If you're looking for an old favorite or a lost “gem,” many long out-of-print titles by popular authors are finally available again. Every week, we feature a handful of titles from the hundreds on our site. Be sure to check out the latest featured titles!
What Publishers Can Learn From Cablevision-ABC Feud
When the publishers of #1 bestselling hardcover Game Change windowed the e-book edition rather than issue it simultaneously, Kindle owners protested by deliberately downgrading the book in their Amazon reviews. Their action, which fell somewhere between populist revolt and temper tantrum, elicited an editorial by Publishers Lunch's Michael Cader urging publishers to do a better job educating the public. "Publishing people who care about these pricing discussions need to get in the online forums and start issuing press releases and find other ways to address readers honestly about price," he said. We agreed with him.
We've changed our minds.
What made us change our minds was the confrontation between Cablevision and ABC over how much the cable provider should pay ABC to carry its programs. Held as hostage was the Academy Awards, one of the most watched shows on the annual television calendar.
The reaction of subscribers was identical to that of Kindle owners deprived of Game Change. They didn't understand the issues, nor did they give a damn who was in the wrong. They wanted their Academy Awards, and they wanted them now. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, said this about the blackout: "When pulling a signal becomes the nuclear option in negotiation, it inflicts collateral damage on consumers who pay their bills and have done nothing wrong. Someone needs to be speaking up for them in this dispute and those like them, and make no mistake, this is the latest example of consumers getting caught in the middle because the high stakes incentives created in these negotiations are not working for the average customer who just expects their programming to be there when they want it."
Fortunately for the average customer, the dispute was settled in time. (Actually about 18 minutes late, occasioning the wry observation by New York Magazine's blogger that subscribers blessedly missed the egg laid by co-hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.)
The moral of Cablevision vs. ABC as far as the publishing industry is concerned is that consumers have no patience for such arcane issues as windowing, loss leader pricing or agency business models. They expect their book when they hit Download and they want it at a reasonable price. Educational initiatives are a waste of time. We need to get our pricing act together. Though there is no Academy Awards show to bring us to the brink of catastrophe, the e-book industry will not realize its full potential until we provide our products reliably and at prices that make sense to customers.
TrueSlant.com blogger Roger Theriault has picked up a story from the MobileRead forums that Random House will go against the recent rush by its Big Six buddies to the "agency" e-book retail model recently introduced by Apple.
Apple's approach is for publishers to retain control over the list price, rather than allowing the list price to be pegged by the e-tailer, as is currently employed by Amazon. It also allows publishers flexibility in timing release of e-books - delaying them rather than releasing them simultaneously with publication of hardcover editions.
Random's decision is based on two approaches to e-book publishing that are at odds with the philosophy of at least three of its fellow publishers. A RH spokesperson voiced the opinion that publishers “have no real experience at setting retail prices.” That explains why Random held back from embracing Apple's iPad tablet. The other reason is timing of e-book releases. “Our current policy is we release e-books at the same time as physical books,” she said. "I haven’t been convinced that it’s good for the author or consumer to delay the release."
You Wanna Turn Us Off Too? Murdoch Voices Harper Opposition to Amazon's $9.99 Cap
Business World reports that HarperCollins owner Rupert Murdoch took a swipe at Amazon's $9.99 e-book price, boosting Macmillan's lonely public stand against the retailer's rigid pricing tactics. "We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at USD 9.99," he said, calling for a renegotiation of Harper's deal with Amazon, and Amazon said it's ready to hear what he has to say.
Murdoch acknowledged that he stands to lose money by opposing $9.99. "They pay us the wholesale price of USD 14 or whatever we charge," he said, referring to the wholesale price that Amazon might pay to Harper for a $28.00 e-book. "But I think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books." Amazon takes a loss on such transactions but has used the loss-leader strategy to gain a dominant position for its Kindle e-book reader. It's worked so far but publishers have worried that a day of reckoning will come in the form of a demand by Amazon that publishers lower their wholesale prices to accommodate that $9.99 retail price.
Though he didn't refer to Macmillan, Murdoch's position mirrors Macmillan's and clearly indicates that the new e-book retail model introduced by Apple as part of its iPad tablet rollout has united the publishing community. "Apple, in its agreement with us, which has not been disclosed in detail, does allow for a variety of slightly higher prices," Murdoch coyly said.
Publishing's Weekend War: 48 Hours That Changed an Industry
The facedown lasted from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon but when it was over the landscape of the book business was permanently altered. On Friday, in reaction to Macmillan's refusal to play the Kindle pricing game by Amazon's rules, the retailer punished Macmillan by extinguishing the publisher's Buy buttons on the Amazon website.
Obviously, Amazon hoped this tactic would bring Macmillan to its knees. Instead it triggered another wave of customer outrage as Kindle owners reacted just as they had in 2009 when Amazon reached into their Kindles and recaptured files without notice or explanation. Though the response of the author community was mixed, many authors were angered at becoming victims of a war they scarcely understood but they too blamed Amazon.
Amazon also underestimated the possibility that other major publishers might support Macmillan. This turned out to be a well founded concern. In the past few weeks all of the big houses except Random House conducted discussions, and in all likelihood negotiations, with Apple to forge a new retailing model that would return control of e-book pricing to the publishers, who had become alarmed that Amazon's insistence on a $9.99 price cap would force them to accept lower wholesale terms. Conditions were ripe for mutiny, and on Friday the test of wills began. By Sunday, as Amazon realized that this was a fight it could not win, it capitulated.
I stated that this might well be a turning point for the book industry - both e-book and print - and I stand by that statement.
I also made a prediction that publishers will no longer be able to hold the line on the current 20-25% royalty rate offered to authors. In fact I guaranteed that they won't be able to, and I stand by that guarantee as well. Authors, and more importantly their powerful literary agents, have viewed the new landscape and found it rich with the potential for profit. They perceive the current royalty level as arbitrary and without basis in the economies of e-book production and distribution. The current rates cannot and will not hold. Just as Amazon blinked in its stare-down with Macmillan, Macmillan and its Big Six companions will also blink in the inevitable confrontation with authors.
Guaranteed: E-book Royalties Will Rise When Publishers' Hands Untied
I don't know if people still make pinkie bets, but when I was a kid that's what we called friendly wagers with no money at stake - just the satisfaction of being right. And I'm making a pinkie bet right now: If publishers can untangle themselves from the current e-book pricing model that ties their hands with a $9.99 ceiling, author royalties will rise. Any takers? Warning - before you extend your pinkie, you must know that I never bet on anything I'm not absolutely certain about.
Currently the e-book royalty offered to authors by five of the Big Six is 25% of the publisher's net receipts, and Macmillan's is even lower. Indeed, it's the lowest in Big Publishing: 20%. And because it is, Macmillan has attracted less support from the author community for its facedown of Amazon than it would otherwise receive. Here for instance is a line from a Silicon Valley blogger that called Macmillan "evil": "they're trying to force all ebook vendors to adopt the new contract, while forcing authors to accept a below industry average (20% vs. 25%) on ebook royalties."
If, as a result of negative publicity, Amazon relents on its rigid pricing formula, e-book revenues will increase and it will be so much harder - indeed, it will be intensely embarrassing - for publishers to continue parceling out the mingy royalty they now proffer. How much higher will the royalty go? Publishers will kick and scream over every point they have to give up, but in time someone will blink and go to 50%, and the rest of the industry will follow.
You can bet the house on that, but I'll accept a friendly pinkie.
Richard Curtis (who is happy to disclose that E-Reads pays 50% royalty to its authors, and has paid it from Day One, 2000).
Eric Engleman, in his Amazon Blog, writes that Kindle fans are punishing a publisher that has held back the Kindle version of a just-published book.
The book in question is Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilman, the juicy tell-all about the 2008 presidential campaign. Though it has generally garnered raves for its brilliant investigative reporting and jaw-dropping revelations, and indeed has received 59 five-star reviews on Amazon, it has also received no fewer than 119 one-star reviews, with scarcely any ratings in between the two poles. Why?
"The book has been deluged with one-star, negative reviews from people who are protesting publisher HarperCollins' decision to delay the Kindle version to Feb. 23," writes Engleman. "Those one-star reviews have contributed to a ho-hum average customer review rating of a 2.5 stars (out of 5). Customer reviews are an important factor for book sales on Amazon, and it will be interesting to see if the Kindle protests spread."
You can read both the raves and the boo-hisses here, but as to the latter, they can be summed up by this one: "No Kindle version? No Sale!"
The wisdom of simultaneously publishing hardcover books and e-books was questioned at the end of last year by a number of publishing figures including literary agent Nat Sobel whose posting here sparked an outpouring of strong feelings on both sides of the issue. Now the strong feelings have spilled over to consumers. The "windowing" (delay) of e-book reprints may seem like sound publishing practice for many kinds of books, but a hot-gossipy and time-sensitive book like Game Change may be the exception to that rule.
Consumers may not consider, and certainly may not care about, sound publishing practice. But for HarperCollins, Game Change's publisher, there's a solid economic reason for withholding the e-print. The hardcover lists at $27.99 on Amazon, discounted to $15.39. If it were available today on Kindle the price would undoubtedly be the standard $9.99 that Amazon is trying to impose on the book retail business. "Some in the publishing industry fear that Amazon's standard $9.99 (or lower) for new release books on Kindle will create a 'sticky' price in consumers' minds, dragging down the overall perceived value of books," writes Engleman.
Sometime in the first half of this year Google will open the doors to its bookstore, called Google Editions. Ian Paul, in PC World, writes: "Unlike Google's biggest competitors, Amazon and Barnes & Noble, which rely heavily on restrictive DRM, Google's store will not be device-specific - allowing for e-books purchased through Google Editions to be read on the far greater number of e-book readers that will flood the market in 2010"
That spells good news for the makers of all those new e-reading gadgets that may be well engineered and loaded with fun features but are hard-up for content. Amazon has its Kindle, but because its system is closed (that's what DRM means) you can't easily get Kindle content on a non-Kindle device. Same goes for B&N and its Nook.
Now you'll be able to download Google's vast (half a million at launch) library on just about any device available. Since most publishers have not given their content exclusively to Amazon or B&N, you'll be able to find and buy it from Google editions and read it on your Que, Skiff, Cool-Er, Flepia, or any other device. Just try not to be embarrassed when someone asks you the name of that e-book reader you're holding in your hand.
The deal Google offers publishers is 63 % of gross sales. This compares favorable with the 50% offered by most e-retailers. But Google is also offering to partner with retailers. If you decide you'd like to open an e-book retail store but don't know how and where to acquire the content, Google will furnish it. Your company would get 55 percent of revenues less a commission for Google.
"Google's e-books would reportedly be indexed and searchable like many books are now through Google's Book Search," says Paul. "Unlike titles offered through e-readers, Google Editions books would not have to be accessed through a dedicated reader or special application.Instead, any device with a Web browser will be able to access a Google Editions book. After you purchase and access your online book for the first time, it will be cached in your browser making the book available when you're offline."
A visitor to our website recently posted this comment in connection with what we call The Orwell Kindle Caper:
Yeah, I did not see a big problem here. As long as customers got a refund, no big deal. As far as the possibility of Amazon arbitrarily deleting content they actually had a right to provide in the first place - I don't ever see that happening. They do actually want customers, after all.
Sorry, pal - it's a big deal. There are some who not only think Amazon's ability to reach into customers' Kindles is a big problem, they are genuinely terrified by the prospect of far graver abuses. Because it's not just about taking back our e-books but taking back our fundamental liberties. At least that's the way technology columnist Farhad Manjoo sees it, and he's stated the case with chilling logic in a blog posted on Slate.
Here's Manjoo's position in a nutshell:
"The worst thing about this story isn't Amazon's conduct; it's the company's technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That's an awesome power, and Amazon's justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1's and 0's, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.
Manjoo builds on this disturbing premise. Here are a few excerpts to keep you awake tonight:
"If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you've bought, then surely a court—or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime—could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I've predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too."
"Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren't really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else."
"In Amazon's view, the books you buy aren't your property—they're part of a "service," and Amazon maintains complete control of that service at all times. Amazon has similar terms covering downloadable movies and TV shows, as does Apple for stuff you buy from iTunes."
"In The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain argues that such "tethered" appliances give the government unprecedented power to reach into our homes and change how our devices function."
"The difference between today's Kindle deletions and yesteryear's banning is that the earlier prohibitions weren't perfectly enforceable."
"Amazon deleted books that were already available in print, but in our paperless future—when all books exist as files on servers—courts would have the power to make works vanish completely."
"The power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely," Manjoo concludes, "is a power no one should have."
Does he have a prescription for reversing this potential erosion of our liberties? "Here's one way around this," he writes. "Don't buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it."
In light of Manjoo's well argued contentions, a threatened class action lawsuit against Amazon reported by Publishers Lunch might bring some of these issues to the forefront of our consciousness.
So yes, faithful correspondent, the Orwell Kindle Caper is indeed a big deal. It's a very, very big deal.
Orwell Kindle Caper: Did Amazon Do the Right Thing?
Publishers Lunch's Michael Cader has commented in depth on Amazon's yanking of unauthorized uploads of two George Orwell books, 1984 and Animal Farm. Cader's views are particularly cogent. In fact I've seen a lot of cogent commentary. What I haven't seen is a contrarian viewpoint defending Amazon. Amazon needs defending? Read on.
Despite all the e-ink spilled over Amazon's seemingly high-handed act of reaching into everyone's Kindle and vaporizing their Orwells, nobody seems to be trying to understand Amazon's motivation let alone support it. Amazon certainly didn't help by failing to apologize or even explain, thus turning a heavy-handed gaffe into a public relations black eye. Nevertheless, we owe it to Amazon to imagine what they - or their lawyers - might have been thinking when they sent down the order to zap the Orwells.
I said lawyers and that's the key. If I were Mr. Amazon (hmm, who could that be?) I would be gravely concerned about my company's liability for infringing on someone else's copyright. Furthermore I would be concerned that those who purchased the copyrighted work from my website might be liable as well, and my actions - simply offering the books for sale - might be responsible for my customers getting sued. Were these infringements inadvertent? Sure. Would that exculpate you and me from a legal action brought by an aggrieved copyright owner? Not necessarily. Ignorance of the law has never shielded the innocent from being drawn into lawsuits. Would you like to be named as a John Doe in an infringement suit? I don't think so. Would I (Mr. Amazon, that is) want to show good faith to the copyright owners by recalling the unauthorized product? My mouthpieces say Yeah, do it now and apologize later.
I haven't seen the communications between Amazon and Kindle owners informing them their books had been yanked, but had Amazon emailed customers saying "We're doing this for your own good so you don't get sued," it might have gone far to snatch some good will from the jaws of intense embarrassment. As it was, Amazon's conduct was lead-footed clumsy, and offering credit towards another purchase just didn't make up for the sense of violation most Kindlelach felt when they woke up to discover their Orwells had vanished. It's still not too late for an explanation (I've just given them one) and apology.
There. I've defended Amazon. But it was damn hard work. Can I go back to picking on them?
On Collision Course for an E-Book-Off, Google-Mothra Enters Fray Against Amazon-Godzilla
A slumbering monster is awakened by greed and folly and, tormented beyond endurance, goes on a rampage.
The formula for a Japanese monster film? No, it's a riff on a major breaking story in the New York Times.
Motoko Rich reports that "In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device."
Though Google is currently a facilitator for readers seeking links to e-book retailers, the company now intends to sell digital editions directly to consumers.
Google has discussed such plans with publishers before, but it has now committed the company to going live with the project by the end of 2009. In a presentation at BookExpo, Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, added the phrase: “This time we mean it.”
Google vs. Amazon is not merely a major trade battle but a test of reader preferences, with huge stakes and social implications. Writes Rich:
"Mr. Turvey said Google’s program would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle. 'We don’t believe that having a silo or a proprietary system is the way that e-books will go,' he said."
The Big Turnoff: Furor Over Kindle Audio Puts Random Between Rock and Hard Place
You shall not curse the deaf nor place a stumbling block before the blind. Leviticus 19:14
I realize it's unfashionable to feel sorry for Random House, but I think they're getting the rotten end of the stick for a problem not of their making.
You'll recall that Amazon's initiative to convert the texts of Kindle e-books to speech generated a furious response from authors and publishers because of potential infringement on their reserved commercial audio rights. Under threat of legal action, Amazon backed off, leaving the decision to speech-activate Kindle texts up to content owners. Many publishers opted out. Random House was one of them.
Now, The Reading Rights Coalition, representing more than 15 million visually challenged Americans, has censured Random House for denying audio service to its constituents. "When Random House turned off the text-to-speech function on all of its e-books for the Kindle 2," declared Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, "it turned off access to this service for more than 15 million print-disabled Americans. The blind and other print-disabled readers have the right to purchase e-books using this service with text-to-speech enabled. Blocking text-to-speech prohibits access for print-disabled readers and is both reprehensible and discriminatory." Maurer was joined by executives of Lighthouse International, American Association of People with Disabilities, National Spinal Cord Injury Association, American Council of the Blind and other organizations in denunciations of Random. A petition is being circulated.
It would be unspeakably callous to disregard the needs of the blind and reading-disabled. And that's the point: book publishers have always been in the vanguard of industries sensitive to the needs of the visually challenged. Language guaranteeing to them free access to published books is a standard feature of every book contract I have ever seen. A recent Random House contract says, "Random House shall have the right to grant transcription or publication rights in any Work in Braille or other non-book formats specifically for the visually impaired without charge." The subsidiary rights grant in a HarperCollins contract on my desk grants Harper "Braille, large-type and other editions for the handicapped (the Publisher may grant such rights to recognized non-profit organizations for the handicapped without charge and without payment to the Author)." I'm ready to bet that every one of the thousands of contracts in our agency's files has similar language.
I don't think the leadership of the Reading Rights Coalition is doing its members a favor by attacking publishers, who have been victimized by Amazon/Kindle's audio initiative just as severely as the visually impaired. There is a line between a function intended for the disabled and one designed for fully sighted and literate. Amazon's aggressive step across that line put publishers on the horns of a cruel dilemma: by withholding audio rights from Kindle they deny service to a genuinely needy population; but by enabling Kindle's audio feature they deprive legitimate copyright holders of the opportunity to exploit a commercial right. They also incur liability: a publisher can be sued by authors whose commercial audio rights had been given away to Amazon. And because that threat of liability is ever-present to Random House and its brother and sister publishers, it's not likely that petitions or humanitarian appeals (including to President Obama) will gain any traction.
What's the answer? We must come up with a voice-enabling technology expressly targeted to the handicapped, and segregate it from commercial audio. That's not a job for publishers. It's a job for technologists, and we wish them godspeed in solving the problem.
Amazon should be in the forefront of those supporting such an initiative, because there are 15 million visually impaired individuals ready to buy a device that serves them what they need and are entitled to. If Amazon doesn't or can't do the job - well, there are a lot of e-book devices coming on stream, and the one that solves this audio dilemma will have a huge advantage and a ready-made market.
A kaiju is marching from Japan to the West, and the Kindle, Sony and other black and white e-book readers are in danger of being trampled. Call the monster Colorzilla.
For instance...
We recently wondered whether Rupert Murdoch was "ready to get e-ink on his fingers." It increasingly looks like he is, and what's more it will be colored ink. Gizmodo's John Herman reports that "Rupert Murdoch, News Corp potentate and noted evil person, yesterday announced his company is 'investing in a new device that has a bigger screen [than the Kindle], [and] four colors,' adding, "THE KINDLE MUST PERISH."
We agree with Herman's observation that "We'll have to wait and see on this one, but probably not for too long - this is a guy who, for better or for worse, means what he says - and the Kindle is begging for some decent competition." (The Informer's headline was, Rupert Murdoch Investing In a Mysterious Color eBook Reader [It Runs On Human Blood]).
Why, you may ask, do we need color to read black type on a white page? Because, as we pointed out a while back (Watching Books), text displayed on a screen - even a bullet-paced thriller - can be boring to a generation of readers raised on color-saturated television and computer screens. Served up with color ads or videos, even dry textbooks will hold our attention. And don't forget the new hybrids slouching toward your screen called vlogs and vooks - dramatized blogs and stories utilizing the full arsenal of modern media.
In the last year or two the push for a color e-reader screen has intensified. The first across the finish line was the Fujitsu Flepia which, despite its intimidating price ($1000) showed us the potential for books nestled in color.
At half the price is the Panasonic WordsGear. As reviewed on Technabob:
The WordsGear offers an amazingly sharp 5.6-inch TFT display with a 1024×600 pixel resolution (that’s about 211 pixels per inch.) This means reading small type should be no problem, and easy on the eyes. Thanks to a special touch sensitive grip, it’s designed to be controlled with a single hand, so you can even use it while standing up on the train or bus.
Since the display isn’t one of those electrostatic ones, it can also handle moving images, and cam play MPEG4 video clips. There’s also AAC and WMA audio playback, and you can listen to your tunes while reading. Content is stored on SD cards, providing plenty of expandability. The rechargeable battery should give you about 6 hours of reading on a single charge.
There’s a huge catalog of e-books for the device (all in Japanese, though) available from Saidoku. From what I can tell, you can load up your own PDF documents so you won’t be limited to Japanese content.
It's worth clicking on the Panasonic WordsGear to see the video. Didn't understand a syllable but it's great fun. And that's the point - color is fun! Even, paradoxically, black-on-white text.
I wonder if the Japanese devices have been compromised by lousy names. It's hard to take an e-book named Flepia seriously. First of all, no one knows if it's Fleh-pia or Flee-pia (it's Fleh, I'm reliably told). Second of all, "Flepia" sounds like one of those junk fishes hauled up with a tuna catch. And WordsGear? Can you see yourself boasting about reading a book on your WordsGear?
No wonder Kindle is enjoying so much success. Whether or not it's a great e-book reader, it sounds like one.
The New Kindle DX: Amazon's First Large Screen Reader
As we've been expecting, today Jeff Bezos announced the new Kindle DX, a $489 large screen (9.7") e-book reader modeled after the Kindle 2. The DX is the first big step in Amazon's effort to create a platform for newspapers, textbooks, and other large scale documents. While developers such as Plastic Logic and Hearst are still preparing their large format devices, Amazon has beat them all out of the gate with a device available this summer in the U.S. (exact first shipping date is yet unknown.)
Besides the larger screen, the Kindle DX offers some special improvements: 3.3GB of storage, wide screen reading (rotate the device sideways), native PDF support (it's unknown if Amazon will support DRM for this format), and resizing/reflowing based on how many words per line you want. Other features remain similar to the Kindle 2, such as 3G Whispernet wireless service, USB charging, and the 16 shades of grey.
Importantly, Amazon has been working to ensure new content is available from newspaper and text book publishers. New arrangements with the New York Times, Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle will offer special rate subscriptions that will subsidize the cost of the DX. And Princeton, Arizona State University, Case Western, Reed College, and the University of Virginia will all be piloting programs serving text books to students with the Kindle DX. Hopefully, when more information about this initiative comes out, we'll see what Amazon's foray into the $9.8 billion text book market has in store for students at other universities.
The Kindle DX is available for pre-order now, although its price is $120 more than the Kindle 2, which continues to sell well. Many people who've already purchased the Kindle 2 may be feeling annoyed that the new model boasts the extra screen real estate and PDF support, but perhaps the higher cost pushes the Kindle DX farther out of reach for most casual customers. The premium will be worth it for those people who work extensively with large PDF documents, and when Amazon's text book pricing is revealed it may actually represent a big savings for students. Those who use the device over a number of years will probably get the most savings. However, at the rate that the technology is developing, the Kindle DX might not have the long legs you'd expect to justify its cost, especially when students might want to wait until a color device and more text books are easily found at retail to begin their investment strategy in an e-book device. University book stores will have to find a way to compete, and digital text books also means no used texts or selling-back for students. But we have to start somewhere. It might just be that the DX is an appetizer for things to come.
Michael Cader, blogging in Publishers Lunch, says that "The Kindle is probably the only major consumer electronic device aimed at older buyers." He cites a survey conducted by Bowker: "The device is favored particularly by people aged 50 to 64, and women like it disproportionately more than men, while the iPhone is heavily preferred by those in the 35 to 49 bracket," Cader writes.
In one respect, these data should not come as a surprise; generally speaking, adults simply buy more books than the young, period - 60 percent of book purchases are by older persons. But because we associate e-books and reading devices with youthful innovation, the numbers bear some attention.
The party most interested in these demographics is Amazon itself, creator of the Kindle. Amazon asked visitors to its Kindle Community page to disclose their age, and as of this writing 1652 responded. That's a huge number of responders and we're not sure why the question elicited so much action. By way of comparison, the second most responded to question garnered only 20 replies! Nor are we sure why respondents felt compelled to relate their life stories in response to the simple request for "Average Kindle Owners Age" ("59 3/4 years old here...no arthritis here yet. Probably will start suffering from it when I turn 60.") I guess seniors talking about their age like to add a flourish or two..
In any event, though we didn't sift methodically through every response or tally the average, it was clear from a random clickthrough of responses that the majority of those answering the question were in their fifties and sixties.
On the trail of these absorbing factoids, I randomly selected and debriefed a 25-year-old male about his, and his friends', attitudes towards Kindle. Interestingly, this interviewee works for a publisher and uses the device in his professional capacity.
Me: Do you own a Kindle personally?
Him: No.
Me: Because?
Him: The expense. I can't afford one. [It currently lists for $359.00 on Amazon.com] My friends can't either.
Me: Do you read books on another electronic device?
Him: No, call me old fashioned, but I like printed books. And they're also economical compared to the Kindle. If you read eight or ten books a year, buying them is cheap compared to buying a Kindle. Some of us either borrow books from the library or from each other, so it doesn't make sense to buy a Kindle.
Me: But you spend money on music.
Him: I would rather spend my money on music. I can listen to music while I'm doing something else. But reading a book is a dedicated activity. You can't do something else while you read a book.
Me. You call yourself old-fashioned. Doesn't that strike you as ironic, that a 25-year-old is more old-fashioned than a Kindle-reading fifty or sixty year old man or woman?
Him. [Shrugs] I guess so.
Are you too young for Kindle? The answer is right under our noses - for kids, it's simply too expensive.
Though Kindle is sitting high atop the e-reader heap, a competitor producing a $99.00 device could topple the Goliath, or at least give it a good healthy fight.
Penetrating the Mysteries of E-Book Pricing. Kind of.
The e-book industry was officially launched at a government-sponsored conference in 1998. Starry-eyed dreamers, technical pioneers, entrepreneurs, geeks and curious publishers convened with the evangelical fervor of a tent meeting. Bliss it was in that dawn to be in the e-book business, and the wave of zeal generated predictions of the end of printed books.
Alas, some hard realities set in soon afterward. Copyright issues, technical problems, muddled business models and a lack of standards hindered momentum for almost ten years. Though the industry grew at a steady double-digit rate in spite of these problems and has at last broken out, it took a decade to mature, and that's a decade longer than most of us anticipated.
One of the problems that compromised progress was e-book pricing. No one really knew how much to charge to download a book. And the fact is, we're still not sure. If you survey prices on various publisher and etail sites you will readily see that list prices are all over the place. A quick foray onto the website of Fictionwise, the world's foremost book etailer, shows Janet Evanovich's The Grand Finale e-book listing at $14.99 (discounted by Fictionwise to $12.74 for its Club members).Temptation and Surrender by Stephanie Laurens sells for $25.99 ($22.09 Club price). The Demon's Librarian, a paranormal romance by Lilith Saintcrow, sells for $5.95 and $5.06 respectively.
As in every other business enterprise there are two schools of pricing merchandise. One is to set a target profit and peg the price to meet that target. The other is to gain an advantage over competitors by undercutting them, reducing profit to the thinnest possible margin. That easily explains the range of list prices from roughly $3.00 to $10.00. It doesn't however account for e-books listing for $20.00 or more. We'll examine that in a moment.
In an attempt to bring discipline to e-book pricing and do for books what Apple did for music (at least, for whole albums) via the iPod, Amazon has strongly prescribed a $9.99 cap for books carried on the Kindle. But an analysis of list prices of Kindle titles, described in a blog headlined "Paid Is a Lot More Complicated than You Think--So Is the Truth"*, reveals the following:
"Using two different methods for checking Kindle price data in Amazon's system, we find that roughly 30 percent of the 240,000 or so Kindle titles sell for more than $9.99 (and well over 20 percent sell for more than $20).
Yes, approximately 33,000 titles sell for around the magic $9.99--but about 13,000 titles sell for between $10 and $20. Here's is one slice of approximate numbers for the four most popular price bands:
1. $20.01 and up: 55,750 2. $10.00 and $9.01: 33,000 3. $4.00 and $3.01: 25,500 4. $8.00 and $7.01: 20,750"
The writer goes on to point out that “There are more than 7,000 free books, and another 28,000 or so titles that sell for $2 or less.”He or she goes on to say,
"Now take a look just at their hourly bestseller list, as we have done both yesterday and today. As of one slice this morning, two of the top three Kindle books (and 18 of the top 100) are free.
But the No. 4 title sells for more than the magic $9.99--Breaking Dawn, by Stephenie Meyer, at $11.38. (The print version, at No. 2 on Amazon's overall list, sells at discount for $12.64.) The Sony eBookstore sells it for $11.99 and the iPhone app version sells for $19.99.
In all, 16 titles on the top 100 are selling for more than $9.99. Some of those are pre-orders of books by the likes of Jodi Picoult, selling now at $15.37 even though presumably those books would sell for less once they are available and hit the NYT list."
A $15.00 or $20.00+ price for an e-book seems counterintuitive, but don't worry, your intuition is quite sound. We know (and appreciate) that there are diehard fans so desperate to read a new book by their favorite author that they're ready to shell out as much for a download as they would pay for the hardcover in a bookstore or on amazon.com, maybe even more. But it's safe to say that most readers and fans feel that, confronted with a choice of paying $25.00 for either an e-book or a hard copy of the same book, they will elect the version that they can put on their bookshelf when they're finished with it.
What's behind that high list price for so many e-books has to do with a stubborn fact of book publishing life. The business model of traditional publishers like Random House, Simon & Schuster and Penguin, is built around printed books. The profit to be made on a successful “book-book’ is at this time far greater than that made on an e-book.Furthermore, publishers employ sales representatives who earn commissions on sales of printed books; they do not earn anything on e-book sales.
It stands to reason, then, that from the viewpoint of a publisher and its sales reps, a low e-book price will cannibalize the profit made on sale of the higher priced print edition, and deprive the sales reps of their commissions.To bring the e-book profit up to parity with that of the print book, publishers must bring the e-book list price up to parity with that of the print book as well. That explains why Temptation and Surrender, the Stephanie Laurens novel selling in e-book for 25.99, is being sold for the very same price in hardcover on amazon.com. When a hardcover edition goes out of print and a cheaper paperback is issued, the publisher will in all likelihood lower the e-book price to maintain that same parity. (And there are mystifying anomalies. The Grand Finale, the Evanovich novel mentioned above that sells for $14.99 in e-book format, can be purchased in mass market paperback for $7.99!)
If your intuition tells you that this brick and mortar mentality is a significant reason why it’s taken so long for the e-book business to prosper – well, again, you’re absolutely correct.Whether the problem can be remedied is hard to say.Traditional publishers are traditional for a good reason.Newer entries into the e-book publishing field are not hampered by the same considerations as the Simon & Schusters of the world, and price their wares without concern about cannibalizing themselves or keeping commissioned sales representatives happy.On the other hand, traditional publishers enjoy distribution advantages that are the envy of every e-book startup.
So – you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.
Our anonymous blogger also raises a cogent point about Kindle pricing: though the price of an e-book purchased on the device may be discounted, you have to build in the price of the Kindle itself in order to ascertain the true cost of the downloaded book:
Logically speaking, the overall save-money-by-buying-a-Kindle argument is also specious for most consumers; as others have pointed out, if you save an average of $7.50 a book--supposed Kindle price of a new hardcover versus discounted Amazon print price--you need to buy at least 50 books or so before recovering the purchase price of the device. Yet it's clearly one factor in the purchase decision by many Kindle owners.
Which brings us back to the “Gillette Razor” solution we’ve championed in these pages.The inventor of the modern razor shrewdly observed that the most effective strategy to boost his product was to give away the razor and sell the blades.Giving away the e-reader and selling the books might be just the rocket boost the e-book industry needs to send it into the stratosphere.
Richard Curtis
*(Apologies to the unnamed author of this survey, which was emailed to me by a friend without a link to the source. In a rare failure of Google search capabilities I was unable to ascertain the blog's author. If the author happens to read this, sir or madame, please identify yourself so that I can accord you well deserved recognition!)
When the publishers of #1 bestselling hardcover Game Change windowed the e-book edition rather than issue it simultaneously, Kindle owners protested by deliberately downgrading the book in their Amazon reviews. Their action, which fell somewhere between populist revolt and temper tantrum, elicited an editorial by Publishers Lunch's Michael Cader urging publishers to do a better job educating the public. "Publishing people who care about these pricing discussions need to get in the online forums and start issuing press releases and find other ways to address readers honestly about price," he said. We agreed with him.
