I've been following the Kindle discussion threads over on Amazon lately. It seems quite natural to me, given that I am a Kindle owner, that I should attempt to keep up on what's going on in the world of my ereader.
Several topics recur with the tenacity of a rat terrier. A couple of the more commonly revisited themes are "When are the Harry Potter books going to be available?" and "Can you read library ebooks on your Kindle?" Periodically, a user will ask a question and the answer will provide handy information of which I was previously unaware.
Perhaps the most frequently revisited issue has to do with ebook pricing and the agency model. In a nutshell, the major players in the publishing world will not allow Amazon to discount ebooks. As an example, go visit the Amazon page for Jim Butcher's Side Jobs
Did you see the text under the price?
Sold by: Penguin PublishingThe publisher is fixing the price, not suggesting it.
This price was set by the publisher
I have a hard time with the idea of paying more for an ebook than the same content in paper. The publishers do not have to purchase the paper and ink to produce millions of copies of an ebook. They do not have to pay a trucker to haul the books from the printing press to the local shop.
According to some numbers published by Newsweek, the cost to produce an ebook is about 50¢, compared to the $4.05 it costs to produce a hardcover book. The author receives about $3.90 per hardcover sold and $2.12 per ecopy sold at $9.99. I'm betting that when the publishers jacked the price to $12.99*, they didn't increase the author's share to $5.12 per ebook.
Another thing occurred to me tonight. When a brick and mortar has had some books on the shelf too long, they strip the books and report them as unsold to the publisher. The profit from the copies actually sold has to offset the number of stripped books reported in order for the publisher to stay in business.
There is no such thing as a stripped ebook.
*In all fairness, typically, once the book makes it to paperback, the ebook price does come down. I guess I will be buying Side Jobs some time next autumn...
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5 yarns:
I was shocked the other day when I saw the paper book was $6, and the ebook was 10.
That is a bummer! I did not quite understand this, cause my thinking was along the lines of what you said: doesn't cost that much. I did not know about the not allowing to discount.
Agency pricing is evil. :)
And that's why I'm reading books by publishers whose focus is ebooks - I don't want to reward those hidebound traditional publishers for their bad behavior. Their stuff I'll get out of the library... if I'm reading it at all anymore.
I'm sticking with paper books for the moment as I can pick the ones I want up second hand for pennies. It does seem quite steep given that paper books are often on sale immediately after or before publication.
It definitely doesn't seem right. Although, I'm at a loss as to how it should be done. /scratches head/
So far I've been lucky and all the ebooks I've purchased have been less then the cost of the hardback or paperback book. This is going off the cost of the book that is sold by Amazon not from another seller in the marketplace. I've noticed that some sellers in the marketplace sell their new books at a lower price but it doesn't make up for the higher shipping prices. When I was buying paperback books I'd buy enough to qualify for free shipping through Amazon since it's not difficult to hit $25.
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