We're all tired of big business and big corporations screwing people.
While I'm on your side, there are a whole bunch of people out there who are apparently not tired of big business. Nearly half of Americans consistently vote for politicians who hand more and more power to big business. *cough* McCain / Net Neutrality / SCOTUS / Corporate Campaign Contributions *cough*
With all due respect to sensible posters and trolls on this topic - I also despise the Murdoch empire.
HOWEVER
The publishers not apple asking people to put their prices up, but to accept variable pricing with a higher charge for new content - this is about publishers who want the right to have variable pricing on their books.
Look at it this way - at the moment, everything is 9.99- new or old.
So why not charge a little more for new titles and less for 'classics' - it makes perfect sense and will probably have the effect of reducing the amount that people spend on digital books, if for instance, classics are 6.99, older titles 9.99 and new releases around the 12.99 mark.
I think the issue here is price fixing. Of course content distributors want to ensure the best, simplest pricing structure for their products (every track 79p). But in a time that we complain about a small number of companies having control, why should Amazon, Apple etc be able to dictate prices to content providers. Variable pricing, within ranges agreed with content distributor and content creator is a good thing.
I guess the question is could they have done the same thing by simply charging $20 wholesale for the ebook on launch and see if Amazon was willing to eat THAT much of a loss to keep the $9.99 price point as oppose to pushing the agency model.
The wholesale model might have worked if Amazon was willing to not sell stuff at a loss to kill ebook competitors. Publishers aren't stupid...they knew Amazon was already a bully and if Amazon managed to dominate the ebook market they'd have been screwed.
Nice to see Steve pulling for the customers.... OH wait...
Perhaps he wants publishers to stay in business? Just a thought. In the long run I suspect the consumers will win as prices of books digitally distributed are bound to be far less than printing ... and look at all the trees that will be spared
While I'm on your side, there are a whole bunch of people out there who are apparently not tired of big business. Nearly half of Americans consistently vote for politicians who hand more and more power to big business. *cough* McCain / Net Neutrality / SCOTUS / Corporate Campaign Contributions *cough*
To be fair to that half ... they are told to do this by one line catch phrases repeated ad nauseam and sent around in e-mails and reinforced by Fox News ... what do you expect them to do ... think?
Excellent comment, anantksundaram, about the digital photos compared to film....I can remember the discourse about CD music quality vs. MP3's quality...and now downloaded HD movies vs. DVD's.
I think there is a definite sea change here that as you say will take some time to shake out. But the writing is on the wall!
If I said to my father (a former CEO-very smart businessman) I want to publish a magazine on paper and ship them using people, trucks, mideast oil, to all the supermarkets in America and again then 3 weeks later pick up 99% of them using people, trucks, mideast oil, because they haven't sold and either recycle them using people, mideast oil, bleach and water or just add them to the landfill. He would say, I don't care how much you make on the advertising, it's a very 'wasteful' business model and in that respect doomed.
That's why I like the iPad and dislike the publishers....they better get on board quick like.
While I'm on your side, there are a whole bunch of people out there who are apparently not tired of big business. Nearly half of Americans consistently vote for politicians who hand more and more power to big business. *cough* McCain / Net Neutrality / SCOTUS / Corporate Campaign Contributions *cough*
To be fair to that half ... they are told to do this by one line catch phrases repeated ad nauseam and sent around in e-mails and reinforced by Fox News ... what do you expect them to do ... think?
My guess is Steve Jobs is going to enable RENTING of e-books on the iPad.
This is why the publishers need a higher price shift for purchasing.
Steve plans on selling iPads to schools en massé, instead of students carrying a bunch of heavy books around, they will have a thin iPad in their notebooks with will be uploaded with books rented by schools, cheaper than purchasing the books.
Also newspapers and other forms of disposable media.
The publishers save 50% of their costs with e-books over traditional books and the schools will save money as they can get volume licensing.
This is a load of shit. Not bullshit, but a pain in the ass.
Best sellers should be $9.99. Everything else should be $6.99 for novels, and $4.99 for novellas. Oh, and Rupert Murdoch is a bastard. Not just for this, but generally speaking.
Write your own books and you can sell them for $1.99 if you wish. You have absolutely no right to tell others what to sell their hard work for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by infinite_entropy
Every single publisher will increase their prices too... Amazon bent for one, the rest want that money too... and who can blame them?
GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD: this is not an across the board price increase. Under the old system, all books were $9.99. Under the new system, the publisher sets the price for what they think they're worth. Some will be much less than $9.99 (I've heard $5 or 6) and some will be more. That's the way books (and everything else is priced). Do you expect to walk into a car dealer and have all the cars priced the same?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Abster2core
As we are beginning to see, the same dissidents will complain. Basically the same bunch that wants virtually everything for literally nothing. That or the unilateral ability to do whatever with anything whether they paid or got it for free.
They are basically the same bunch that dis Apple/Jobs/Macs and those that support it/them to any degree.
The problem this bunch doesn't seem to get; they are virtually non-countable. That is, there is less than a couple of dozen that frequently post at any one time at the most. True, they do rant loudly, but how can anybody take them seriously as evidenced by Apple's continued growth and significant at that?
In this case, to suggest that every ebook is only worth $9.99 at the most is ludicrous. Or that they aren't worth $14.99 at any time. In what capacity is anybody that can dictate what a creation is worth?
Are they suggesting that we should all come down to the lowest denominator?
Would they concede to cutting their income? To match, for example:
I doubt it.
I agree 100%. People who think things should be free can go out and create their own intellectual property and give it away. I have a great deal of respect for the people who contribute free software and donate their time to make the world a better place. Where I draw the line is when they start to demand that EVERYONE do the same thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jukes
Competition causes prices to go up? Someone call the FTC.
Hint: in a free market, prices sometimes go up and sometimes go down. Amazon was artificially forcing prices down by selling some items below cost. That's not sustainable. What Apple is driving is a free market - publishers can choose how to price their own product rather than having Amazon dictate that everyone must charge the same.
AND SOME PRICES WILL BE LESS THAN $9.99 under the new system.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jblenio
These book publishers are greedy. They want to increase the price for a product that has virtually no production cost. I will NEVER buy an e-book that is overpriced, unless it gives me some value add like the dynamic/interactive/content. All these publishers now have to do with ebooks is distribute a digital file over the internet, sans warehousing, sans paper costs, ink costs, etc. etc. They save a ton of money, yet they want to increase the price.
I'll tell you what I will do though. If I buy an ebook digital file. I will make sure to share it with other people. I will be glad to distribute it for free to a friend or two if the opportunity arises. I don't care if it's "illegal."
The publishers would be smarter if they lowered the price to minimize the kind of thing I might do if they raise the price. Believe me. People will do this. Hackers will create cracks for ebooks so they can be read.
The app store model is the perfect model. Make the book relatively inexpensive and you build revenue by high volume rather than gouging a lower volume of people.
Greedy jerk offs out there. As a consumer, we go by the saying, caveat emptor (buyer beware). Well "supplier beware" too. If you try to screw the consumer by greedily raising prices for something that you have to do virtually no work to produce, we will figure out a way to screw you back.
I see. So the publishers are greedy because they want to be paid for their work? I suppose you're greedy because you make your employer pay you, right? And you think it's OK to steal something because you don't want to pay what the seller charges? I'm just curious - what bizarre reasoning justifies this position? After all, I assume that you wouldn't think you could steal a Ferrari just because it's 'too expensive'. What type of warped mind makes you think it's OK to steal ANYTHING just because you don't like the price?
Your entire premise is wrong, anyway. First, even under the new prices, the eBooks will be less than paper books. Macmillan is proposing $12.99 to $14.99 for newly released best sellers and prices as low as $5 or 6. In the book store, best sellers list for $24.99 to $29.99 and are typically discounted to the $20 level. The bulk of books are around $14.99 hardcover and $8-10 paperback. So Macmillan's prices ARE less than the paper copy.
I also disagree with your premise that the electronic version is worth less than the paper version. Value has nothing to do with cost. If it did, I'd go out and buy a bunch of paint and paint a big canvas. By your logic, it should be worth more than the Mona LIsa because I have more paint in mine. For some people, the electronic version has greater value than the paper version. When I travel, it will save me 5-10 pounds of weight (I usually carry several books for international flights). I could theoretically get rid of the overflowing bookcases in my living room. Today, I regularly give stacks of books away because I have no where to store them. With eBooks, I can keep my books forever without wasting space. It's just inane to say that eBooks are a ripoff because they are set at a certain price. YOU may see them that way, but lots of others don't.
Does anyone else think that the eBook trend is a very dangerous one with the current grey area surrounding digital media? Especially since the bought and sold politicians are constantly handing more and more power over content to the media companies.
What am I talking about?
Why literacy and social classes of course.
Go to any decent sized town in the US and you will likely find a second hand book store where a person can buy a used book for a fraction of the cost of the new book. This has setup an entire system where the more affluent people in the US can and will buy a new book, read it, and then sell that book. This book can then be bought by the less fortunate members of our society for a fraction of the original price and read. Then possibly resold again to the used book store. This system allows for the publishers to make their money on the initial sale and allows for the poorer members of our society to afford to access to printed materials, thus helping our literacy rates. All of this is possible because of the First-sale Doctrine. The current cluster F' that is digital media completely violates the first-sale doctrine because the idiots in Washington have been told by the media companies that digital media isn't a sale but a license. I don't think I need to expand on what I think of this steaming pile of...
So, what does this "revolution" bring us? It brings us a widening gap between the classes of this country. The media companies don't give a crap. Hell they are all for destroying the second hand market, it means more money for them. Maybe. It means that only the well to do will be able to afford the best educations. It means nothing good for our society.
I have heard a few comments on why this won't happen. However, I don't buy them as true cures.
First, is libraries. What exactly are libraries going to loan out? Will they be allowed to loan out digital copies of books that they purchase? LOL! Yeah right, as if the media companies won't running screaming to their lawyers about suing the libraries for violating the DMCA or some such other unconstitutional law to stop those filthy pirates from distributing their digital content.
Second, is real hard bound books. Um... have you heard of economics? As the publishers move to eBooks because they can charge the same amount for an eBook as a real book, but don't have to pay for printing, handling, shipping, storing, and everything else that cost a lot of money when you are dealing with a real product. The real books will thus be produced in smaller quantities. This means that their price will go up. Thus, those real books will again get more expensive, and therefore when a person actually buys a real book it will be to keep it, not to sell it later. Thus, this will dry up the second hand market for books as well, and will similarly put real books further out of reach of the poorer people.
So, what is the solution? Don't go to eBooks, which is not a good solution, in my opinion. Make the laws recognize that when a consumer buys a digital copy of a work, that they own that copy of the work, just as they would have owned a hard copy. This means that the First-sale doctrine still applies and thus after I purchase that eBook and read it I can then turn around and sell it to someone else.
Our copyright laws are way out of date. In fact, the very name just goes to show how out of touch they are. Copying something is not the issue, and really never has been. If in the 1940s someone had taken The Grapes of Wrath, took the time to typeset the whole book and then buy the paper, ink, and printing press and produced a million books and set them in a warehouse and then burned them all the publisher would not have been harmed. Despite the fact that millions of unauthorized copies had been made.
It is the distribution of said copies that is the issue. If I purchase a book, I have paid the publisher for that work. If I make a thousand copies on my hard drive but never distribute them, what have I done to hurt the publisher or the author? Nothing. If I were to distribute those thousand copies then I have increased the available copies for consumption and have interfered with their distribution rights, and that should be illegal. Copying is not the issue.
What I think you meant to say is that you are not buying it for the paper, because you certainly are paying for it. And the majority of consumers do place greater value on a print edition that they can do with what they wish than on such an ephemeral entity as an e-book.
But even if the cost of manufacturing, distributing and recalling a physical volume is only a fraction of the total cost of production, there are still other factors to consider. For instance, a brick and mortar retailer can only stock and display so many books and periodicals at a given instant; the online world has the potential to offer virtually ubiquitous access to any material published. For the publisher this means their wares are never out of stock and can sell all over for as long as there is even the slightest demand. So there is a lot more potential for profit on any work they release.
Now, as Oscar Wilde said, a cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I do not dispute that it would be foolish to assign a certain dollar amount to all creative works of one form all across the board. But given that they incur close to no additional expense after publication for every volume they ship electronically, I would be surprised if publishers did not eventually come to the conclusion that they will reap the greatest revenue the lower they price their virtual inventory.
I think we agree. It's just so important to point out that cost based pricing vs value for the customer really creates the interesting margins. Apple as well as all publishers knows this. It's the heart of their business. Of course they will make sure they push costs lower. After that's it for the customers to place our bucks where we find the value.
Print has one problem here though: Each book will only come thru one publisher. There is no competition on JK Rawlings books about Harry Potter. Unless you settle for a completely different book. But that's besides the point in this discussion!
He can price it at what he want's but at the end of the day the power is with the consumer. The free market will dictate whether the prices are fair or not. Always remember that.
There is no way in hell an eBook novel, (best-seller or not), is worth $12.99 or $14.99.
You not only aren't getting the book, you aren't even getting a close facsimile of the book. You are getting a text file and a jpeg of the cover.
Also, as a writer, it's a bad bad day when eBooks become the norm and any bozo can re-stream your text and change the font into comic sans before sending it on for free to all their friends. Books are works of art. The aren't just text.
Hell, there is a thousand times more art in a digital comic than there is in one of these "books." By this measure, the latest digital comic should cost $40.00.
Most of that rise is because of the draconian, 'so 20th century', IP laws. So, to be honest, the blame should not be put on the distributors (Apple, publishers) alone but on the greedy writers and their associations. Followed the iTunes/Beatles saga? Dhani Harrison, a lazy son of John and Paul's friend who happened to play a guitar, is the leading face of that farce ... Ridiculous.
All this will only result in more illegal downloads. While people (including me) were somewhat affraid of cracking an iPhone (especially as it was tied to an operator), there will be much less resistance to cracking an iPad. Torrents will flourish. What goes around, comes around.
There isn't an ebook out there that you can't torrent today. Heck, there are many books that aren't ebooks that you can torrent today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mknopp
Does anyone else think that the eBook trend is a very dangerous one with the current grey area surrounding digital media? Especially since the bought and sold politicians are constantly handing more and more power over content to the media companies.
Long snip
You raise a number of good points. The biggest concern is libraries, but I suspect that will be solved by evolution in the interpretation of copyright laws and licenses. Even today, libraries have slightly different rules than individuals (you could not, for example, charge someone money to read your books, but libraries can). I think it's a near certainty that licenses will either explicitly or implicitly allow libraries to circulate eBooks. At that point, it becomes an issue of how to get a cheap eBook reader into the hands of people who can't afford one. I'm not sure how that's going to work out--maybe they will rent you an eBook reader or perhaps there's a secure way to allow you to read on your computer (of course, many poor don't have a computer, so that's still a problem). Clearly, that issue needs to be addressed.
I think the bigger issue involves availability of work. As it is, new and unknown authors find it almost impossible to get published for the first time. Switching to eBooks will reduce the volume of paper books, making the cost even greater for the publisher. In theory, it would be less expensive for the publisher to publish eBooks, but in practice, the cost difference is small - and the selling price for eBooks will be lower, as well. I could picture a lot of marginal authors being pushed out of the business.
OTOH, eBooks makes it very inexpensive for authors to self-publish or for a cut-rate publisher to enter the business and INCREASE the number of authors available. If this goes too far, the difficulty of weeding through the junk may become a problem. So what happens? Fewer authors published because of costs? More authors published because of self-publishing? Massive increase of the number of authors created by low cost of entry? Only time will tell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland
What are you talking about?
If you'd read what I was responding to, I was clearly responding to someone who felt that they had the right to dictate what price eBooks should be sold for.
As we are beginning to see, the same dissidents will complain. Basically the same bunch that wants virtually everything for literally nothing. That or the unilateral ability to do whatever with anything whether they paid or got it for free.
They are basically the same bunch that dis Apple/Jobs/Macs and those that support it/them to any degree.
The problem this bunch doesn't seem to get; they are virtually non-countable. That is, there is less than a couple of dozen that frequently post at any one time at the most. True, they do rant loudly, but how can anybody take them seriously as evidenced by Apple's continued growth and significant at that?
In this case, to suggest that every ebook is only worth $9.99 at the most is ludicrous. Or that they aren't worth $14.99 at any time. In what capacity is anybody that can dictate what a creation is worth?
Are they suggesting that we should all come down to the lowest denominator?
Would they concede to cutting their income? To match, for example:
If you'd read what I was responding to, I was clearly responding to someone who felt that they had the right to dictate what price eBooks should be sold for.
As we are beginning to see, the same dissidents will complain. Basically the same bunch that wants virtually everything for literally nothing. That or the unilateral ability to do whatever with anything whether they paid or got it for free.
They are basically the same bunch that dis Apple/Jobs/Macs and those that support it/them to any degree.
The problem this bunch doesn't seem to get; they are virtually non-countable. That is, there is less than a couple of dozen that frequently post at any one time at the most. True, they do rant loudly, but how can anybody take them seriously as evidenced by Apple's continued growth and significant at that?
In this case, to suggest that every ebook is only worth $9.99 at the most is ludicrous. Or that they aren't worth $14.99 at any time. In what capacity is anybody that can dictate what a creation is worth?
Are they suggesting that we should all come down to the lowest denominator?
Would they concede to cutting their income? To match, for example:
I doubt it.
Dude, both Amazon and Apple can set what ever prices they want. Publishers can ask whatever prices they want and complain about Appple's or Amazon's policies.
Readers have RIGHT to complain about this price hike and you can spare us your masohisctic attitude towards Apple or "industry".
Comments
We're all tired of big business and big corporations screwing people.
While I'm on your side, there are a whole bunch of people out there who are apparently not tired of big business. Nearly half of Americans consistently vote for politicians who hand more and more power to big business. *cough* McCain / Net Neutrality / SCOTUS / Corporate Campaign Contributions *cough*
With all due respect to sensible posters and trolls on this topic - I also despise the Murdoch empire.
HOWEVER
The publishers not apple asking people to put their prices up, but to accept variable pricing with a higher charge for new content - this is about publishers who want the right to have variable pricing on their books.
Look at it this way - at the moment, everything is 9.99- new or old.
So why not charge a little more for new titles and less for 'classics' - it makes perfect sense and will probably have the effect of reducing the amount that people spend on digital books, if for instance, classics are 6.99, older titles 9.99 and new releases around the 12.99 mark.
I think the issue here is price fixing. Of course content distributors want to ensure the best, simplest pricing structure for their products (every track 79p). But in a time that we complain about a small number of companies having control, why should Amazon, Apple etc be able to dictate prices to content providers. Variable pricing, within ranges agreed with content distributor and content creator is a good thing.
I guess the question is could they have done the same thing by simply charging $20 wholesale for the ebook on launch and see if Amazon was willing to eat THAT much of a loss to keep the $9.99 price point as oppose to pushing the agency model.
The wholesale model might have worked if Amazon was willing to not sell stuff at a loss to kill ebook competitors. Publishers aren't stupid...they knew Amazon was already a bully and if Amazon managed to dominate the ebook market they'd have been screwed.
I dunno.
Nice to see Steve pulling for the customers.... OH wait...
Perhaps he wants publishers to stay in business? Just a thought. In the long run I suspect the consumers will win as prices of books digitally distributed are bound to be far less than printing ... and look at all the trees that will be spared
While I'm on your side, there are a whole bunch of people out there who are apparently not tired of big business. Nearly half of Americans consistently vote for politicians who hand more and more power to big business. *cough* McCain / Net Neutrality / SCOTUS / Corporate Campaign Contributions *cough*
To be fair to that half ... they are told to do this by one line catch phrases repeated ad nauseam and sent around in e-mails and reinforced by Fox News ... what do you expect them to do ... think?
If the price is too high for you, don't buy it. Or, write your own book and make out like a bandit like these publishers are doing. Or, STFU.
I think there is a definite sea change here that as you say will take some time to shake out. But the writing is on the wall!
If I said to my father (a former CEO-very smart businessman) I want to publish a magazine on paper and ship them using people, trucks, mideast oil, to all the supermarkets in America and again then 3 weeks later pick up 99% of them using people, trucks, mideast oil, because they haven't sold and either recycle them using people, mideast oil, bleach and water or just add them to the landfill. He would say, I don't care how much you make on the advertising, it's a very 'wasteful' business model and in that respect doomed.
That's why I like the iPad and dislike the publishers....they better get on board quick like.
While I'm on your side, there are a whole bunch of people out there who are apparently not tired of big business. Nearly half of Americans consistently vote for politicians who hand more and more power to big business. *cough* McCain / Net Neutrality / SCOTUS / Corporate Campaign Contributions *cough*
Save us your desperate political tripe please.
Terrific insights!
Hey, my posts are pretty 'terrific insights' too!
To be fair to that half ... they are told to do this by one line catch phrases repeated ad nauseam and sent around in e-mails and reinforced by Fox News ... what do you expect them to do ... think?
Quit hijacking the thread.
This is why the publishers need a higher price shift for purchasing.
Steve plans on selling iPads to schools en massé, instead of students carrying a bunch of heavy books around, they will have a thin iPad in their notebooks with will be uploaded with books rented by schools, cheaper than purchasing the books.
Also newspapers and other forms of disposable media.
The publishers save 50% of their costs with e-books over traditional books and the schools will save money as they can get volume licensing.
Steve can sell a lot of iPads. Everyone wins.
This is a load of shit. Not bullshit, but a pain in the ass.
Best sellers should be $9.99. Everything else should be $6.99 for novels, and $4.99 for novellas. Oh, and Rupert Murdoch is a bastard. Not just for this, but generally speaking.
Write your own books and you can sell them for $1.99 if you wish. You have absolutely no right to tell others what to sell their hard work for.
Every single publisher will increase their prices too... Amazon bent for one, the rest want that money too... and who can blame them?
GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD: this is not an across the board price increase. Under the old system, all books were $9.99. Under the new system, the publisher sets the price for what they think they're worth. Some will be much less than $9.99 (I've heard $5 or 6) and some will be more. That's the way books (and everything else is priced). Do you expect to walk into a car dealer and have all the cars priced the same?
As we are beginning to see, the same dissidents will complain. Basically the same bunch that wants virtually everything for literally nothing. That or the unilateral ability to do whatever with anything whether they paid or got it for free.
They are basically the same bunch that dis Apple/Jobs/Macs and those that support it/them to any degree.
The problem this bunch doesn't seem to get; they are virtually non-countable. That is, there is less than a couple of dozen that frequently post at any one time at the most. True, they do rant loudly, but how can anybody take them seriously as evidenced by Apple's continued growth and significant at that?
In this case, to suggest that every ebook is only worth $9.99 at the most is ludicrous. Or that they aren't worth $14.99 at any time. In what capacity is anybody that can dictate what a creation is worth?
Are they suggesting that we should all come down to the lowest denominator?
Would they concede to cutting their income? To match, for example:
I doubt it.
I agree 100%. People who think things should be free can go out and create their own intellectual property and give it away. I have a great deal of respect for the people who contribute free software and donate their time to make the world a better place. Where I draw the line is when they start to demand that EVERYONE do the same thing.
Competition causes prices to go up? Someone call the FTC.
Hint: in a free market, prices sometimes go up and sometimes go down. Amazon was artificially forcing prices down by selling some items below cost. That's not sustainable. What Apple is driving is a free market - publishers can choose how to price their own product rather than having Amazon dictate that everyone must charge the same.
AND SOME PRICES WILL BE LESS THAN $9.99 under the new system.
These book publishers are greedy. They want to increase the price for a product that has virtually no production cost. I will NEVER buy an e-book that is overpriced, unless it gives me some value add like the dynamic/interactive/content. All these publishers now have to do with ebooks is distribute a digital file over the internet, sans warehousing, sans paper costs, ink costs, etc. etc. They save a ton of money, yet they want to increase the price.
I'll tell you what I will do though. If I buy an ebook digital file. I will make sure to share it with other people. I will be glad to distribute it for free to a friend or two if the opportunity arises. I don't care if it's "illegal."
The publishers would be smarter if they lowered the price to minimize the kind of thing I might do if they raise the price. Believe me. People will do this. Hackers will create cracks for ebooks so they can be read.
The app store model is the perfect model. Make the book relatively inexpensive and you build revenue by high volume rather than gouging a lower volume of people.
Greedy jerk offs out there. As a consumer, we go by the saying, caveat emptor (buyer beware). Well "supplier beware" too. If you try to screw the consumer by greedily raising prices for something that you have to do virtually no work to produce, we will figure out a way to screw you back.
I see. So the publishers are greedy because they want to be paid for their work? I suppose you're greedy because you make your employer pay you, right? And you think it's OK to steal something because you don't want to pay what the seller charges? I'm just curious - what bizarre reasoning justifies this position? After all, I assume that you wouldn't think you could steal a Ferrari just because it's 'too expensive'. What type of warped mind makes you think it's OK to steal ANYTHING just because you don't like the price?
Your entire premise is wrong, anyway. First, even under the new prices, the eBooks will be less than paper books. Macmillan is proposing $12.99 to $14.99 for newly released best sellers and prices as low as $5 or 6. In the book store, best sellers list for $24.99 to $29.99 and are typically discounted to the $20 level. The bulk of books are around $14.99 hardcover and $8-10 paperback. So Macmillan's prices ARE less than the paper copy.
I also disagree with your premise that the electronic version is worth less than the paper version. Value has nothing to do with cost. If it did, I'd go out and buy a bunch of paint and paint a big canvas. By your logic, it should be worth more than the Mona LIsa because I have more paint in mine. For some people, the electronic version has greater value than the paper version. When I travel, it will save me 5-10 pounds of weight (I usually carry several books for international flights). I could theoretically get rid of the overflowing bookcases in my living room. Today, I regularly give stacks of books away because I have no where to store them. With eBooks, I can keep my books forever without wasting space. It's just inane to say that eBooks are a ripoff because they are set at a certain price. YOU may see them that way, but lots of others don't.
What am I talking about?
Why literacy and social classes of course.
Go to any decent sized town in the US and you will likely find a second hand book store where a person can buy a used book for a fraction of the cost of the new book. This has setup an entire system where the more affluent people in the US can and will buy a new book, read it, and then sell that book. This book can then be bought by the less fortunate members of our society for a fraction of the original price and read. Then possibly resold again to the used book store. This system allows for the publishers to make their money on the initial sale and allows for the poorer members of our society to afford to access to printed materials, thus helping our literacy rates. All of this is possible because of the First-sale Doctrine. The current cluster F' that is digital media completely violates the first-sale doctrine because the idiots in Washington have been told by the media companies that digital media isn't a sale but a license. I don't think I need to expand on what I think of this steaming pile of...
So, what does this "revolution" bring us? It brings us a widening gap between the classes of this country. The media companies don't give a crap. Hell they are all for destroying the second hand market, it means more money for them. Maybe. It means that only the well to do will be able to afford the best educations. It means nothing good for our society.
I have heard a few comments on why this won't happen. However, I don't buy them as true cures.
First, is libraries. What exactly are libraries going to loan out? Will they be allowed to loan out digital copies of books that they purchase? LOL! Yeah right, as if the media companies won't running screaming to their lawyers about suing the libraries for violating the DMCA or some such other unconstitutional law to stop those filthy pirates from distributing their digital content.
Second, is real hard bound books. Um... have you heard of economics? As the publishers move to eBooks because they can charge the same amount for an eBook as a real book, but don't have to pay for printing, handling, shipping, storing, and everything else that cost a lot of money when you are dealing with a real product. The real books will thus be produced in smaller quantities. This means that their price will go up. Thus, those real books will again get more expensive, and therefore when a person actually buys a real book it will be to keep it, not to sell it later. Thus, this will dry up the second hand market for books as well, and will similarly put real books further out of reach of the poorer people.
So, what is the solution? Don't go to eBooks, which is not a good solution, in my opinion. Make the laws recognize that when a consumer buys a digital copy of a work, that they own that copy of the work, just as they would have owned a hard copy. This means that the First-sale doctrine still applies and thus after I purchase that eBook and read it I can then turn around and sell it to someone else.
Our copyright laws are way out of date. In fact, the very name just goes to show how out of touch they are. Copying something is not the issue, and really never has been. If in the 1940s someone had taken The Grapes of Wrath, took the time to typeset the whole book and then buy the paper, ink, and printing press and produced a million books and set them in a warehouse and then burned them all the publisher would not have been harmed. Despite the fact that millions of unauthorized copies had been made.
It is the distribution of said copies that is the issue. If I purchase a book, I have paid the publisher for that work. If I make a thousand copies on my hard drive but never distribute them, what have I done to hurt the publisher or the author? Nothing. If I were to distribute those thousand copies then I have increased the available copies for consumption and have interfered with their distribution rights, and that should be illegal. Copying is not the issue.
What I think you meant to say is that you are not buying it for the paper, because you certainly are paying for it. And the majority of consumers do place greater value on a print edition that they can do with what they wish than on such an ephemeral entity as an e-book.
But even if the cost of manufacturing, distributing and recalling a physical volume is only a fraction of the total cost of production, there are still other factors to consider. For instance, a brick and mortar retailer can only stock and display so many books and periodicals at a given instant; the online world has the potential to offer virtually ubiquitous access to any material published. For the publisher this means their wares are never out of stock and can sell all over for as long as there is even the slightest demand. So there is a lot more potential for profit on any work they release.
Now, as Oscar Wilde said, a cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. I do not dispute that it would be foolish to assign a certain dollar amount to all creative works of one form all across the board. But given that they incur close to no additional expense after publication for every volume they ship electronically, I would be surprised if publishers did not eventually come to the conclusion that they will reap the greatest revenue the lower they price their virtual inventory.
I think we agree. It's just so important to point out that cost based pricing vs value for the customer really creates the interesting margins. Apple as well as all publishers knows this. It's the heart of their business. Of course they will make sure they push costs lower. After that's it for the customers to place our bucks where we find the value.
Print has one problem here though: Each book will only come thru one publisher. There is no competition on JK Rawlings books about Harry Potter. Unless you settle for a completely different book. But that's besides the point in this discussion!
Write your own books and you can sell them for $1.99 if you wish. You have absolutely no right to tell others what to sell their hard work for.
What are you talking about?
There is no way in hell an eBook novel, (best-seller or not), is worth $12.99 or $14.99.
You not only aren't getting the book, you aren't even getting a close facsimile of the book. You are getting a text file and a jpeg of the cover.
Also, as a writer, it's a bad bad day when eBooks become the norm and any bozo can re-stream your text and change the font into comic sans before sending it on for free to all their friends. Books are works of art. The aren't just text.
Hell, there is a thousand times more art in a digital comic than there is in one of these "books." By this measure, the latest digital comic should cost $40.00.
Most of that rise is because of the draconian, 'so 20th century', IP laws. So, to be honest, the blame should not be put on the distributors (Apple, publishers) alone but on the greedy writers and their associations. Followed the iTunes/Beatles saga? Dhani Harrison, a lazy son of John and Paul's friend who happened to play a guitar, is the leading face of that farce ... Ridiculous.
All this will only result in more illegal downloads. While people (including me) were somewhat affraid of cracking an iPhone (especially as it was tied to an operator), there will be much less resistance to cracking an iPad. Torrents will flourish. What goes around, comes around.
There isn't an ebook out there that you can't torrent today. Heck, there are many books that aren't ebooks that you can torrent today.
Does anyone else think that the eBook trend is a very dangerous one with the current grey area surrounding digital media? Especially since the bought and sold politicians are constantly handing more and more power over content to the media companies.
Long snip
You raise a number of good points. The biggest concern is libraries, but I suspect that will be solved by evolution in the interpretation of copyright laws and licenses. Even today, libraries have slightly different rules than individuals (you could not, for example, charge someone money to read your books, but libraries can). I think it's a near certainty that licenses will either explicitly or implicitly allow libraries to circulate eBooks. At that point, it becomes an issue of how to get a cheap eBook reader into the hands of people who can't afford one. I'm not sure how that's going to work out--maybe they will rent you an eBook reader or perhaps there's a secure way to allow you to read on your computer (of course, many poor don't have a computer, so that's still a problem). Clearly, that issue needs to be addressed.
I think the bigger issue involves availability of work. As it is, new and unknown authors find it almost impossible to get published for the first time. Switching to eBooks will reduce the volume of paper books, making the cost even greater for the publisher. In theory, it would be less expensive for the publisher to publish eBooks, but in practice, the cost difference is small - and the selling price for eBooks will be lower, as well. I could picture a lot of marginal authors being pushed out of the business.
OTOH, eBooks makes it very inexpensive for authors to self-publish or for a cut-rate publisher to enter the business and INCREASE the number of authors available. If this goes too far, the difficulty of weeding through the junk may become a problem. So what happens? Fewer authors published because of costs? More authors published because of self-publishing? Massive increase of the number of authors created by low cost of entry? Only time will tell.
What are you talking about?
If you'd read what I was responding to, I was clearly responding to someone who felt that they had the right to dictate what price eBooks should be sold for.
As we are beginning to see, the same dissidents will complain. Basically the same bunch that wants virtually everything for literally nothing. That or the unilateral ability to do whatever with anything whether they paid or got it for free.
They are basically the same bunch that dis Apple/Jobs/Macs and those that support it/them to any degree.
The problem this bunch doesn't seem to get; they are virtually non-countable. That is, there is less than a couple of dozen that frequently post at any one time at the most. True, they do rant loudly, but how can anybody take them seriously as evidenced by Apple's continued growth and significant at that?
In this case, to suggest that every ebook is only worth $9.99 at the most is ludicrous. Or that they aren't worth $14.99 at any time. In what capacity is anybody that can dictate what a creation is worth?
Are they suggesting that we should all come down to the lowest denominator?
Would they concede to cutting their income? To match, for example:
I doubt it.
I'm in accord with your assessment.
If you'd read what I was responding to, I was clearly responding to someone who felt that they had the right to dictate what price eBooks should be sold for.
You're wrong, fanboy.
As we are beginning to see, the same dissidents will complain. Basically the same bunch that wants virtually everything for literally nothing. That or the unilateral ability to do whatever with anything whether they paid or got it for free.
They are basically the same bunch that dis Apple/Jobs/Macs and those that support it/them to any degree.
The problem this bunch doesn't seem to get; they are virtually non-countable. That is, there is less than a couple of dozen that frequently post at any one time at the most. True, they do rant loudly, but how can anybody take them seriously as evidenced by Apple's continued growth and significant at that?
In this case, to suggest that every ebook is only worth $9.99 at the most is ludicrous. Or that they aren't worth $14.99 at any time. In what capacity is anybody that can dictate what a creation is worth?
Are they suggesting that we should all come down to the lowest denominator?
Would they concede to cutting their income? To match, for example:
I doubt it.
Dude, both Amazon and Apple can set what ever prices they want. Publishers can ask whatever prices they want and complain about Appple's or Amazon's policies.
Readers have RIGHT to complain about this price hike and you can spare us your masohisctic attitude towards Apple or "industry".