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Publishers line up against Amazon’s $9.99 e-books
- ryanelkins 17y agoI find it a little odd that Apple, which really seemed to drive adoption of digital music sales with 99 cent songs, seems to now have a hand in driving digital book sales, although by pushing the relative price upwards. It will be interesting to see where the price point is that enough people are willing to buy a book rather than pirate it.
- wmf 17y agoThe music industry felt a little burned by the whole 99 cent experience, and I suspect the movie and book people learned from that. Also, Amazon already tried the "bully the publishers" play so Apple is doing something different.
- petercooper 17y agoAwesome. Let the big publishers shoot themselves in the foot so that small publishers and independent authors can undercut them, yet still make more money per book. With the end-to-end digital process, you'll see a lot of authors selling independently (as has already started on the Kindle) and publishers will be caught on the back foot. Readers will vote with their dollars and smart authors will skip the publishers and provide what readers want without them.
- clistctrl 17y agoThis may be possible, but I think part of the value a publisher brings an author is editing/review services.
- petercooper 17y agoI agree, and it won't work for a lot of authors yet, but I see no reason why a smart, modern author can't become better at dealing with business, marketing, and publishing and outsourcing or performing certain editorial functions. (Of course, you could argue that a publisher is better value for money, but authors need to calculate that for themselves.) Once upon a time, putting together a community newsletter or a magazine was a big, difficult job that involved many people. Now you can use DTP, graphics editors, on demand printing, etc (such as MagCloud), and get great results by yourself. Similar advances are being made (and will continue to be made) in writing/publishing.
- MikeCapone 17y agoYeah, that's what I'd like to see. A lot of companies specializing in offering reviewing/editorial/typography services to authors (for a fixed fee?) who are otherwise selling their books directly to the public via digital platforms like Amazon and Apple's iBooks.
- clistctrl 17y agoMaybe a good YC candidate? :)
- petercooper 17y agohttp://www.inkling.com/ http://www.inkling.com/ is doing stuff like this for textbook authors and publishers. But, yeah, totally. It's not just all about typography, editing, etc, but the interaction design too. There are lots of opportunities to pioneer here, even down to producing individual book apps for the regular app store (so iPhone users can read too, or for better interfaces).
- chromatic 17y agoI've considered selling editorial services. I haven't figured out how to market them, though -- nor a cost strategy.
- stan_rogers 17y agoYou might try checking the existing services selling on, say, Lulu.com -- there are a number of price points with various expectations of service, from the merely editorial to editorial/design/typography, and covering the gamut from the family Christmas album to multi-volume academic tomes. There's got to be a niche or two that isn't being hit or that could use a competitive bump or two. If you can offer Kindle-formatted and Mobipocket in addition to the standard PDF (and make 'em all work right and look good), there's a bit of value-added right there. (And if you can build a tool set to do the majority of the grunt work, you can do it either more cheaply or in higher volumes than the competition.) I'd do it myself, but I'm the type who can "correct" a Douglas Adams until it reads like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and I'd have to pay people for the privilege (negative pricing).
- dagw 17y agoYou're assuming that books by different authors are interchangeable goods. If had to choose between buying the latest book by my favourite author for $21 or three books by independent authors that I've never heard of for $7 each, I'll go with my favourite author. When it comes to books I buy what I like and price is pretty much irrelevant. So yes I do vote with my dollars, and I vote quality first.
- petercooper 17y agoSure you do, but let's say a small publisher like the Pragmatic Programmers managed to roll out a $8.99 iPad e-book on a new technology (let's say Clojure) and O'Reilly's was selling for $14.99.. well, the choice would be more difficult, no? In many niches, books are interchangeable.. at least until the reviews come out ;-) Luckily with many tech and non-fiction books, the author isn't quite as important as when you're buying fiction or high profile books from the likes of Seth Godin or Malcolm Gladwell. Those guys will always be able to charge the premium rates :-)
- MikeCapone 17y agoOnce e-books are widespread enough, your favorite author could go solo, sell for less, and still make more money. And you'd get the book you want.
- petercooper 17y agoCan you even imagine how much money J K Rowling could make if she hired a few people to run a self publishing outfit and then sold her latest scrawl on the App Store and iBookstore at $9.99 a pop? Not that she needs any more money at this point, of course..
- dagw 17y agoHonesty. I think she'd make less money than going the traditional way. JK Rowling is big enough to basically make up her own terms and browbeat her publisher into accepting it.
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- CWuestefeld 17y agoIt would be nice if that were true. But with MP3.com (before they went insane and threw out their business model), there were a lot of quality acts whose material you could buy for very reasonable prices, but it never really got much traction.
- petercooper 17y agoA problem with MP3.com, though, was that the store itself didn't get much traction.. so getting traction as an artist within that store was hard going. The iPhone App Store (and eventually the iBookstore) already has traction and if you're in there, it's a lot easier to convince people to buy. If you need to sell your customers on the store and your book, you're screwed.
- protomyth 17y agoI think the more important part of the story is the % a publisher gets and the relationship between the publishers and Amazon / Apple. I would really like to see some analysis of how the different models worked and who got what. I still think publishers are important for editorial. I wonder if a group of editors will create a company to do the "editing, ebook production, accounting" part of the chain and take like a 5 - 10% cut of the book.
- chromatic 17y agoIt's probably not feasible for the editors and producers at five or ten percent; it might start to make sense at 20%.
- protomyth 17y agoso do you think: 30% eBook shop (e.g. Amazon, iTunes), 20% editors / producers, and 50% authors?
- chromatic 17y ago30% for the distributor seems high, especially compared to the editors. I'd rather see 20% distributor, 30% editor / producer, 50% author. For physical copies, the numbers are much different, especially because initial costs are higher.
- protomyth 17y agoI guess the 30% is generally there because of high credit card fees. I wonder if Amazon / Apple has a min price for ebooks?
- gamble 17y agoI hope it doesn't take a decade for the publishing industry to come to the same conclusion as the music business and ditch DRM. There's no way that I'm going to spend $15 on a book that can only be read using a specific device and depends on the manufacturer maintaining an authentication server in perpetuity.
- smokey_the_bear 17y agoI wish amazon would bundle the ebook with the physical book for an extra dollar or something. I've often gone to buy a book, and thought maybe I'd buy the ebook so I could start reading it immediately on my iphone. But then it's not substantially cheaper than the physical book, and I decide I'd prefer the physical book.