7 ms·

Amazon indicates they'll accept Macmillan's terms

58 points by healsdata 17y ago

ghshephard 17y ago
Huge win for the publishers. If Amazon accepts, then the publishers (And I disagree with Amazon, once they conceed with Macmillan, the rest will want the same deal) will be able to leverage this agreement to get the same from Barnes and Nobles and other eBook sellers - I'm sure Apple will, likewise, agree - if they haven't already. This will restrict (prevent?) Amazon, B&N, Apple from discounting eBook prices to get people into their eStore. It hurts the reader, in that they can't get cheap eBooks until a year after they are released. I wonder if the publishers will try to extend this to the "Physical" book market, or whether that's a different ballgame altogether. (If Walmart is the Amazon in the physical book market, who is the Apple? I'm sure B&N likes being able to flexibly price books to get traffic in the store. As does Target. For that matter, so does Amazon. Is there an odd man out there with enough volume to make a difference?) From a competitive landscape perspective - Steve Jobs knew that providing an agency model as a negotiating tool to Macmillan was valuable - I'm wondering what he got back in return? All in all, a very exciting weekend of developments in the eBook economy. All started with the iBook store negotiating between Apple and Macmillan, I'm sure.
- adamc 17y ago
  Interesting. If it has the effect you postulate, I would expect to see reduced demand for ebooks, and more "piracy" (copyright infringement).
- tokenadult 17y ago
  Interesting analysis. Yet I think over the next several years authors (who, after all, produce new content) and readers will be thinking about these trade-offs from their own perspectives, and it's not necessarily so that all publishers will agree with Macmillan. High prices produce business opportunities for sellers who offer lower prices.
  - mikedouglas 17y ago
    Considering the immaturity of the ebooks market, price variability seems like a good thing. Increased margins (whether the result of higher or lower prices) will let publishers experiment with better typography, lesser known authors and more interactive works. The last thing most of us would like to see would be the ebook market turned into a numbers game such that only mass market paperbacks, poorly converted public domain material, and amateur self-publishers ever get access to the market. How would we have reacted if Apple had announced a $0.99 ceiling for the AppStore?
    - pyre 17y ago
      > amateur self-publishers If amateur self-publishers have access to the market, then how do you figure that non-'mass market paperbacks' don't?
- petercooper 17y ago
  (And I disagree with Amazon, once they conceed with Macmillan, the rest will want the same deal) But who cares? The big publishers aren't the only publishers out there, and it leaves a lot of scope for smaller, more agile publishers to steal business from the bigger ones selling the overpriced e-books. If Amazon had "won" this one and the big publishers' e-books were all under $10, it'd have done more to hurt entrepreneurs and small publishers since they'd find it a lot harder to compete. Macmillan winning means that, ultimately, they lose. The longer "established" publishers keep high prices on their e-books, the more opportunities there are for top writers to self publish to these new e-book stores. Wouldn't that be great? More money for the authors and a steadily reducing influence by the publishers. It's started to happen in the music industry..
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  It hurts the reader, in that they can't get cheap eBooks until a year after they are released One of the lessons I have learned from this debacle is that I should be careful what I wish for. It turns out, according to my favorite authors, that time-sensitive pricing is a huge part of what makes the economics of their business work. After all, an author's hardcore fans are willing to pay more, and time-sensitive pricing -- with books costing more on the day of release, then gradually getting cheaper -- is the established mechanism for extracting that premium. The "hardcover" vs "softcover" vs "remaindered" thing is the industry's way of signalling the different price points. I've suddenly started looking at hardcover buyers with more respect. These people aren't suckers, or at least they aren't mere suckers. They are the patrons, the hardcore fans, that are keeping my favorite writers in business. It would be the height of irony if I eventually got what I used to think was my wish -- flat-rate ebooks at, say, $5 per copy, no premium pricing -- only to see my favorite authors either go out of business or figure out some other way -- exclusive early releases by subscription, the street performer protocol, selling T-shirts, product placement -- to recover the equivalent of the cost of a hardcover book! We're all going to save money in the e-book era, but I'm not really sure it's going to be that much money: Writers and editors and marketers still need to be paid. We'll save on printing and shipping, but that may be about it. There just aren't tons of excess profits sitting around in book publishing: The audiences are too small. I might not even save money on bricks and mortar: I like visiting bookstores or the equivalent, even if just to sit and drink tea while surrounded by media.
  - ja30278 17y ago
    There may not be tons of excess profits, but there are certainly tons of efficiencies to be gained by eliminating the print/ship/warehouse model of distribution. I simply don't accept the argument that ebooks can't be sold drastically more cheaply than paper books. To me, there's no reason for the publisher to exist at all (not that the various functions they provide don't need to be done, just that they don't need to be provided by a single large entity). Not to mention that, as sold, Ebooks represent a drastically _worse_ value than paper books. They aren't lendable, they're often linked to a single device, and the right to read them can even be revoked remotely. Publishers are offering a worse product for nearly the same price, while simultaneously crying poor.
synarch 17y ago
Apple is encouraging cartels.
- sachinag 17y ago
  Sure, but most cartels fall over time as the players find themselves having divergent priorities. And even now, I'm going to tie myself to Amazon's MP3 store. I just got a Pre Plus and I'm never, ever going to buy a song from iTunes again.
  - ugh 17y ago
    Why do you tie yourself to anything? There is no more DRM. No need for any tieing. Buy wherever it’s cheapest or where what you want is available. File formats are no problem, webOS plays both MP3 and AAC files.
    - sachinag 17y ago
      I thought the cheaper iTunes downloads are still FairPlay protected AACs and only the $1.29 downloads are DRM free.
      - JeremyBanks 17y ago
        They dropped the price of DRM-free tracks to be the same as DRMed tracks way back, and during the first quarter of last year they removed DRM from all of the songs in their library. Some music videos are still DRMed, but all songs are DRM-free 256 KBps AACs for 99 cents.
      - ugh 17y ago
        No. iTunes went DRM free nearly a year ago. You can’t buy any music with DRM from iTunes even if you wanted to. (That doesn’t apply to some music videos and all other video content as well as iPhone apps.)
petercooper 17y ago
Amazon would have done a lot better out of this if they hadn't pulled the dick move of removing all of Macmillan's irrelevant-to-the-argument print titles. Now we've seen Amazon's true colors. They're not bothered about destroying their entire relationship with you if you want to negotiate on one element of it.
nfnaaron 17y ago
"Macmillan ... are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 "We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative. "Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!" Wow. What a masterfully passive aggressive mash. They made us do it. But they'll see. They will. Will. Also, even if Amazon's posts on that forum are normally signed by "the team," this was a decision by somebody or a small group of somebodies, and it should have been signed by a name. Especially something as masterful as this.
dpapathanasiou 17y ago
It's more than just an indication: "we [Amazon] will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms" ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01amazonweb.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01ama... )
wheels 17y ago
Wow. I'm surprised Amazon didn't leave the hurt on longer, find some way to ensure used stock of the most important Macmillan titles to block revenue to Macmillan, go all out tactical maneuvers on this one. Their not-even two week old impressively ambitious strategy is already cracking and I suspect once one publisher has stiff-armed them, their ability to reel-in the others will be nullified. I don't really have a team I'm rooting for here, but this is as close as I get to watching sports and the quarterback for one team just got taken off the field in a stretcher 2 minutes into the game. Man, and I thought the final bit of this was going to be Bezos vs. Jobs slugging it out over the future of publishing, now it's looking like it'll underwhelm.
- gamble 17y ago
  Going nuclear on Macmillan was a mistake. It made Amazon look like the bully, and I wouldn't be surprised if it scared the other major publishers into standing behind Macmillan.
  - wheels 17y ago
    That's believable. But Amazon basically declared war on book publishers two weeks ago anyway. It's disappointing that when the publishers (predictably) pushed back that Amazon didn't have something more nuanced than this worked out. I figured going nuclear was part of a scorched earth strategy, "You can die now or later..." sort of thing. From the (admittedly, little) that I understand of the publishing industry, it's fragile enough that there was at least uncertainty in what the result of such would be.
Kilimanjaro 17y ago
I never understood why an e-song can be sold for 99cts and an e-book can not. Anybody care to explain the economics of both?
- likpok 17y ago
  e-songs sell much higher volume. Therefore, e-books must cost more to cover the fixed costs (someone else posted a breakdown of book-costs in an earlier thread). Edit: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are-no-longer-for-sale-via-amazon/ http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are-no-...
  - GavinB 17y ago
    Additionally, the effort required to produce a song is much less. I could write, record, mix, and master a song in a week. A book would take several months just to get a first draft. An album of songs is much closer in terms of production costs, and requires a similarly large effort.
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
There's something very weird about this. I'm surprised that they would post this in the Kindle forums, and the tone is just odd: We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. If that's true, then why wait? Just "capitulate" now and get it over with. If you're going to tell the other side that you're going to cave anyway, you've pretty much given up all bargaining power. I see the move to this agency model as such a monumentally bad deal for Amazon that it seems like one of four things must be going on here: a) They've analyzed the situation and know they can't win (unlikely) b) There's a legal reason that they can't do what they're doing (unlikely) c) They're running a more elaborate play than we all realize d) This was posted in error or without authorization
- thras 17y ago
  e) 5-10 big name publishers threatened Amazon over Macmillan, and they had to choose between backing down or facing a publisher revolt.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    First, I find it very hard to believe that they wouldn't have seen that coming when they first yanked Macmillan's books. Second, even if they did realize that they were going to lose and decided to back down, I find it hard to believe that the best messaging channel is a Kindle forum, and that the best language to use makes you sound like a tiny retailer with no power who has to "capitulate".
  - waterlesscloud 17y ago
    f) Amazon believes the consumer will eventually force the prices down and this was their method of bringing public attention to the issue. Thus every author posting on their blog today ultimately helps Amazon.
    - wheels 17y ago
tsally 17y ago
An author published by Macmillan did a write up about this on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's blog: http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer-available-on-amazon-com/ http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer-avail... You can probably skip the commentary on free markets, but he has some interesting insight in the actual cost and mechanics of publishing. He explains that at the moment eBooks are the equivalent of selling limited editions of paper books because they just don't have the volume yet.
b3b0p 17y ago
I agree with Amazon's opinion on the prices, but disagree with their action. If the publishers wish to have their items for a certain price, let them. However, I think it's clear they are in for a rude awakening when they see the sales figures. My fear is that the publishers will find a way to blame not their prices, but another variable (Amazon, the devices, something else). Ultimately hindering the availability of books and adoption rate of what could have been an excellent format. Your product is only worth what others are willing to pay and I do not believe I am in the minority when I think that $14.99 (or even $9.99) for many is too much for a non-tangible drm (or not) ebook.
jsz0 17y ago
I'm curious why people think e-books should be so cheap? $15 for a recent release really isn't a bad deal in my opinion. Books are a value compared to most other forms of entertainment. A new release movie costs you $15-$25 and it's only 2 or 3 hours of entertainment. A new release video game costs $50-$60 and is probably pretty close to the number of hours of entertainment a book offers. A CD is $10-$15 for up to 70 minutes of entertainment. That's simplifying it a bit since we should consider the re-consumption value of each medium but I think it's worth considering that a book has quite a bit of consumer value. I think it's also worth considering that the number of people who actually read books has been on the decline for some time. I'm not sure a lower e-book pricing model makes up the difference. Are people more likely to read if a book is $5 instead of $10? Doubtful since libraries have books for free and most people still don't read that much.
- bugs 17y ago
  Libraries aren't exactly convenient for normal consumers. To go against your video game and cd relation to a book: Video Games are targeted to a very large market and the majority of games today tend to offer much more than 2 or 3 hours of entertainment especially if you take the case of online play; CDs are in a market that is surrounded by piracy and yells of corruption but to take the price point a cd usually offers much more value than 70 minutes of entertainment and one popular way to consume music and purchase it is through itunes which does indeed offer lower prices for basically the same content.
- cmelbye 17y ago
  Why was this post voted down? It was very insightful. Is voting down if one disagrees with the post okay or something?
- Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
  For me (and I don't claim this calculus works for anyone else) an ebook is overpriced if I can get a discounted or used copy of a print version for the same amount or less. The print copy has intrinsic value; I can resell it, lend it out, donate it to a "books for prisoners" program or leave it to my grandkids; it requires no additional hardware, and I'll be able to read it anywhere, anytime for the rest of my life. If I drop it down a sewer grate or forget it in a cab, I'm out no more than the replacement cost of the book (which is probably out in paperback now). If I throw it in a box in the attic and leave it there, barring the Rise of the Silverfish I'll be able to pull the box back down again in ten years and pick right back up reading it again. But the electronic copy has no intrinsic value; I can't resell it, lend it out, or donate it; it requires additional hardware to use, and I can only read it on the platform(s) the vendor allows me to read it on for as long as the vendor allows me to read it. If I'm reading on my PC, I can't change platforms or upgrade my OS unless the proprietary reader software is available for the platform/OS I'm moving to. If the vendor decides to adopt another format or leave the business entirely, my books suddenly have a drop-dead date: once my hardware breaks, I lose the titles I've bought forever. A lot of these issues go away with non-DRMed titles, but in all but a few cases (bulky tech reference titles for example) a DRM-free eBook is still unlikely to be worth as much to me as the print version. And you really don't want to get into the "dollars per hour" argument here. The iPhone game I just finished up cost me a dollar and I got a good 20+ hours of play time out of it. But I can get through an average-sized book in four or five hours, so if I went by price per enjoyment-hour, it'd make that book worth about twenty-five cents. (I'm cheap, but not that cheap...)
gills 17y ago
And...queue Amazon publishing house in 3...2...1...?
- ajdecon 17y ago
  Which would be interesting to see them try, but I don't think they'd find many takers among popular authors right now. Most of the anti-Amazon press this weekend was generated by authors angry over the stealth delisting of their physical books. It's a community response, too: many of the angry authors did not even publish through MacMillan.
jonknee 17y ago
Ironic that Apple is the one forcing Amazon's hand for not allowing publishers to use the agency model. Steve Jobs went to war with the record labels when they wanted the same thing as Macmillan. Even better is that Amazon went agency for their music sales which put a kink in Apple's plans and caused them to introduce flex pricing and DRM free content. This is all the result of two egos duking it out. Fun to watch.
DannoHung 17y ago
Why are authors going to stick with publishers in 10 years or 20 years or however long it takes for there to be more eBook purchasers than physical book purchasers? I mean, it only took cell phones what, 15 years before they were so common that people in third world nations had them, right?

58 points by healsdata 17y ago

Huge win for the publishers. If Amazon accepts, then the publishers (And I disagree with Amazon, once they conceed with Macmillan, the rest will want the same deal) will be able to leverage this agreement to get the same from Barnes and Nobles and other eBook sellers - I'm sure Apple will, likewise, agree - if they haven't already. This will restrict (prevent?) Amazon, B&N, Apple from discounting eBook prices to get people into their eStore. It hurts the reader, in that they can't get cheap eBooks until a year after they are released. I wonder if the publishers will try to extend this to the "Physical" book market, or whether that's a different ballgame altogether. (If Walmart is the Amazon in the physical book market, who is the Apple? I'm sure B&N likes being able to flexibly price books to get traffic in the store. As does Target. For that matter, so does Amazon. Is there an odd man out there with enough volume to make a difference?) From a competitive landscape perspective - Steve Jobs knew that providing an agency model as a negotiating tool to Macmillan was valuable - I'm wondering what he got back in return? All in all, a very exciting weekend of developments in the eBook economy. All started with the iBook store negotiating between Apple and Macmillan, I'm sure.

adamc 17y ago
Interesting. If it has the effect you postulate, I would expect to see reduced demand for ebooks, and more "piracy" (copyright infringement).
tokenadult 17y ago
Interesting analysis. Yet I think over the next several years authors (who, after all, produce new content) and readers will be thinking about these trade-offs from their own perspectives, and it's not necessarily so that all publishers will agree with Macmillan. High prices produce business opportunities for sellers who offer lower prices.
- mikedouglas 17y ago
  Considering the immaturity of the ebooks market, price variability seems like a good thing. Increased margins (whether the result of higher or lower prices) will let publishers experiment with better typography, lesser known authors and more interactive works. The last thing most of us would like to see would be the ebook market turned into a numbers game such that only mass market paperbacks, poorly converted public domain material, and amateur self-publishers ever get access to the market. How would we have reacted if Apple had announced a $0.99 ceiling for the AppStore?
  - pyre 17y ago
    > amateur self-publishers If amateur self-publishers have access to the market, then how do you figure that non-'mass market paperbacks' don't?
petercooper 17y ago
(And I disagree with Amazon, once they conceed with Macmillan, the rest will want the same deal) But who cares? The big publishers aren't the only publishers out there, and it leaves a lot of scope for smaller, more agile publishers to steal business from the bigger ones selling the overpriced e-books. If Amazon had "won" this one and the big publishers' e-books were all under $10, it'd have done more to hurt entrepreneurs and small publishers since they'd find it a lot harder to compete. Macmillan winning means that, ultimately, they lose. The longer "established" publishers keep high prices on their e-books, the more opportunities there are for top writers to self publish to these new e-book stores. Wouldn't that be great? More money for the authors and a steadily reducing influence by the publishers. It's started to happen in the music industry..
mechanical_fish 17y ago
It hurts the reader, in that they can't get cheap eBooks until a year after they are released One of the lessons I have learned from this debacle is that I should be careful what I wish for. It turns out, according to my favorite authors, that time-sensitive pricing is a huge part of what makes the economics of their business work. After all, an author's hardcore fans are willing to pay more, and time-sensitive pricing -- with books costing more on the day of release, then gradually getting cheaper -- is the established mechanism for extracting that premium. The "hardcover" vs "softcover" vs "remaindered" thing is the industry's way of signalling the different price points. I've suddenly started looking at hardcover buyers with more respect. These people aren't suckers, or at least they aren't mere suckers. They are the patrons, the hardcore fans, that are keeping my favorite writers in business. It would be the height of irony if I eventually got what I used to think was my wish -- flat-rate ebooks at, say, $5 per copy, no premium pricing -- only to see my favorite authors either go out of business or figure out some other way -- exclusive early releases by subscription, the street performer protocol, selling T-shirts, product placement -- to recover the equivalent of the cost of a hardcover book! We're all going to save money in the e-book era, but I'm not really sure it's going to be that much money: Writers and editors and marketers still need to be paid. We'll save on printing and shipping, but that may be about it. There just aren't tons of excess profits sitting around in book publishing: The audiences are too small. I might not even save money on bricks and mortar: I like visiting bookstores or the equivalent, even if just to sit and drink tea while surrounded by media.
- ja30278 17y ago
  There may not be tons of excess profits, but there are certainly tons of efficiencies to be gained by eliminating the print/ship/warehouse model of distribution. I simply don't accept the argument that ebooks can't be sold drastically more cheaply than paper books. To me, there's no reason for the publisher to exist at all (not that the various functions they provide don't need to be done, just that they don't need to be provided by a single large entity). Not to mention that, as sold, Ebooks represent a drastically _worse_ value than paper books. They aren't lendable, they're often linked to a single device, and the right to read them can even be revoked remotely. Publishers are offering a worse product for nearly the same price, while simultaneously crying poor.

synarch 17y ago

Apple is encouraging cartels.

sachinag 17y ago
Sure, but most cartels fall over time as the players find themselves having divergent priorities. And even now, I'm going to tie myself to Amazon's MP3 store. I just got a Pre Plus and I'm never, ever going to buy a song from iTunes again.
- ugh 17y ago
  Why do you tie yourself to anything? There is no more DRM. No need for any tieing. Buy wherever it’s cheapest or where what you want is available. File formats are no problem, webOS plays both MP3 and AAC files.
  - sachinag 17y ago
    I thought the cheaper iTunes downloads are still FairPlay protected AACs and only the $1.29 downloads are DRM free.
    - JeremyBanks 17y ago
      They dropped the price of DRM-free tracks to be the same as DRMed tracks way back, and during the first quarter of last year they removed DRM from all of the songs in their library. Some music videos are still DRMed, but all songs are DRM-free 256 KBps AACs for 99 cents.
    - ugh 17y ago
      No. iTunes went DRM free nearly a year ago. You can’t buy any music with DRM from iTunes even if you wanted to. (That doesn’t apply to some music videos and all other video content as well as iPhone apps.)

petercooper 17y ago

Amazon would have done a lot better out of this if they hadn't pulled the dick move of removing all of Macmillan's irrelevant-to-the-argument print titles. Now we've seen Amazon's true colors. They're not bothered about destroying their entire relationship with you if you want to negotiate on one element of it.

nfnaaron 17y ago

"Macmillan ... are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 "We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative. "Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!" Wow. What a masterfully passive aggressive mash. They made us do it. But they'll see. They will. Will. Also, even if Amazon's posts on that forum are normally signed by "the team," this was a decision by somebody or a small group of somebodies, and it should have been signed by a name. Especially something as masterful as this.

dpapathanasiou 17y ago

It's more than just an indication: "we [Amazon] will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms" ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01amazonweb.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01ama... )

wheels 17y ago

Wow. I'm surprised Amazon didn't leave the hurt on longer, find some way to ensure used stock of the most important Macmillan titles to block revenue to Macmillan, go all out tactical maneuvers on this one. Their not-even two week old impressively ambitious strategy is already cracking and I suspect once one publisher has stiff-armed them, their ability to reel-in the others will be nullified. I don't really have a team I'm rooting for here, but this is as close as I get to watching sports and the quarterback for one team just got taken off the field in a stretcher 2 minutes into the game. Man, and I thought the final bit of this was going to be Bezos vs. Jobs slugging it out over the future of publishing, now it's looking like it'll underwhelm.

gamble 17y ago
Going nuclear on Macmillan was a mistake. It made Amazon look like the bully, and I wouldn't be surprised if it scared the other major publishers into standing behind Macmillan.
- wheels 17y ago
  That's believable. But Amazon basically declared war on book publishers two weeks ago anyway. It's disappointing that when the publishers (predictably) pushed back that Amazon didn't have something more nuanced than this worked out. I figured going nuclear was part of a scorched earth strategy, "You can die now or later..." sort of thing. From the (admittedly, little) that I understand of the publishing industry, it's fragile enough that there was at least uncertainty in what the result of such would be.

Kilimanjaro 17y ago

I never understood why an e-song can be sold for 99cts and an e-book can not. Anybody care to explain the economics of both?

likpok 17y ago
e-songs sell much higher volume. Therefore, e-books must cost more to cover the fixed costs (someone else posted a breakdown of book-costs in an earlier thread). Edit: http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are-no-longer-for-sale-via-amazon/ http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are-no-...
- GavinB 17y ago
  Additionally, the effort required to produce a song is much less. I could write, record, mix, and master a song in a week. A book would take several months just to get a first draft. An album of songs is much closer in terms of production costs, and requires a similarly large effort.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

There's something very weird about this. I'm surprised that they would post this in the Kindle forums, and the tone is just odd: We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. If that's true, then why wait? Just "capitulate" now and get it over with. If you're going to tell the other side that you're going to cave anyway, you've pretty much given up all bargaining power. I see the move to this agency model as such a monumentally bad deal for Amazon that it seems like one of four things must be going on here: a) They've analyzed the situation and know they can't win (unlikely) b) There's a legal reason that they can't do what they're doing (unlikely) c) They're running a more elaborate play than we all realize d) This was posted in error or without authorization

thras 17y ago
e) 5-10 big name publishers threatened Amazon over Macmillan, and they had to choose between backing down or facing a publisher revolt.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  First, I find it very hard to believe that they wouldn't have seen that coming when they first yanked Macmillan's books. Second, even if they did realize that they were going to lose and decided to back down, I find it hard to believe that the best messaging channel is a Kindle forum, and that the best language to use makes you sound like a tiny retailer with no power who has to "capitulate".
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  f) Amazon believes the consumer will eventually force the prices down and this was their method of bringing public attention to the issue. Thus every author posting on their blog today ultimately helps Amazon.
  - wheels 17y ago

tsally 17y ago

An author published by Macmillan did a write up about this on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's blog: http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer-available-on-amazon-com/ http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer-avail... You can probably skip the commentary on free markets, but he has some interesting insight in the actual cost and mechanics of publishing. He explains that at the moment eBooks are the equivalent of selling limited editions of paper books because they just don't have the volume yet.

b3b0p 17y ago

I agree with Amazon's opinion on the prices, but disagree with their action. If the publishers wish to have their items for a certain price, let them. However, I think it's clear they are in for a rude awakening when they see the sales figures. My fear is that the publishers will find a way to blame not their prices, but another variable (Amazon, the devices, something else). Ultimately hindering the availability of books and adoption rate of what could have been an excellent format. Your product is only worth what others are willing to pay and I do not believe I am in the minority when I think that $14.99 (or even $9.99) for many is too much for a non-tangible drm (or not) ebook.

jsz0 17y ago

I'm curious why people think e-books should be so cheap? $15 for a recent release really isn't a bad deal in my opinion. Books are a value compared to most other forms of entertainment. A new release movie costs you $15-$25 and it's only 2 or 3 hours of entertainment. A new release video game costs $50-$60 and is probably pretty close to the number of hours of entertainment a book offers. A CD is $10-$15 for up to 70 minutes of entertainment. That's simplifying it a bit since we should consider the re-consumption value of each medium but I think it's worth considering that a book has quite a bit of consumer value. I think it's also worth considering that the number of people who actually read books has been on the decline for some time. I'm not sure a lower e-book pricing model makes up the difference. Are people more likely to read if a book is $5 instead of $10? Doubtful since libraries have books for free and most people still don't read that much.

bugs 17y ago
Libraries aren't exactly convenient for normal consumers. To go against your video game and cd relation to a book: Video Games are targeted to a very large market and the majority of games today tend to offer much more than 2 or 3 hours of entertainment especially if you take the case of online play; CDs are in a market that is surrounded by piracy and yells of corruption but to take the price point a cd usually offers much more value than 70 minutes of entertainment and one popular way to consume music and purchase it is through itunes which does indeed offer lower prices for basically the same content.
cmelbye 17y ago
Why was this post voted down? It was very insightful. Is voting down if one disagrees with the post okay or something?
Lazlo_Nibble 17y ago
For me (and I don't claim this calculus works for anyone else) an ebook is overpriced if I can get a discounted or used copy of a print version for the same amount or less. The print copy has intrinsic value; I can resell it, lend it out, donate it to a "books for prisoners" program or leave it to my grandkids; it requires no additional hardware, and I'll be able to read it anywhere, anytime for the rest of my life. If I drop it down a sewer grate or forget it in a cab, I'm out no more than the replacement cost of the book (which is probably out in paperback now). If I throw it in a box in the attic and leave it there, barring the Rise of the Silverfish I'll be able to pull the box back down again in ten years and pick right back up reading it again. But the electronic copy has no intrinsic value; I can't resell it, lend it out, or donate it; it requires additional hardware to use, and I can only read it on the platform(s) the vendor allows me to read it on for as long as the vendor allows me to read it. If I'm reading on my PC, I can't change platforms or upgrade my OS unless the proprietary reader software is available for the platform/OS I'm moving to. If the vendor decides to adopt another format or leave the business entirely, my books suddenly have a drop-dead date: once my hardware breaks, I lose the titles I've bought forever. A lot of these issues go away with non-DRMed titles, but in all but a few cases (bulky tech reference titles for example) a DRM-free eBook is still unlikely to be worth as much to me as the print version. And you really don't want to get into the "dollars per hour" argument here. The iPhone game I just finished up cost me a dollar and I got a good 20+ hours of play time out of it. But I can get through an average-sized book in four or five hours, so if I went by price per enjoyment-hour, it'd make that book worth about twenty-five cents. (I'm cheap, but not that cheap...)

gills 17y ago

And...queue Amazon publishing house in 3...2...1...?

ajdecon 17y ago
Which would be interesting to see them try, but I don't think they'd find many takers among popular authors right now. Most of the anti-Amazon press this weekend was generated by authors angry over the stealth delisting of their physical books. It's a community response, too: many of the angry authors did not even publish through MacMillan.

jonknee 17y ago

Ironic that Apple is the one forcing Amazon's hand for not allowing publishers to use the agency model. Steve Jobs went to war with the record labels when they wanted the same thing as Macmillan. Even better is that Amazon went agency for their music sales which put a kink in Apple's plans and caused them to introduce flex pricing and DRM free content. This is all the result of two egos duking it out. Fun to watch.

DannoHung 17y ago

Why are authors going to stick with publishers in 10 years or 20 years or however long it takes for there to be more eBook purchasers than physical book purchasers? I mean, it only took cell phones what, 15 years before they were so common that people in third world nations had them, right?