
A dark day for the future of books - ColinWright
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/15/opinion/coker-book-publishing/index.html
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ComputerGuru
I will never buy an eBook when I can get an actual used copy of the same book
in mid to great condition for a tenth or a twentieth of the price of the
eBook, both from Amazon. eReaders may have gained acceptance (I have a Kindle
and a Sony eReader) but they're not "better" than real books, at least,
certainly not better enough to justify paying fixed prices w/ no opportunity
for second hand sale (esp. for non-reference materials).

With almost any popular, still-under-copyright book, this is what the pricing
looks like on Amazon:

[http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone-
Book/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone-
Book/dp/059035342X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334507344&sr=8-1)

Paperback: 8.79 dollars. Kindle: 7.99 dollars. Used: 1 cent. Used via Amazon
Prime: 3.98

To save NINETY CENTS you get an arguably inferior copy that you cannot resell,
pass on, share, touch, or truly experience. No, thank you. And don't forget
that your Kindle cost a hundred dollars - you'll need to buy a hundred and
eleven such books before you're actually "saving" money.

~~~
jstabbac
To each their own I guess. Personally I love how awesome it is that I can have
one book in many places. I can read from my laptop at work, on my phone on the
go, and from my tablet at home. Each automatically syncs to the last read page
and my notes/highlights move between them. Mind you I don't actually ever USE
notes or highlights, but it's pretty cool that that option is there. Sure I
like to hold a book in my hands, but the convenience of an ebook is really
hard to beat.

Plus if I have a moment to read and I want a new book, I don't need to wait
3-5 days for shipping, I can download it instantly. If I'm ever out of the
country (as I am now for half a year) I can still get any book delivered to me
instantly. For me that's just a convenience, however it's critical for areas
that normally have to wait 15-20 days for shipping from a place like Amazon.

EDIT: As a quick note to your edit, you're really ignoring some of the best
parts of ebooks while pointing out their worst. I don't own a Kindle however
read ebooks through Amazon on three different devices.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Like I mentioned, I have a Kindle, and I've loaded it with tons of classics
and DRM-free materials. It's nice and convenient, and I really like it.

But buying something is different - buying is, by nature, a matter of value.
The fact of the matter is, buying a second hand book gives you more
value/dollar than buying an ebook at 3 times the cost. An ebook you read once
but cannot resell is eight dollars literally lost overnight. You no longer
have the eight dollars _and_ you don't have anything worth eight dollars. When
you buy the book second hand, you get the same (or better) value of reading
the book, but you also retain a residue value that lives forever.

~~~
jstabbac
I contend that I get eight dollars of value out of the conveniences the ebook
provides. Like I said, to each their own I guess.

------
homosaur
I essentially find his argument incoherent. What's he complaining about, that
publishers don't have the right to illegally fix prices? They can set prices
to whatever they want but can do so on their own marketplaces. Amazon has the
right to impose whatever it wants on their marketplace. You don't have to sell
there. Now we can once again make this argument that Amazon dominates the
marketplace and you HAVE to sell there to sell any books, but that argument is
ridiculous. Plenty of small publishers are selling books solely by themselves
or with limited agreements with independent marketplaces.

This seems like sour grapes from more middlemen who are unneeded. This is why
the music industry is so bitter--because the Internet makes them irrelevant.
There will be a need for promotion, yes, but I'd rather pay a smart literary
agent 15% or even 20% to handle that rather than some publisher where I'm
basically getting dimes on the backend. I'm not aware of any promotion that
Smashwords ever executed that reached me, so clearly they are not even doing a
great job.

It's a dark day for industry middlemen and that's it.

BY THE WAY, I will pay a premium well over $20 if you distribute your ebooks
in multiple DRM free formats. I just paid $40 for the InDesign CS5 Classroom
in a Book yesterday which came with a PDF and an EPUB. If publishers are too
lazy to do that, we have no use for them anyway.

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jackfoxy
_...the responsibility for pricing decisions should rest with authors and
publishers. If they price fairly and competitively, customers will reward
them. If they price too high, customers will migrate to lower-cost books._

I agree authors and publishers should set prices, but not in collusion. As for
the argument consumers will migrate to lower-cost books, that may hold for
some genres, but books are not really fungible. The books I am interested in
are each unique works.

~~~
radicalbyte
If I understand his argument correctly, @markcoker is suggesting that if Lord
of the Rings is too expensive people will buy Eragon instead?

Okay, could understand the lack of knowledge of basic economics, but I'd have
hoped that someone who has started their own business would at least have read
a couple of wikipedia pages on the subject.

~~~
tzs
Are you suggesting that people will buy LoTR no matter how high the price? Or
are you suggesting that if LoTR is priced too high for someone who wants to
read it, they will give up on reading rather than entertain themselves with
some other book?

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jaysonelliot
There are two major flaws with this article. The first is the author's
reliance on the reader's understanding of the phrase "agency pricing model." A
hyperlink to yet another article that presumably contains an explanation of
the term somewhere within it is not the same as a simple one-sentence
explanation.

The second is his assumption that "customers will migrate to lower-cost
books." Books are not fungible objects. If I want to read the latest Eric
Flint novel, I'm not going to pick up a Danielle Steele book instead because
it's cheaper.

~~~
Retric
I read a _lot_ and I don't really notice or care who wrote most of them.

Sure, I would be willing to pay 50$ to read the next _Jim Butcher_ novel right
now, but I also get a fair amount of free novels on my Kindle. If it's good I
am more than happy to buy something by the author, but there is a lot of free
stuff out there and I don't feel the need to spend money just because someone
was published.

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jpdoctor
> _By assuming responsibility for the roles once played by publishers, authors
> are earning up to 70% of the list price as their e-book royalty versus the
> 17.5% paid by traditional publishers._

I'm trying to figure out why this is a dark day for the future of books. It
sounds to me like authors just got a sizable raise.

~~~
Hemospectrum
Assume for a moment that all authors in a given genre are interchangeable. In
other words, they're unskilled labor, and it's really the publishers who bring
all the value to the table.

Come to think of it, I am sure a lot of very successful people in the
publishing industry view it this way.

~~~
jaysonelliot
Since the author of this article is an "e-book publisher" (ugh), I think your
assessment of his viewpoint is spot-on.

He's a middleman who delivers a vanishingly small amount of value, and is
worried about being made redundant.

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muhfuhkuh
I have an amicable solution. Don't let big publishing be a cartel setting
prices willy-nilly, and if it bothers him that Amazon or whomever wants to
have a sale on a book, they can negotiate a "bulk buy" of the paper or ebook
with the author or publisher and then discount it however they choose.

But, he's insane if he thinks collusion is the answer.

------
pgrote
The publishing industry has a chance to actually make the transition into the
electronic commerce world a success. What has worked in the past isn't going
to make the transition.

One of the larger problems is the lack of a second sale. Many people,
especially in non-fiction, looks to second sales as a way to add to their
knowledge base. Without second sale there has to be a more effective method of
engaging these people and it is price.

Collusion among the publishers ensures that the logical price dropping for
ebooks wouldn't happen as it should normally.

Smashwords has done a ton to ensure ebooks have entered the market by
mitigating the normal distributorship model. I can see where they are coming
from in terms of author royalties, but other publishers will look to protect
the old business models.

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dyeje
One thing I've been noticing with arguments against this lawsuit is that
people are saying "If prices are too high, just buy from another publisher."
The thing is that it just doesn't work that way with books. If I want to read
Moby Dick but I think the price is too high, I'm boned. That publisher owns
that specific book, and I can't just get a knockoff book. There's only one
Moby Dick. They are the gatekeepers to that intellectual property.

------
alecco
Typical strawman. Authors and publishers are not a single group. Publishers
are just gatekeepers.

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ChristianMarks
The author argues for a centralized command economy of e-book sales, in which
large bureaucratic institutions set prices based on the consumption patterns
of their executives.

