iPad Helping Book Publishers Gain More Control Over eBook Pricing

[friedmud]

Holy crap what a bunch of whiners!

Look... I like low prices as much as the next guy.... but we're talking about HOURS of entertainment here for $15. It's ****ing _$15_.

Are you people really serious that an increase of $5 is going to keep you from buying a book that's going to last a month or so and give you hours of enjoyment?

You can barely go to a movie for $15 anymore... and that only entertains you for about 2 hours (if the movie is even any good).

If they start charging $50... then I'll have to look at how much enjoyment I'm getting out of that money... but you know what? There are books I've read that I'd gladly pay $50 for... they would be totally worth it.

I don't know if it's just the geek crowd that's cheap because they're used to getting things for free (OMG! Bittorrent to the rescue!) or if this is a bigger trend in society. Is our society really so messed up that we're willing to pay $300 for an e-Book reader and then NOT sufficiently compensate the authors that make that reader worth something?

I just don't get it.

Yes... I don't like publishers... I'm not taking their side here. I just can't believe the comments of "That's too expensive... therefore my bittorrenting is justified!".

 

[AtticusFinch]

I'm sorry, I can't be concerned about individual bookstores. As a consumer (and in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression), I want the lowest prices possible. Have you actually looked at Amazon's New York Bestseller list? Almost every hardcover costs less than $14.99.

This mentality is what got us in the current economic climate.

 

[enberg]

Unless you jailbreak your iPad potentially you won't be able to download pirated books, just like apps for the iPhone. Unless you can open them as PDF files but I'm sure Apple is already scheming against piracy.

The iPad uses the EPUB format which is an open standard.

 

[neb_greely]

How is this more money for authors?

There's a mention of royalty negotiations in the letter written by McMillan's CEO here:
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=58735

Here's the relevant bit:

"And now on to royalties. Three or four weeks ago, we began discussions with the Author’ s Guild on their concerns about our new royalty terms. We indicated then that we would be flexible and that we were prepared to move to a higher rate for digital books. In ongoing discussions with our major agents at the beginning of this week, we began informing them of our new terms. The change to an agency model will bring about yet another round of discussion on royalties, and we look forward to solving this next step in the puzzle with you."

I don't believe it means anything, yet, but there's the potential for it to mean something.

 

[fifthworld]

If the experience of reading a book on a screen is comparable of reading a book on paper, why we should be upset if they cost the same? Conversely, If we believe the experience of reading a book on a screen is inferior, why buying a device to do it?

 

[enberg]

Putting more control into the publisher's hands than the retailer's is always going to be more profitable for the authors. Why is this concept so hard to understand for everyone?

How do you know that? It isn't a natural law. Lady GaGa made $170 from being the most played artist on the legal spotify in 2009.

 

[nelmat]

Content producers should be able to set their own prices, this should be a fair market place.

By allowing variable pricing, you allow competition between providers.

This is good for the market place and good for the consumer. Price fixing is bad, as the agreed fixed price across multiple content creators is one that normally results in paying higher than necessary prices for older/classic content.

New books cost more.

Older content costs less.

It's a good thing.

Apple is not controlling this, the publishers are - just because they now have a choice, they are no longer able to be forced into a pricing structure by one distributor.

It's basic market economics, and allows for competition. Which, again, is good for the consumer.

Apple is championing nothing, it is simply fact the content providers now have multiple avenues to choose from, rather than a monopoly.

 

[plokoonpma]

This is such a typical corporate bull-****!

Only person who should mark this news with positive is Rupert Murdoch & co.

meh...

It is a positive change, we are talking about knowledge and rich entertainment, not music that phases out when next hit surface. Books will be always there to teach, amaze and drive people to other places with imagination or other way to see things. It is a shame that in a country like USA that claims to be the best are so short sighted to respect and value the writers... It is hard enough to have a publisher that believes in you or go with a project that needs so much large investment when we talk about hard copies. On digital almost all that cost is taken away in favor of more straight approach. In the end is fair for the author/writer to ask for more money for his work. Will you work underpaid? Hell no! right.. then why you want the writer to gives his/her work almost for free?

 

[patrickdunn]

We can complain, but we vote with our wallets. Economics is a beautiful thing. Once publishers realize they are not selling much at $14.99, we will see a quick drop. The markets will set the prices.

 

[CWallace]

Guess who's not going to be buying as many eBooks anymore?

And that is pretty much how the system works.

When Apple allowed music retailers to raise prices 30 cents, sales of those titles in the iTunes store plummeted and many publishers re-adjusted their prices back down in response.

As a consumer, you're not forced to buy the title in eBook form. With the battle over the pricing of hardcopy bestsellers between Wal-Mart and other publishers, that might be a far more cost-effective option versus the $9.99 price, much less $14.99. And there is always your local library (why not benefit from your tax and levy dollars?).

If enough people choose not to buy an eBook at $14.99, eventually the price will fall. The Law of Supply and Demand has not been repealed, after all.

 

[kingtj]

What about opportunities for the "little guy"?

I'm thinking that the book publishing industry isn't really quite as far "evolved" as the music business, in the sense that authors still seem to feel a strong need to get "accepted" and published by one of the big publishers out there. Meanwhile, musicians are quickly learning that modern technology lets them produce their own albums and distribute them without requiring a "major label" and all the catches that come with that.

I know there are a few "indie publishers" out there, but I'm not sure they're really being taken that seriously yet.

The most significant change Apple could potentially make here is opening up the world of book publishing to the "little guy" by letting anyone publish their works on iTunes, digitally. Just like the app store scenario, they could even say "Hey, you're going to have to pay an annual $99 fee first." or something, to ensure only serious people apply (and the bandwidth used to distribute their work and advertise it on a store page has its cost covered).

But right off the top of my head, I can think of someone who would GREATLY benefit from something like this. (One of my best friends spends all his spare time trying to write several novels. He has one in the science-fiction genre going right now, and another horror novel. Everything I've seen from him is really promising -- but he's been met with nothing but rejections from every publisher he's sent his work in to.)

 

[psingh01]

This sucks. Apple wanted them all on board so they let them charge higher prices. Customer is screwed in the end. Same deal with their exclusive agreement with AT&T for the iPhone.

 

[spice weasel]

Holy crap what a bunch of whiners!

Look... I like low prices as much as the next guy.... but we're talking about HOURS of entertainment here for $15. It's ****ing _$15_.

I'm not in disagreement with you, but I think the public is going to see this as a) a 50% price hike, and b) another example of corporate greed. As people have already said, neither of those points is necessarily true. But this is as much of a PR problem as it is a business model and pricing issue. I think publishers have to tread very carefully or they might end up looking like the RIAA.

 

[neb_greely]

We can complain, but we vote with our wallets. Economics is a beautiful thing. Once publishers realize they are not selling much at $14.99, we will see a quick drop. The markets will set the prices.

And that's exactly what the publishers have been asking for...
For the markets to set the price, not Amazon who was artificially setting the price in order to sell tons of Kindles.

 

[seedster2]

nice spin. "iPad Helping Book Publishers Gain More Control Over eBook Pricing".

That's a laughable angle. I don't think even the most diehard Apple fanboy would want book publishers to have more 'control' by charging more. THANKS APPLE!

Agreed. only on MacRumors could you find this sort of praise

Many will say they don't mind paying more. Conversely, if it were Amazon alone jacking up prices, they would be screaming bloody murder.

I'm in agreement. I highly doubt that authors are going to see a single penny more. This is really just an attempt by the large publishing houses to maintain control of the market. While I don't think they've learned the proper lessons from the recording industry, I think the one thing they did learn is that you don't want to have a single large digital distributor (Apple, in the case of music) come in and start to dictate pricing. Competition in the digital distribution world doesn't seem to work the same way it normally does. In digital distribution, you have several outlets competing for the same producer's work. In this case, Apple, B&N, and Amazon all competing for the goods coming out of the publishing houses. High demand, with a controlled supply.

Consumers, of course, make the ultimate choice in what they are and aren't willing to pay for a product. I think in the case of ebooks, filesharing won't be as big of an issue as it is for music, mainly because of the demographics involved. This just means that more people will buy bound books, which suits the publishing houses just as well - although I assume the profit margin on bound books is tighter than for digital ones.

You hit the nail on the head. The publishers are being cautious to open to as many outlets as they can to avoid the iTunes trap the music industry fell into.

Amazon has done an admirable job making e-books recognizable and attractive. Now that everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon, publishers want to cash in. This is fair, but who knows how the market will respond.

I thought SJ said people didnt read?

 

[cmaier]

Putting more control into the publisher's hands than the retailer's is always going to be more profitable for the authors. Why is this concept so hard to understand for everyone?

Because publishers maximize their own profits, not the profits to the authors?

 

[Eso]

The iPad uses the EPUB format which is an open standard.

...which also includes for support for DRM, which you can be assured Apple will take advantage of.

 

[Stelph]

Its an interesting move by Apple. To be honest I would suspect that Apple/Jobs would prefer to have the "one price for all" cost like they have for music, but currently apple dont yet have enough of the marketshare to force the publishers to do this, and if they did then at best they would only be on a level playing field with the Kindle. I would suspect that their plan is to give the publishers what they want now (control over pricing), get the support from the Publishers to undermine your competitor, gain the marketshare with a "sexy" device then when they have the market sewn up THEN force the publishers to bend to your rules.

It may annoy the users having to pay higher costs, but in the end Apple will get what they want, a market that they control

 

[sishaw]

Wait, wait - I get to pay more for an eBook? Sign me up!

/sarcasm

It wouldn't be more than the new hardcover price. $14.99 would still be less than the $25.00 or so a new hardcover book costs, and books that are out in mass market paperback, obviously, would have to be cheaper or no one would buy them electronically.

 

[sishaw]

Because publishers maximize their own profits, not the profits to the authors?

Author's royalties are typically a percentage of the sales price/book. So the higher price should, in fact, help authors.

 

[JAT]

Thanks, Apple. I love paying more for things.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7D11 Safari/528.16)

So, in order to wrest control from amazon, apple allows publishers to charge more. Thanks, apple, way to fight for the consumer.

Just Great, I have a Sony Reader and I have to pay for the Ipad's blunder

So, Apple fails in their attempt to go all Walmart on one industry and it's their fault? Aren't you the people that usually complain when they try to monopolize with certain pricing? Here they can't, the pubs are winning.

Ooh, just remembered. DirecTV just raised prices this month. That's probably Apple's fault, too.

 

[jerome65]

To those detractors from this, are you willing to work for 25-50% less today just so that your employer can cut the price of their service or product? In the end that is what we are talking about, it may not be an immediate cut for the authors and people who produce the books but eventually the retailer will demand that the wholesale price be lowered so that they can make a profit off of the product, and that will cut into the bottom line of the publishers who will pass that on to the authors, the vendors that produce the books, editors, and their own employees.

Publishers price new releases higher for a reason, to recoup their investment off of producing the books. This includes paying the people to make the electronic files, the printer (or in the case of eBooks the ePub format conversion of the electronic files, which are originally created in a different format for print), the photographers or illustrators, the stock photography houses, the proofreaders, etc. They may also have given the authors an up front payment to write the book, taken out of the initial royalty payments till it is paid off. Once these expenses have been paid off for in sales the books typically see a reduction in price.

Honestly, I wish you were half as upset about the price of drug we as Americans pay compared to the rest of the world. Maybe then we would see a bit of relief on the ever increasing cost of medical care and insurance. I recently had one prescription for a generic drug that was $230/30 pills. A bit of research showed that the same generic drug in Canada sold for $60-80 for the same 30 pills. Still we go allowing these companies to charge us whatever they want for their products without batting an eye, and we don't push our elected officials to do anything about it.

 

[netnothing]

I'm sorry, I can't be concerned about individual bookstores. As a consumer (and in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression), I want the lowest prices possible. Have you actually looked at Amazon's New York Bestseller list? Almost every hardcover costs less than $14.99.

What's worse, the only time you get to raise prices in a market is if you're raising them slightly to account for inflation. Nobody gets to come into a two-year old market where customers already have expectations about price and increase the price 50%. Not if they want to stay in business, that is.

This is going to decrease eBook sales, as it should. The greedy publishers should get exactly what's coming to them. Not only will I not buy another eBook until the prices return to $9.99, I'm going to encourage everyone I know to steal all the eBooks they can.

Wow.....pillage and plunder.....that's the pirate way!

Do you shop at WalMart or any other brick-and-mortar store? When you don't like the price of milk do you just steal it?

-Kevin

 

[jofallon]

Guess who's not going to be buying as many eBooks anymore?

I don't care how you rationalize it, a 50% increase over an existing mental price point is not going to go over well.

They want to sell at a variety of price points - new hardcovers at a higher price, and the backlist books less that 9.99.

And none of them, authors or publishers, feel like getting less money so Amazon can subsidize the price of a Kindle. Amazon is trying to be a classic monopoly. Maybe it will work. They still aren't selling Macmillan books - a whole lot of my favorite SF authors aren't available from Amazon.

 

[AtticusFinch]

Holy crap what a bunch of whiners!
Look... I like low prices as much as the next guy.... but we're talking about HOURS of entertainment here for $15. It's ****ing _$15_.

Precisely - it blows my mind sometimes. People wouldn't think twice on most occasions to go out an get a couple of drinks at $15! It makes no sense.

My suspicion is that most of the bashers commenting here don't even read. They are just lashing out for the sake and principle of it.