4 ms·

We believe 35% should go to the author, 35% to the publisher and 30% to Amazon. What do publishers even do with regards to e-book distribution? Are they going

by coryl 12y ago

We believe 35% should go to the author, 35% to the publisher and 30% to Amazon. What do publishers even do with regards to e-book distribution? Are they going the way of the record label company?

krschultz 12y ago
The publishers and record labels are doing the same thing they were before - curation and editing. The book printers & CD burners are out of the mix, but they were never that expensive anyway. There are still fixed costs associated with a book (editor) or an album (studio time), not to mention the marketing costs. Are they worth 35% of the profit? I don't think so. But probably more than 0%. I personally think it should be 70% author, 20% publisher, 10% Amazon.
- JohnTHaller 12y ago
  The publisher can always sell directly as an unencrypted EPUB and MOBI (works on Kindle) to the consumer and set their own pricing and percentages.
  - notatoad 12y ago
    they can, and many try, but for the most part people don't buy books outside of their chosen e-reader platform (ibooks, kindle store, kobo). Amazon has significant value to add that they've built up over time and that publishers can't easily get: recommendations, integration with e-reader devices, a huge amount of traffic, and a huge number of people with one-click purchasing already set up.
  - lesterbuck 12y ago
    Not exactly. Turns out you can sell via Amazon, or you can sell directly, but if you use the undocumented Amazon-only tool to construct your .mobi, you can't sell that directly. And Amazon is now blocking the output of many/all other ebook construction software so you can't use Send to Kindle or email. USB is the only option to load a book. http://devblog.avdi.org/2014/04/02/why-does-amazon-hate-ebook-authors/ http://devblog.avdi.org/2014/04/02/why-does-amazon-hate-eboo...
    - jamesbritt 12y ago
      You can use numerous other tools to create the mobi and sell that eleswhere while you also sell the kindle mobi on Amazon. I've yet to run into a problem sending all sorts of files, ebook or otherwise (aside from epub), to my Kindle. That article seems to overstate issues with generating files readable on Kindle.
    - mintplant2 12y ago
      Just yesterday I used http://epub2mobi.com/ http://epub2mobi.com/ to convert a public domain ePub file to MOBI, then sent that to my Kindle's email address. It was delivered wirelessly to my Kindle. Are you sure this hasn't changed? Or is epub2mobi doing something to circumvent this?
    - krschultz 12y ago
      I buy my OReilly books direct and send them to my Kindle all the time. They even work in the Kindle cloud reader on my desktop.
    - mcguire 12y ago
      On the other hand, I've had absolutely no problems pointing a tablet's browser at a .mobi's URL and downloading it directly to ebook reading software. (Do modern Kindle readers not include browsers? I've never looked on mine.)
  - tjl 12y ago
    Do you know which publisher sells for all your favourite authors? I certainly know for some of them, but not others. What about when you just hear about a book from someone? This is why people go to bookstores. I'd be a lot happier if everyone went to no-DRM or at least interchangeable DRM so you could move to a different e-reader. Amazon and iBooks are the odd ones out. iBooks doesn't have a big marketshare, but Amazon definitely does.
    - mcguire 12y ago
      There's this thing, on the internet. It's specifically designed for locating the publisher of a given author. We call it a "search engine". :-) I personally go to bookstores to find books and authors that I've never heard of before---something that is actually quite hard to do online.
- coryl 12y ago
  10% is far too little. Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices, handling payment/currency, and all the dirty work necessary to get the device in the hands of the customer in the first place.
  - Anechoic 12y ago
    Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices Which shouldn't that be built into the price of those devices?
    - walterbell 12y ago
      If it was, there would be a healthy e-reader market with competing devices and choices for consumers, which would deprive Amazon of business leverage over content distribution. Barnes & Noble had a brief moment of glory when their first Nook color tablet was cheaper, better and unlocked. Devs were selling rooted Android SD cards on eBay. If BN had opened up the hardware, they had a chance of gaining the scale needed to compete with Kindle. Instead, BN went the other way, locked down Nooks, created their own App Store with poor selection and the rest is history. Apple has managed to charge premium prices for devices (enabling a market for many cheaper competitors) AND keep leverage on app/content distribution. Digital publishing needs to separate distribution from payment. Convert "pirates" into "free logistics services" and focus on customers connecting more closely with authors. Why can't authors accept elastic (value-based, pay-what-you-want) bitcoin payments?
      - tjl 12y ago
        A big problem with the competing device market is that books aren't portable between Amazon and alternatives (but they are between the alternatives). So, if you've bought a number of e-books on Amazon, switching becomes much more difficult.
        walterbell 12y ago
        Some people use Calibre.
- robbiemitchell 12y ago
  It seems Amazon is effectively the entire market: customers, distribution, payment. If Amazon were worth only 10%, it would be irrelevant and publishers would go elsewhere. If the combined value to an author of a publisher and Amazon were only 30%, they wouldn't rely on either so heavily. But here we are.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    I think this is one of those points where a lot of people on HN will think in terms of COGS, but because Amazon is effectively offering your products at such a large market, the 70% of revenue you'll get through amazon is worth a lot more than the 100% you'd get without going through them (and by definition, more than the 30% they're getting).
wdewind 12y ago
They are giving people advances so that they can live while they write the book full time. An example is someone who used to be a journalist can use their success as a journalist to sign a book deal and work on that. It's similar to raising a seed round. IMO they are going the way of the record label. Some publishing houses and record labels will continue to add value, while larger ones who used to use their brand to add value and had scaled to a point where that is their main value proposition are going to have a hard time, as we are seeing right now in OP.
- thinkling 12y ago
  Publishers are kickstarter for authors, raising the money from previous book sales by other authors... :-p
rbehrends 12y ago
First of all, ebooks still make up only a fraction of the book market (especially outside the US). Most big publishers will have to support hardcover, paperback, and ebook version in parallel and price them so that they make a profit for everything combined. Hardcover and paperback versions are not going to go away anytime soon, either. Second, publishers also make losses on books that don't sell and that they have to recover. The majority of books don't actually sell a whole lot of copies, so the fixed costs associated with producing a book can be a pretty high percentage of revenues for the average book. Finally, publishers provide editing, translation into foreign languages or negotiation with foreign publishers (assuming your agent didn't retain translation/foreign publication rights), production, marketing, accounting and sales services, distribution, and warehousing (for dead tree books). Note also that you can equally ask what Amazon provides with regards to ebook distribution: In the end, it's just another middleman that got a head start because it was first to market with the Kindle, but is otherwise unnecessary. In some markets, publishers selling directly to readers (on non-Kindle platforms) makes up a significant part of sales.
matthewowen 12y ago
Editing takes a lot of time. They also assume some risk by paying advances. Are venture capital firms going to go the way of the record label company?

by coryl 12y ago

We believe 35% should go to the author, 35% to the publisher and 30% to Amazon. What do publishers even do with regards to e-book distribution? Are they going the way of the record label company?

krschultz 12y ago

The publishers and record labels are doing the same thing they were before - curation and editing. The book printers & CD burners are out of the mix, but they were never that expensive anyway. There are still fixed costs associated with a book (editor) or an album (studio time), not to mention the marketing costs. Are they worth 35% of the profit? I don't think so. But probably more than 0%. I personally think it should be 70% author, 20% publisher, 10% Amazon.

JohnTHaller 12y ago
The publisher can always sell directly as an unencrypted EPUB and MOBI (works on Kindle) to the consumer and set their own pricing and percentages.
- notatoad 12y ago
  they can, and many try, but for the most part people don't buy books outside of their chosen e-reader platform (ibooks, kindle store, kobo). Amazon has significant value to add that they've built up over time and that publishers can't easily get: recommendations, integration with e-reader devices, a huge amount of traffic, and a huge number of people with one-click purchasing already set up.
- lesterbuck 12y ago
  Not exactly. Turns out you can sell via Amazon, or you can sell directly, but if you use the undocumented Amazon-only tool to construct your .mobi, you can't sell that directly. And Amazon is now blocking the output of many/all other ebook construction software so you can't use Send to Kindle or email. USB is the only option to load a book. http://devblog.avdi.org/2014/04/02/why-does-amazon-hate-ebook-authors/ http://devblog.avdi.org/2014/04/02/why-does-amazon-hate-eboo...
  - jamesbritt 12y ago
    You can use numerous other tools to create the mobi and sell that eleswhere while you also sell the kindle mobi on Amazon. I've yet to run into a problem sending all sorts of files, ebook or otherwise (aside from epub), to my Kindle. That article seems to overstate issues with generating files readable on Kindle.
  - mintplant2 12y ago
    Just yesterday I used http://epub2mobi.com/ http://epub2mobi.com/ to convert a public domain ePub file to MOBI, then sent that to my Kindle's email address. It was delivered wirelessly to my Kindle. Are you sure this hasn't changed? Or is epub2mobi doing something to circumvent this?
  - krschultz 12y ago
    I buy my OReilly books direct and send them to my Kindle all the time. They even work in the Kindle cloud reader on my desktop.
  - mcguire 12y ago
    On the other hand, I've had absolutely no problems pointing a tablet's browser at a .mobi's URL and downloading it directly to ebook reading software. (Do modern Kindle readers not include browsers? I've never looked on mine.)
- tjl 12y ago
  Do you know which publisher sells for all your favourite authors? I certainly know for some of them, but not others. What about when you just hear about a book from someone? This is why people go to bookstores. I'd be a lot happier if everyone went to no-DRM or at least interchangeable DRM so you could move to a different e-reader. Amazon and iBooks are the odd ones out. iBooks doesn't have a big marketshare, but Amazon definitely does.
  - mcguire 12y ago
    There's this thing, on the internet. It's specifically designed for locating the publisher of a given author. We call it a "search engine". :-) I personally go to bookstores to find books and authors that I've never heard of before---something that is actually quite hard to do online.
coryl 12y ago
10% is far too little. Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices, handling payment/currency, and all the dirty work necessary to get the device in the hands of the customer in the first place.
- Anechoic 12y ago
  Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices Which shouldn't that be built into the price of those devices?
  - walterbell 12y ago
    If it was, there would be a healthy e-reader market with competing devices and choices for consumers, which would deprive Amazon of business leverage over content distribution. Barnes & Noble had a brief moment of glory when their first Nook color tablet was cheaper, better and unlocked. Devs were selling rooted Android SD cards on eBay. If BN had opened up the hardware, they had a chance of gaining the scale needed to compete with Kindle. Instead, BN went the other way, locked down Nooks, created their own App Store with poor selection and the rest is history. Apple has managed to charge premium prices for devices (enabling a market for many cheaper competitors) AND keep leverage on app/content distribution. Digital publishing needs to separate distribution from payment. Convert "pirates" into "free logistics services" and focus on customers connecting more closely with authors. Why can't authors accept elastic (value-based, pay-what-you-want) bitcoin payments?
    - tjl 12y ago
      A big problem with the competing device market is that books aren't portable between Amazon and alternatives (but they are between the alternatives). So, if you've bought a number of e-books on Amazon, switching becomes much more difficult.
      - walterbell 12y ago
        Some people use Calibre.
robbiemitchell 12y ago
It seems Amazon is effectively the entire market: customers, distribution, payment. If Amazon were worth only 10%, it would be irrelevant and publishers would go elsewhere. If the combined value to an author of a publisher and Amazon were only 30%, they wouldn't rely on either so heavily. But here we are.
- rtpg 12y ago
  I think this is one of those points where a lot of people on HN will think in terms of COGS, but because Amazon is effectively offering your products at such a large market, the 70% of revenue you'll get through amazon is worth a lot more than the 100% you'd get without going through them (and by definition, more than the 30% they're getting).

wdewind 12y ago

They are giving people advances so that they can live while they write the book full time. An example is someone who used to be a journalist can use their success as a journalist to sign a book deal and work on that. It's similar to raising a seed round. IMO they are going the way of the record label. Some publishing houses and record labels will continue to add value, while larger ones who used to use their brand to add value and had scaled to a point where that is their main value proposition are going to have a hard time, as we are seeing right now in OP.

thinkling 12y ago
Publishers are kickstarter for authors, raising the money from previous book sales by other authors... :-p

rbehrends 12y ago

First of all, ebooks still make up only a fraction of the book market (especially outside the US). Most big publishers will have to support hardcover, paperback, and ebook version in parallel and price them so that they make a profit for everything combined. Hardcover and paperback versions are not going to go away anytime soon, either. Second, publishers also make losses on books that don't sell and that they have to recover. The majority of books don't actually sell a whole lot of copies, so the fixed costs associated with producing a book can be a pretty high percentage of revenues for the average book. Finally, publishers provide editing, translation into foreign languages or negotiation with foreign publishers (assuming your agent didn't retain translation/foreign publication rights), production, marketing, accounting and sales services, distribution, and warehousing (for dead tree books). Note also that you can equally ask what Amazon provides with regards to ebook distribution: In the end, it's just another middleman that got a head start because it was first to market with the Kindle, but is otherwise unnecessary. In some markets, publishers selling directly to readers (on non-Kindle platforms) makes up a significant part of sales.

matthewowen 12y ago

Editing takes a lot of time. They also assume some risk by paying advances. Are venture capital firms going to go the way of the record label company?