There are lots of self release books that are total crap. There is a lot of value that the publishers offer in producing a quality release. The real middle man is Amazon. The publisher is the company that supports the writers before, during and after the work is done. What should happen is the publishers should remove the middleman and go directly to the customer with their ebooks. The problem is they allowed Amazon to destroy the real book stores so now they are dependent on them for printed sales, and as they have recently shown, Amazon would retaliate by killing the sales of the printed books if publishers ever do anything they don't like.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Offers Discounts on Hachette Pre-Orders Amid Publisher's Dispute With Amazon
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
There are lots of self release books that are total crap. There is a lot of value that the publishers offer in producing a quality release. The real middle man is Amazon. The publisher is the company that supports the writers before, during and after the work is done. What should happen is the publishers should remove the middleman and go directly to the customer with their ebooks. The problem is they allowed Amazon to destroy the real book stores so now they are dependent on them for printed sales, and as they have recently shown, Amazon would retaliate by killing the sales of the printed books if publishers ever do anything they don't like.
Hm. Charles Stross and John SCalzi have. As authors who both self publish and have published with major publishers, they can tell you that you're barking up the wrong tree---the costs differences are far smaller than what you think.
----------
Yeah, a lot of the cost from publishers comes from talent procurement, talent development and marketing. That's because publishing is labor intensive...most of the cost is in paying individuals to develop relatively tailor made products. Don't make the mistake of applying mass production techniques to the INSIDE of the books...the content. That's still time and labor intensive to develop.
And even if you're good and drop a relatively polished manuscript over the transom, you still have to pay people to proofread, continuity check, edit, name clear (legal processing, whether fiction or non-fiction). It's simply not a simple process.
Except ebooks don't magically just materialize. They have to be coded, and the coding isn't always very simple. Sure, no paper, trucks or warehouses are involved but coders are, and the coders need to eat, too.
This.
And while I'm not familiar with Rubbermaid's specific situation, it seems to me Rubbermaid put itself out of business - not WalMart. If its business model and products were to succeed, the price must have matched the demand or serve another niche of consumer. Price it too high and you don't sell at WalMart. Won't change your price and business model? Go sell to William and Sonoma or the higher end consumer and make your money there.
There are other shopping option than Amazon.
I have been Amazon prime member for 5 years, I used to buy almost everything from them. No longer I can't support a bully like them, they are the new Walmart
Recently when I needed to buy a hard-drive I went to NewEgg, I needed healthcare product I went to supplier directly and found them both a little cheaper and with free shipping like Amazon. Yes, it was a little inconvenience, but I'll slowly break away from Amazon.
I have been Amazon prime member for 5 years, I used to buy almost everything from them. No longer I can't support a bully like them, they are the new Walmart
Recently when I needed to buy a hard-drive I went to NewEgg, I needed healthcare product I went to supplier directly and found them both a little cheaper and with free shipping like Amazon. Yes, it was a little inconvenience, but I'll slowly break away from Amazon.
Nonsense, eh? So youve spent a lot of time looking into the publishing practices of the major firms because youve been looking to publish a novel? You sure act like youre pretty familiar with the industry business practices, and you seems satisfied with them. So what have you published? And with who?
I guess Amazon is slowly replacing the "devil" that is Samsung on this board. Brand loyalty run amok folks.
No that's now how things work. Hachette sells the books at whatever discount they want to the store. Say the book list price is $10 and their wholesale discount is 55%. The store gets them for $4.50 a piece + the bulk shipping rate. As far as Hachette is concerned, their part of the deal has been satisfied. Said book store may now sell them for $1, $100, or just burn them out back.
When you upload your eBook to Amazon, they're not paying you for it. So when they tell you that pricing your book from $0.99-$1.99 or $10.00-$200 will only net you 35%, yes that affects your bottom line (Also they charge you an additional fee for each download based on file size. So a 200Kb eBook nets more profit than a 1Mb selling at the same price ). But, hey, Apple is the one price fixing, right?
The publisher takes the lion's share on ebook sales. The author typically gets 15%. So, $1.50 on a $10 sale. $2.25 on a $15 sale. If Amazon sells the ebook for $10 instead of $15, the publisher loses $4.25, the author $.75. Whose losing big? The publisher.
Not quite. Print books are sold through distribution companies, a middle-man. They set the prices based on what the publisher charges them. Brick and mortar stores don't buy books they can't return, unless they're getting them for pennies, as in overruns. Hachette's part of the deal isn't done until they see how many books aren't returned.
The royalty rate is 70% to the publisher, not 35%. At least for books under $10. Publisher gets almost $7 on a $9.99 sale, minus the small delivery fee. My understanding of the Apple price fixing thing was, they were conspiring with the publishers to keep prices of ebooks high, not low. Hachette's trying to tell Amazon they can't sell their ebooks for less, so essentially it's the same thing: they're trying to price-fix by strong-arming. As you pointed out, the seller should be able to sell a product for what they think they can get, or what is fair.
I'm all for lower price for the consumer.
Spot on. I just wanted to add though, that with Amazon's price tiers you make more money selling at $9.99 than $14.99.
$9.99 nets the publisher $6.99 ( 70% royalty )
$14.99 nets the publisher $5.25 ( 35% royalty, because over $9.99 )
As a publisher you make less money on books priced between $10-$20 than you do just selling it at $9.99. So no, they are not technically forcing you to sell your eBook at $9.99, but I think you can see why publishers feel like they are.
A) If the software developers negotiated the right to control the price of their products, fine. If I don't want to pay the price the App Store is selling an app for, I move on.
B) Books and software are intellectual products, so they're basically the same.
But that doesn't matter. From what I understand about the issue is, Amazon wants to renegotiate the split. Hachette doesn't.
----------
There's no distributor for ebooks, only for print. There's no need as there's no physical inventory.
I did say, "$0.99-$1.99 or $10.00-$200 will only net you 35%". However, I should have done a better job representing the 70% range.
I agree about the returns, but that's a returns issue not a selling price. Though maybe some would raise the price significantly if they thought they'd only sell a few and the rest would be returned?
The royalty rate is not so set in stone either. The rate changes by country, so if you don't subscribe to KDP Select you don't get the 70% roytalty in certain parts of the world, even if it's their $9.99 USD equivalent: "Your book must be enrolled in KDP Select in order to be eligible for 70% royalty".
For those not familiar with KDP Select:
I'm fine with lower prices for the consumer, but most consumers don't know how much money is spent on a book. It's a bit unnerving selling an eBook for $9.99, when it lists at $29.99 and has $10k+ invested in it, knowing it's for a niche market. Remember, books don't make the publisher money until the 2nd or 3rd printing. The first few print runs only cover costs, which include the author's advance.
You know, that's just the deal I have with Amazon. My understanding is the big publishers like Hachette sell their ebooks to Amazon at a fixed price, even more than $9.99 in some cases. Amazon sells those books at a loss. Hachette and the others are more worried about the overall erosion of book prices in general.
----------
As a consumer, I don't care how much money is spent on a book, or on any other product for that matter. I don't care how much my iMac cost to develop and produce, I only care about what it cost me to get one on my desk.
And ebooks are a whole different animal than print books. Once a manuscript is edited and ready for publication, turning it into an ebook is ridiculously easy and inexpensive. (Speaking of books with text only. Books with images are completely different.) Publishers have about a 75% profit margin on an ebook while only about 40% on print books. And you're right, most books printed aren't hits.
Last edited:
And yet the DOJ goes after Apple? Jeff Bezos must have compromising photos of Eric Holder.
If that's true, than why this?
Why do you care about margins? You just finished saying that you only care what it cost you.
You're confused. The KDP Select is optional, not mandatory. You can sell ebooks on Amazon without enrolling them in Select.
----------
I was responding to different statements.
As a consumer, I care nothing about margins. As someone who sells stuff for profit, I care greatly about margins.
Agreed, which is why Apple sets the price of an iMac to give them margins they consider profitable. Consumers then decide whether it's worth the price tag. Not another party which decides Apple's margins should be smaller, so they hit them with a higher fees.
Let the consumer decide that a publisher's $15 eBook is too much, not Amazon.
Side note: I do give amazon a hard time about this stuff. However, it's their servers, bandwidth, hardware, and access to lots of customers with 1-Click Buying. Publishers who try doing that stuff on their own fail miserably. So, with that said, I fully support Amazon charging whatever they want (even if I don't like it) and would be on their side if some government body tried to make them change their rates. I just hope one day they'll adjust their rates based on their own decision
Fair enough. Amazon does funky pricing on the paperback versions of my novels, drops them for no apparent reason, but I don't sell too many of them so it doesn't bother me much. If I sold a ton of them I'm sure I'd feel differently.