been wondering why books are so cheap, even before eBooks became "popular" I have been buying them for years. I have no problems paying as much as a hard cover personally, and at 12.99 to 14.99 that's the price of a trade paperback! It's less than a new release DVD and even if only consumed one time, brings far more value for the dollar. I don't get why people think they are somehow owed lower prices in this market. I also don't think Amazon has thought hard enough about the real business model in the publishing industry and how pushing the prices down so hard will affect authors (read: it will alienate them entirely.)
Frankly I find $14.99 to be a steal, considering all the advantages of eBooks. And that's still about $10 less than a hardcover. Even better, to me, is the 30% cut. Amazon takes 70% for independent sellers. I imagine they work on the old eBook wholesale pricing structure for the larger pubs, but frankly, that's an odd business model given the realities of digital distribution. Amazon is doing very little other than advertising and offering a payment kiosk in terms of their participation in the retail chain, and they don't even do much advertising other than for the kindle itself. Why should they get such a large cut, or even be involved in the book "cost?" The 30/70 cut is the same as the Apple app store, btw, so I doubt that's a coincidence.
Despite what's reported, I suspect strongly that the other publishers will see how much simpler this model is, and how it benefits their grosses, and will expect the same deal. They know Apple has potential for critical mass to invade yet another market and will gamble on it happening. The gamble alone will be enough to force Amazon.
It's not as though Amazon is some kind of victim here folks, they are abusing their monopoly to force market acceptance of reasonable prices (and therefore, viable profit margins) down into the dumps. The book industry works like the movie industry, it depends on blockbusters to drag with them the rest of your selection. Take a look at who publishes all your favorite novels and you'll start to see they all have their line of big titles, and it's probably not what you read. But if they can't make their take on the Kings and Pattersons of the industry, your Gaimans and your Salvatores will be snuffed out as well. You might not like the reality of this, might even find it unfair or somehow greedy or whatever. But let's be real: These companies, and along with them nearly every single author in contemporary times is out to make a living. Though they seek to entertain and please you, the customer, they will all stop if it's made unprofitable. The industry is already in a struggle as it is.
What's more, this pricing trend should become pervasive. If it does, then that is only beneficial to everyone. It levels the distribution grounds for smaller indie pubs, or even direct publishing by authors themselves to be profitable and worthwhile.
The one thing that could make this great is if Apple allows book publishers to set their license terms on their books, unlike Amazon. Amazon requires all books, even those without DRM, be sold under the same legal terms. Those terms make the same restrictions as the DRM, though without the encryption to enforce it. So it's still a violation of your terms with Amazon to read an Amazon Kindle store eBook on a non-Kindle reading device or software, for example. It's important for authors, or the agents they hire (i.e. publishers) to have the right and ability to sell their content how they want, that's the best way to move towards a more open content model, and promote authors who recognize and honor the rights of the consumer (such as Cory Doctorow, as one example). Of course, this is high hopes, since such control is unavailable to the app store devs, but hey, who knows? Maybe Apple would do it just to make a point about being "better" than Amazon. It seems popular for new eBook stores to push for more sources to prop up their numeric apparent scale (such as BN including the scanned public domain books from google in their number of books available) so getting some more authors interested who are against restrictive licensing might actually be realistic.
I, a long term eBook reader, am ultimately pleased with this series of events and have hopes for a more viable, and even more open eBook market in the future.
Where did you get this? First time I've seen it. Every other account I've seen is that Amazon lost money on every ebook to help drive the adoption of their Kindle.
Scanning a book isn't terribly difficult. Actually, scanning a mass-market paperback is horrendous. But most hardcovers or larger paperbacks, no problem. You can make a readable copy with a cheap scanner. Do the tedious page-flipping while watching a couple TV shows on your iPad.
(Forget about OCR and converting to text, though. Even if you're a masochist with a ton of time, I've yet to find a program that will do a decent job of formatting it all into something that looks good in the end. Save yourself the pain and just buy the frickin' ebook if you need search or whatever.)
But I dunno...as long as I can buy used copies from Amazon of essentially everything I want for about $5-8, shipping included, I'm not eager to pay $15 for a DRM'd ebook. Prices need to come down if the format is really going to catch on.
I would say that App Store Pirates are mainly 11-17. That's just based off of the people I know.
Thanks! I now have my first "ePub" format book for free.
As long as the actual authors, who create the books, get more for them as well. It is very, very difficult to write a book.
The publishing industry has been at odds with Amazon since Amazon was created. This is nothing new and it didn’t start with eBooks or the iBookstore.
Are you kidding? Why do you assume Jobs or Apple want publishers to charge $14.99? Apple doesn’t care about content prices.
They make all their money off hardware. Their content stores perform slightly above even. I wouldn’t be surprised if the iBookstore loses money the first year. That’s probably why they’ve separated eBooks into a completely separate store and not just integrated it with iTunes.
Apple would love for McGraw-Hill/Macmillan to charge $4.99 for all their bestsellers, but it’s not going to happen.
The only reason this fight between Amazon and Macmillan happened now is because for once there’s a viable alternative to the Kindle by a company that has just as much (and probably more) marketing power than Amazon.
Let the market decide. If Kindle and iPad customers are not willing to fork over $14.99 per eBook, Macmillan and other publishers will adjust accordingly.
What’s funny about this is Amazon is getting a taste of what Apple had to go through with the record labels. The labels were offering Amazon’s MP3 Store unprotected music and a lower wholesale cost, while refusing to do the same for iTunes. This is the exact reverse with eBooks except the pricing is the same.
Here is a link
The previous royalty agreement was 65% for Amazon, not 70%.
The new agreement they put for 30/70 comes with some strings attached.
We need to move Textiles and Paper to Hemp. We'll have more durable goods and the top soil won't be stripped of nutrients thanks to Cotton and our books will be far more durable.
As you know, our founding documents are on Hemp.
On this very website:
https://www.macrumors.com/2010/01/2...royalty-program-ahead-of-apple-tablet-launch/
My apologies for getting the percentages wrong -- Amazon kept 65%, not 70%.
No one is forced to pay anything. If the majority of consumers don't like $14.99, they won't pay for it and prices will reduce accordingly.
Thank you. If people had read the statements in the topic the first place (just more than the first 2 sentences), they would realize that most titles will be lower. And if they would have read it and buy books already they also would have known that hardcovers cost more then $14.99 to begin with...
Apple benefits from higher eBook prices
Apple still gets 30% of the sale price. The last time I checked, 30% of $14.99 is more than 30% of $9.99. Jobs is not one to leave money on the table, as Apple's historical prices (higher than the rest of the industry) have demonstrated. Perhaps he wants to break even or make a slight profit immediately.
Apple still gets 30% of the sale price. The last time I checked, 30% of $14.99 is more than 30% of $9.99. Jobs is not one to leave money on the table, as Apple's historical prices (higher than the rest of the industry) have demonstrated. Perhaps he wants to break even or make a slight profit immediately.
RE: Pricing, storage of books
It is silly to only allow publishers to sell books at fixed low prices. That discourages publishers from distributing more valuable and hard to find books, such as technical books or niche books that have limited sales volume and high value to the specialized audience.
I look forward to the flexible pricing allowing the content to go to digital MUCH faster and with better graphics - color pictures, adjustable graphics, sortable tables of data, instant clicking to footnotes, all kinds of stuff that can be done with some extra work from the publisher. This should be similar to what happens with DVDs where you get "Bonus Footage", outtakes, extended chapters, interactive games etc related to a material that are available on the digital release.
Admit it! How many people that have already seen a movie have bought it or watched it again to get more goodies on the DVD? Why would they just make the digital version the same as the print version if they have a chance to upsale you?
Imagine - they could re-release decades of bestsellers with additional content and get folks to repurchase stuff that they already own, just the music industry got people to repurchase music that folks already had on vinyl.
It is questionable if this is "good for consumers", may be bad for their wallets but may be something that they enjoy re-reading or collecting. I personally have a lot of space already dedicated to just storing books and have had to switch to reading library items and getting rid of books to prevent clutter. I'm looking forward to eventually having all my items digitally (would especially like it if they were stored on a cloud system that was backed up by a reputable company in a format that would not be indecipherable in 10 years).
If you read the book "The Long Tail", you'd know that only a fraction of 1% of all books are available for sale in physical bookshops currently. Bookshops only sustain themselves by selling high volume or high profit items. This distorts the market, preventing items from getting published as they would not be high enough margin. If Apple's ebook store allows people to post their own works at a small cost, the next generation of authors could be able to keep a larger portion of their own income without the huge chunk going to the publishing houses. This would benefit customers who would not have otherwise had access to those books.
Many prolific readers used to imagine having a huge library in their own in a dream home. Now they can imagine having all their books accessible via an easily carried portable device and a nice comfortable chair. This could save a lot of marriages and have a big impact on home design and furniture sales. The size of the home office has been going down as people embrace digital records and portable computers, now the size of living room/office/kitchen/bedrooms may also be downsized as the content goes digital and are no longer cluttered with bookcases and shelving.
It is silly to only allow publishers to sell books at fixed low prices. That discourages publishers from distributing more valuable and hard to find books, such as technical books or niche books that have limited sales volume and high value to the specialized audience.
I look forward to the flexible pricing allowing the content to go to digital MUCH faster and with better graphics - color pictures, adjustable graphics, sortable tables of data, instant clicking to footnotes, all kinds of stuff that can be done with some extra work from the publisher. This should be similar to what happens with DVDs where you get "Bonus Footage", outtakes, extended chapters, interactive games etc related to a material that are available on the digital release.
Admit it! How many people that have already seen a movie have bought it or watched it again to get more goodies on the DVD? Why would they just make the digital version the same as the print version if they have a chance to upsale you?
Imagine - they could re-release decades of bestsellers with additional content and get folks to repurchase stuff that they already own, just the music industry got people to repurchase music that folks already had on vinyl.
It is questionable if this is "good for consumers", may be bad for their wallets but may be something that they enjoy re-reading or collecting. I personally have a lot of space already dedicated to just storing books and have had to switch to reading library items and getting rid of books to prevent clutter. I'm looking forward to eventually having all my items digitally (would especially like it if they were stored on a cloud system that was backed up by a reputable company in a format that would not be indecipherable in 10 years).
If you read the book "The Long Tail", you'd know that only a fraction of 1% of all books are available for sale in physical bookshops currently. Bookshops only sustain themselves by selling high volume or high profit items. This distorts the market, preventing items from getting published as they would not be high enough margin. If Apple's ebook store allows people to post their own works at a small cost, the next generation of authors could be able to keep a larger portion of their own income without the huge chunk going to the publishing houses. This would benefit customers who would not have otherwise had access to those books.
Many prolific readers used to imagine having a huge library in their own in a dream home. Now they can imagine having all their books accessible via an easily carried portable device and a nice comfortable chair. This could save a lot of marriages and have a big impact on home design and furniture sales. The size of the home office has been going down as people embrace digital records and portable computers, now the size of living room/office/kitchen/bedrooms may also be downsized as the content goes digital and are no longer cluttered with bookcases and shelving.
You know... I was thinking...
Since Apple pretty much gets a *bleep*load of cash from iPhone apps... Couldn't they sell the iPod (and soon the iPad) at VERY low prices? I mean, it would get a ton of people to say "Holy *****! The iPad is $250 and iPod Touch is $99!"
I'm just thinking it's a good strategy...
Since Apple pretty much gets a *bleep*load of cash from iPhone apps... Couldn't they sell the iPod (and soon the iPad) at VERY low prices? I mean, it would get a ton of people to say "Holy *****! The iPad is $250 and iPod Touch is $99!"
I'm just thinking it's a good strategy...
It is unfortunately a terrible idea. The idea of a company is to make profit. Your idea makes little sense. They haven't gotten that rich from the app store alone.
A lot of authors are paid upfront for their books:
- Best selling novelists sign up to write a minimum number of novels each year, and get advance payments.
- Bidding for memoirs of famous people can go crazy: Bill Clinton got $12million for his, Tony Blair supposedly got £5million (just over $8million) for a single volume of life in 10 Downing Street.
- Text books have to be edited very very carefully to ensure that information is accurate, so cost a whole more before they are signed-off for printing.
The royalty payments that authors get is based on an actual sale, so if one title sells 10million copies, everyone's happy, but if another only sells 10,000 copies on projected sales of millions, no-one is happy.
- Best selling novelists sign up to write a minimum number of novels each year, and get advance payments.
- Bidding for memoirs of famous people can go crazy: Bill Clinton got $12million for his, Tony Blair supposedly got £5million (just over $8million) for a single volume of life in 10 Downing Street.
- Text books have to be edited very very carefully to ensure that information is accurate, so cost a whole more before they are signed-off for printing.
The royalty payments that authors get is based on an actual sale, so if one title sells 10million copies, everyone's happy, but if another only sells 10,000 copies on projected sales of millions, no-one is happy.
If what you say is true. Why did Apple, specifically Steve Jobs, force the recording industry successfully for years to keep all the iTunes songs prices at $.99?
Again, Apple makes no money off their content stores. Theyve even warned analysts in earnings calls that they dont see their content stores as a revenue generating business for them.