Books are bigger then music files, by a several meg. To say bandwidth cost are non-existent is not true...
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'The Da Vinci Code' and Other Random House Titles Appearing in iBookstore
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Books are bigger then music files, by a several meg. To say bandwidth cost are non-existent is not true...
Why is it absurd that an electronic book is priced similar to a hard copy? Isn't the value of a book to a reader based completely on content? Regardless of supposed overhead savings (which are undermined by the new cost sharing structure required in order to distribute ebooks via iTunes), why would cost go down when demand is either staying the same (because hard copy readers are changing to ereaders) or going up (because readers are reading more on ereaders)?
These digital services are starting to get on my nerves...
Why (oh why) would physical copies of books be cheaper/equally priced with digital downloads? A great case in point: the initial iPad version of the New York Times was MORE EXPENSIVE than the print copy. This is shear madness...and a reason that other services need to exist (amazon MP3/rhapsody/etc).
Why (oh why) would physical copies of books be cheaper/equally priced with digital downloads? A great case in point: the initial iPad version of the New York Times was MORE EXPENSIVE than the print copy. This is shear madness...and a reason that other services need to exist (amazon MP3/rhapsody/etc).
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I just spent an evening in "Portlandia" flipping through albums in a great little record store-things change and things stay the same.
I just spent an evening in "Portlandia" flipping through albums in a great little record store-things change and things stay the same.
"Value", as it relates to people's desire, is unquantifiable....but I get your drift. The simple fact is: if a company's manufacturing and operating costs go down (less printing required>less paper/ink/employees/etc>cheaper purchasing environments [no resellers like Barnes & Nobles]), that savings should have an influence on the selling price of the product (not just cause its the right thing by consumers, but because it encourages greater volumes to be sold). This DD pricing is so artificial it makes me sick.
But why are we fussing so much... "nobody reads anymore" -Steve Jobs
LMFAO
Finally! I hadn't made the connection that Zadie Smith, Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon and Safran Foer were all printing from Random House imprints. Now I need to start making some more room in my itunes budget.
I could spend less at a used bookstore, but then I couldn't haul a hundred books with me on carry on luggage.
I could spend less at a used bookstore, but then I couldn't haul a hundred books with me on carry on luggage.
Add to that a few things...
1. Printing of unsold books
2. Disposal of unsold books
3. Shipping and Handing cost
All of these cost money in excess of what it cost to print a book? Right?
No, that doesn't make sense.
Apple could allow you to read a book through an app in OS X without loosing money.
The cost to store and transport a book file, of say 10 MB, is a fraction of a cent.
For example, consider Amazons pricing....after they have added a nice profit margin.
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing
10 cents per 1 GB transfer and 14 cents for storage of 1 GB at the high end. So, lets say a file is 10 MB, that is 0.1 cents to transfer it and 0.14 cents to store it, or 0.24 cents for both. I don't know about you, but 0.24 cents (a quarter of a PENNY) is pretty close to non-existent if you ask me.
The prices I quote are for a commercial service and the lowest tier of service. If it was done in house and on a larger scale - then the cost would be even lower.
Dan Brown is a boring middle-aged man in a brown jacket who can't get laid and writes books about a boring middle-aged man in a brown jacket who gets the girl at the end... LAME.
...It's sort of The Revenge Of The Nerds all over again.
...It's sort of The Revenge Of The Nerds all over again.
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Finally George R. R. Martin's books (Game of Thrones) are available! Been wondering what the deal was, now I know, they're published by a Random House subsidiary, Bantam.
Anyway, I don't have a huge problem with the pricing. They're about the same price as a normal paperback and considerably less expensive than the trade paperbacks I normally buy at the bookstore. I can download it in seconds from my phone nearly anywhere in the world, and it's searchable, with a built-in dictionary "in" each book. That has value for me.
Finally George R. R. Martin's books (Game of Thrones) are available! Been wondering what the deal was, now I know, they're published by a Random House subsidiary, Bantam.
Anyway, I don't have a huge problem with the pricing. They're about the same price as a normal paperback and considerably less expensive than the trade paperbacks I normally buy at the bookstore. I can download it in seconds from my phone nearly anywhere in the world, and it's searchable, with a built-in dictionary "in" each book. That has value for me.
RH and the Big 6 agency scam
RH switched to agency and book prices jump 20%. Then RH is trying to claim that it benefits customers. Yup, my finding the books elsewhere for free benefits me, thanks RH and the Big 6.
RH switched to agency and book prices jump 20%. Then RH is trying to claim that it benefits customers. Yup, my finding the books elsewhere for free benefits me, thanks RH and the Big 6.
It's interesting to note that Random House in the UK is not switching to the agency model, largely due to investigations like this:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576176032102691822.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559604576176032102691822.html
This isn't true!
Even "War and Peace" is only 1.5MB on the Kindle Store. That's a huge book!
A one minute song sold by iTunes is about 1.9MB - and most songs are much longer than that.
Let's see:
Author royalties stay; 15%
Marketing stays; 7%
Pre-production...stays, but probably goes down. Keep it at 13% anyway.
Wholesaler...gone.
Retailer...that's now Apple and their 30% cut (less than current)
Sum: 65%
Agreed. We could hypothesize a 'Net Cost of Ownership' value by subtracting off an estimate of the book's used value. A decent swag would be to take Amazon's used book retail price and cut it by 50% to estimate the price that a seller would get selling it to a used book reseller.
I'm not so sure about that: I just looked in iTunes and found that every track on Pink Floyd's The Wall albums are larger than 1MB ... and the Mark Twain eBook file of Tom Sawyer is <250K.
But it doesn't matter anyway, since that expense is being incurred by Apple as the e-Distributor and is being paid for by their 30% commission.
-hh