6 ms·

Anger at Kindle pricing victimizes ratings of new Turow bestseller

26 points by FluidDjango 16y ago

KC8ZKF 16y ago
A lot of the anger seems to come from the fact that an ebook is cheaper to produce and distribute. As if the value of a book is in the wood pulp and ink...
- goodside 16y ago
  For $15.11, you can have the same book on a nicely bound hardback printed on acid-free paper. The production, storage, and delivery of this medium increases the cost of the book by 12 cents. If that 12 cents reflects the actual marginal expense of printing each copy, it begs the question why cheap mass-market paperbacks exist.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    Mass market paperbacks exist as a means of creating market segmentation. Book publishers release an expensive, high-profit version of the book initially and then release a lower cost version of the book later, to rake in volume sales. The result is that people who value the book more will be able to spend more money on it. Today this is done by releasing the high-profit version as a hardback volume and the low-profit version as a paperback, though in reality the production cost differences between the two are comparatively minor. And, as many people notice, after a paperback version comes out often the hardback version will be heavily discounted, nearly to the price of the paperback. But if the versions were identical and merely differently priced many consumers would complain. See also: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...
- ben1040 16y ago
  I think the ebook purchasers are getting a raw deal, but not because of production costs (though I think we all know it doesn't cost 12 cents to print and distribute this book). An ebook has less utility compared to a physical book; if I find an ebook entertaining or insightful I can't loan it to a friend or donate it. Because of that, I expect the price to be discounted by a few dollars. Since buying an iPad I've bought several Kindle ebooks and find them to be a fair price at ~$10 for a book that would cost $15 in dead-tree form. When the price is the same as a physical copy, it's worth it to me to just get the physical book. Getting the book delivered instantly does not, in my mind, outweigh the technical limitations imposed on an ebook.
  - joubert 16y ago
    Are the technical limitations you mention just the DRM, or is there something else as well?
- jonhohle 16y ago
  Why shouldn't it be cheaper? As distribution has gotten cheaper food, physical goods, software, entertainment, and information have all gotten cheaper. Why should books be exempt? Looking at the prices, I would also feel Like as an ebook buyer, I'm either subsidizing the price of the physical version, which must cost more than $0.12 to manufacture and ship, or simply being charged a higher margin for the same (and in some cases lower fidelity) content.
  - cstross 16y ago
    Nope. The cost of producing an ebook is around 90% of the cost of producing a paper book. This only seems counter-intuitive until you realize that 70% of what you pay for a book is slurped down by the retail distribution channel, 10% goes to the author, 10% goes to the publisher, and 10% goes on production costs. More here: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-2-how-books-are-made.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-2-h...
    - joubert 16y ago
      Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but a retail distribution channel is necessary for physical goods (the 70% component you mention), unlike electronic products, which can be distributed at close to zero.
      - protomyth 16y ago
        The web does have costs and they are not "close to zero". People cost money either in salary or contracting.
        joubert 16y ago
        Maybe were not talking about the same aspects of book distribution, but I would estimate physical distribution (inventory keeping, shipping) to cost much more than electronic distribution (uoloading to an ebook store).
- danielford 16y ago
  It's not just the cost of production for me, but also that when I buy an ebook I am decreasing the supply of that book in the used book market. This should cause used versions to be priced more highly, and increase the probability that someone will buy a new book from the publisher.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  I remain unconvinced that anyone but the copy editor and the author are superfluous in the creation of a great work of art. I will concede that there needs to be someone to run a storefront to sell the art, but his costs should be very, very small when the art is non-corporeal.
  - joubert 16y ago
    I agree with you 100%. That's why I co-founded Fifobooks, which is a new DRM-free ebook marketplace, where authors: - retain all the rights to their work - maintain full editorial control - set the price at which their ebooks are sold (and keep majority of the revenue) - there is no fee to publish http://fifobooks.com http://fifobooks.com
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
    That's sort of like saying anyone but the programmer is superfluous in the creation of a startup. Pretty much all startups I see posted here disagree. Most require other people involved. Sales, support, marketing, and even investors. Than you need people to manage that. At the same time, publishers can do something others can't: Provide an advance, something a lot of authors need to be able to write their books.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Media pricing is currently pathological. Even for printed books the cost of production is relatively minor compared to the total price, and the artists tend to take away a relatively small portion of total revenue. If a book costs 10x as much to produce or has 1/100th the sales as another book that has almost no effect on the overall pricing. Unfortunately, consumers now expect books (and CDs and movies) to have flat, wholesale-style pricing. As if they were a commodity. Worse yet we have this bizarre hard back / paper back staged release process for books used to extract profit for in demand books. A model which doesn't work at all for ebooks. I don't know what the answer is and I suspect that consumers may be too inflexible, at least in the near term, to allow for much price variability on ebooks. If that's the case then we may end up in a very bad situation for authors and new literature in general for a very long time.
- bobbyi 16y ago
  The hardback/ paperback model is that early adopters are charged more and then the price is brought down later for people who are willing to wait. I don't see why that couldn't work for ebooks if people were willing to accept it.
  - InclinedPlane 16y ago
    The problem is that consumers are likely to reject, or be upset by, paying more for an identical version. If book publishers got rid of hardbacks and started introducing paperbacks at the same retail price as hardbacks used to cost, the market would probably not respond well. With ebooks it's even worse, since a lot of benefits of books (ability to loan and resell, quality of layout and production, etc.) are lost for ebooks and not necessarily made up for by some of the increases in convenience. I don't think a simplistic initial price premium is the answer to this problem but I also don't know what the answer is.
  - kgermino 16y ago
    Yes, that's why the publishers do it but they get away with it because many people see a hardback book as being more valuable than a paperback one despite the fact that they both cost about the same to make. Sure the only people who regularly but hardbacks are early adopters but they don't see themselves as paying extra because they are early adopters they see themselves as paying extra because their buying a better quality hardback book. This is different from a tech early adopter who knows that they are paying extra for the same thing in order to have it first. Yes it could work if people accepted it but I don't see people accepting it without there being something extra (maybe a forward from the author where the story only version of the book isn't released for a few weeks) that they can justify paying extra for.
pneill 16y ago
Oh, this is nothing. You want to be outraged, take a look at the "Intelligent Investor" on Amazon. The kindle edition is 5 DOLLARS more than the printed version. What the what!!!!
russell 16y ago
Charlie Stross has done a series of interesting posts "Common Misconceptions About Publishing" at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m... The take-away is that ink to dead trees is a small part of the cost of publishing a book. Personally I dont believe its only 12 cents. It appears to me that Amazon squeezes the cost of a print book and lets the publishers set the Kindle price.
- dpapathanasiou 16y ago
  Personally I dont believe its only 12 cents. According to "The Insider's Guide to Getting Published" (http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-Getting-Published-Manuscript/dp/0385479360 http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-Getting-Published-Manus...), a book that sells for $20 costs $2 to produce. That book is a little dated (1996), but I'd be surprised if the cost structure has changed that much. The book goes on to explain why it's difficult to make money in traditional publishing, even with those margins. It appears to me that Amazon squeezes the cost of a print book and lets the publishers set the Kindle price. Not sure about the former, but the latter is definitely true: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01amazonweb.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01ama...
CapitalistCartr 16y ago
Price is not a multiple of cost: it is set by the market. Kindle is a closed platform owned by Amazon, and they can charge all the market will bear. That's the downside of closed platforms.
- thwarted 16y ago
  Charging what the market will bear is the duty of sellers in a free market. This has nothing to do with a platform being closed or not. Open platforms don't exist outside the market, they compete in same economy that the closed platforms are in.
blehn 16y ago
I've been seeing this a lot recently, and I find it really annoying. The reviews are not the place to voice your pricing concerns; they should be used to review product quality. This sort of abuse completely undermines the usefulness of the system.
- hexis 16y ago
  I have to completely disagree. Amazon.com is a store, not wikipedia, and price is a hugely important factor. If folks are unhappy with the pricing on amazon.com, then amazon.com is exactly the right place for it. In particular, if folks are unhappy with the pricing of a particular item, then the review section for that item is precisely the right place to complain. They are reviewing a product that is being offered for sale. Price is crucial and relevant.
  - billswift 16y ago
    I agree, something might be a great deal for one price and totally unacceptable at another - price matters. Of course, Amazon is partially at fault for combining different editions in the reviews. I have been annoyed at how hard it is to compare different editions of computer books, for example, to decide whether to buy a newer edition or not.
  - blehn 16y ago
    Price is relevant in terms of the product value. If you buy a $1000 set of tupperware from Amazon, and they melt in the dishwasher, by all means, give the product a low rating because the item's performance does not justify it's price. These book reviews are different, though. People are giving 1 star reviews without having read the book, because they don't agree with the price. They are giving 1 star reviews for books that are not available on Kindle. They are not qualified to review the item because they have not used it. Whether or not the complaints are valid, the review section is the wrong venue for voicing them.

26 points by FluidDjango 16y ago

A lot of the anger seems to come from the fact that an ebook is cheaper to produce and distribute. As if the value of a book is in the wood pulp and ink...

goodside 16y ago
For $15.11, you can have the same book on a nicely bound hardback printed on acid-free paper. The production, storage, and delivery of this medium increases the cost of the book by 12 cents. If that 12 cents reflects the actual marginal expense of printing each copy, it begs the question why cheap mass-market paperbacks exist.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Mass market paperbacks exist as a means of creating market segmentation. Book publishers release an expensive, high-profit version of the book initially and then release a lower cost version of the book later, to rake in volume sales. The result is that people who value the book more will be able to spend more money on it. Today this is done by releasing the high-profit version as a hardback volume and the low-profit version as a paperback, though in reality the production cost differences between the two are comparatively minor. And, as many people notice, after a paperback version comes out often the hardback version will be heavily discounted, nearly to the price of the paperback. But if the versions were identical and merely differently priced many consumers would complain. See also: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...
ben1040 16y ago
I think the ebook purchasers are getting a raw deal, but not because of production costs (though I think we all know it doesn't cost 12 cents to print and distribute this book). An ebook has less utility compared to a physical book; if I find an ebook entertaining or insightful I can't loan it to a friend or donate it. Because of that, I expect the price to be discounted by a few dollars. Since buying an iPad I've bought several Kindle ebooks and find them to be a fair price at ~$10 for a book that would cost $15 in dead-tree form. When the price is the same as a physical copy, it's worth it to me to just get the physical book. Getting the book delivered instantly does not, in my mind, outweigh the technical limitations imposed on an ebook.
- joubert 16y ago
  Are the technical limitations you mention just the DRM, or is there something else as well?
jonhohle 16y ago
Why shouldn't it be cheaper? As distribution has gotten cheaper food, physical goods, software, entertainment, and information have all gotten cheaper. Why should books be exempt? Looking at the prices, I would also feel Like as an ebook buyer, I'm either subsidizing the price of the physical version, which must cost more than $0.12 to manufacture and ship, or simply being charged a higher margin for the same (and in some cases lower fidelity) content.
- cstross 16y ago
  Nope. The cost of producing an ebook is around 90% of the cost of producing a paper book. This only seems counter-intuitive until you realize that 70% of what you pay for a book is slurped down by the retail distribution channel, 10% goes to the author, 10% goes to the publisher, and 10% goes on production costs. More here: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-2-how-books-are-made.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-2-h...
  - joubert 16y ago
    Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but a retail distribution channel is necessary for physical goods (the 70% component you mention), unlike electronic products, which can be distributed at close to zero.
    - protomyth 16y ago
      The web does have costs and they are not "close to zero". People cost money either in salary or contracting.
      - joubert 16y ago
        Maybe were not talking about the same aspects of book distribution, but I would estimate physical distribution (inventory keeping, shipping) to cost much more than electronic distribution (uoloading to an ebook store).
danielford 16y ago
It's not just the cost of production for me, but also that when I buy an ebook I am decreasing the supply of that book in the used book market. This should cause used versions to be priced more highly, and increase the probability that someone will buy a new book from the publisher.
DannoHung 16y ago
I remain unconvinced that anyone but the copy editor and the author are superfluous in the creation of a great work of art. I will concede that there needs to be someone to run a storefront to sell the art, but his costs should be very, very small when the art is non-corporeal.
- joubert 16y ago
  I agree with you 100%. That's why I co-founded Fifobooks, which is a new DRM-free ebook marketplace, where authors: - retain all the rights to their work - maintain full editorial control - set the price at which their ebooks are sold (and keep majority of the revenue) - there is no fee to publish http://fifobooks.com http://fifobooks.com
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  That's sort of like saying anyone but the programmer is superfluous in the creation of a startup. Pretty much all startups I see posted here disagree. Most require other people involved. Sales, support, marketing, and even investors. Than you need people to manage that. At the same time, publishers can do something others can't: Provide an advance, something a lot of authors need to be able to write their books.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Media pricing is currently pathological. Even for printed books the cost of production is relatively minor compared to the total price, and the artists tend to take away a relatively small portion of total revenue. If a book costs 10x as much to produce or has 1/100th the sales as another book that has almost no effect on the overall pricing. Unfortunately, consumers now expect books (and CDs and movies) to have flat, wholesale-style pricing. As if they were a commodity. Worse yet we have this bizarre hard back / paper back staged release process for books used to extract profit for in demand books. A model which doesn't work at all for ebooks. I don't know what the answer is and I suspect that consumers may be too inflexible, at least in the near term, to allow for much price variability on ebooks. If that's the case then we may end up in a very bad situation for authors and new literature in general for a very long time.

bobbyi 16y ago
The hardback/ paperback model is that early adopters are charged more and then the price is brought down later for people who are willing to wait. I don't see why that couldn't work for ebooks if people were willing to accept it.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  The problem is that consumers are likely to reject, or be upset by, paying more for an identical version. If book publishers got rid of hardbacks and started introducing paperbacks at the same retail price as hardbacks used to cost, the market would probably not respond well. With ebooks it's even worse, since a lot of benefits of books (ability to loan and resell, quality of layout and production, etc.) are lost for ebooks and not necessarily made up for by some of the increases in convenience. I don't think a simplistic initial price premium is the answer to this problem but I also don't know what the answer is.
- kgermino 16y ago
  Yes, that's why the publishers do it but they get away with it because many people see a hardback book as being more valuable than a paperback one despite the fact that they both cost about the same to make. Sure the only people who regularly but hardbacks are early adopters but they don't see themselves as paying extra because they are early adopters they see themselves as paying extra because their buying a better quality hardback book. This is different from a tech early adopter who knows that they are paying extra for the same thing in order to have it first. Yes it could work if people accepted it but I don't see people accepting it without there being something extra (maybe a forward from the author where the story only version of the book isn't released for a few weeks) that they can justify paying extra for.

pneill 16y ago

Oh, this is nothing. You want to be outraged, take a look at the "Intelligent Investor" on Amazon. The kindle edition is 5 DOLLARS more than the printed version. What the what!!!!

russell 16y ago

Charlie Stross has done a series of interesting posts "Common Misconceptions About Publishing" at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-misconceptions-about-pu-1.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m... The take-away is that ink to dead trees is a small part of the cost of publishing a book. Personally I dont believe its only 12 cents. It appears to me that Amazon squeezes the cost of a print book and lets the publishers set the Kindle price.

dpapathanasiou 16y ago
Personally I dont believe its only 12 cents. According to "The Insider's Guide to Getting Published" (http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-Getting-Published-Manuscript/dp/0385479360 http://www.amazon.com/Insiders-Guide-Getting-Published-Manus...), a book that sells for $20 costs $2 to produce. That book is a little dated (1996), but I'd be surprised if the cost structure has changed that much. The book goes on to explain why it's difficult to make money in traditional publishing, even with those margins. It appears to me that Amazon squeezes the cost of a print book and lets the publishers set the Kindle price. Not sure about the former, but the latter is definitely true: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01amazonweb.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/technology/companies/01ama...

CapitalistCartr 16y ago

Price is not a multiple of cost: it is set by the market. Kindle is a closed platform owned by Amazon, and they can charge all the market will bear. That's the downside of closed platforms.

thwarted 16y ago
Charging what the market will bear is the duty of sellers in a free market. This has nothing to do with a platform being closed or not. Open platforms don't exist outside the market, they compete in same economy that the closed platforms are in.

blehn 16y ago

I've been seeing this a lot recently, and I find it really annoying. The reviews are not the place to voice your pricing concerns; they should be used to review product quality. This sort of abuse completely undermines the usefulness of the system.

hexis 16y ago
I have to completely disagree. Amazon.com is a store, not wikipedia, and price is a hugely important factor. If folks are unhappy with the pricing on amazon.com, then amazon.com is exactly the right place for it. In particular, if folks are unhappy with the pricing of a particular item, then the review section for that item is precisely the right place to complain. They are reviewing a product that is being offered for sale. Price is crucial and relevant.
- billswift 16y ago
  I agree, something might be a great deal for one price and totally unacceptable at another - price matters. Of course, Amazon is partially at fault for combining different editions in the reviews. I have been annoyed at how hard it is to compare different editions of computer books, for example, to decide whether to buy a newer edition or not.
- blehn 16y ago
  Price is relevant in terms of the product value. If you buy a $1000 set of tupperware from Amazon, and they melt in the dishwasher, by all means, give the product a low rating because the item's performance does not justify it's price. These book reviews are different, though. People are giving 1 star reviews without having read the book, because they don't agree with the price. They are giving 1 star reviews for books that are not available on Kindle. They are not qualified to review the item because they have not used it. Whether or not the complaints are valid, the review section is the wrong venue for voicing them.