If a well known author really wanted to make some money, they'd hire their own editor, PR team, typesetter, graphic designer, etc. and simply sell direct to the public via iTunes. I got the impression that an author like Dan Brown already has some kind of production team or cross-promotional sharing agreement, if you saw him on the Today Show promoting his last book it seemed like he was there all week.
What will keep the star authors from taking their books direct to iTunes? Nothing except for long term or exclusive contracts.
How does this author do this before they become well known? Who pays their expenses then? Should they mortgage their house, if they have one? Ty to take a loan out from a bank (which won't give it to them for this anyway)?
Guys like Dan Brown and Patterson get millions as an advance on every book they write. If they leave the publisher, that won't happen. Most of them are quite content where they are. The reason why most authors move to different publishers is because they don't think they're being promoted enough, aren't being given the best editors, etc.
I fully understand the marketing strategy and financial logic behind the higher premium prices for e-books, HOWEVER, I still believe it's all verging on ridiculous. I think a "sweet spot" from a CONSUMER VIEWPOINT for e-book prices would be between $3.99-$6.99. Yes, I know this is impossible financially due to the various royalties & costs involved by the publishers, but $12.99-$14.99 will make me very less likely to purchase their books. The ONLY exception would be textbooks. I will be willing to pay top-dollar for textbooks that don't weigh 10 pounds in my bag.
I really don't care what a publisher's fixed costs are. If I like or want the book, I'll buy it regardless of price. Just don't trot out a bunch of bull justifying these inflated prices for e-books when common sense would tell anyone that the price of a physical book is going to be higher than an electronic version, but an electronic version 'near' the price of a physical book... baloney!
There's a neurotic need to justify the price of an ebook being in the sub-$10 range because it is just electronic bits, while the paper versions have a "real-world" and somewhat lasting quality to them. That's just the plain wrong angle to take. There's only a loose connection between how much something costs to make and how much we are willing to pay for it.
With digital, more then ever, it will test people's ability to value the experience over the physical object. It's going to test how much we value reading a great book. If the collective we don't value a good book enough to buy digital fiction books for $15-$30, it'll be interesting to see how the industry will change if the range is really $5-$10 for first releases.
It's going to be like App Store economics, the good brands will command higher prices ($15), while the smaller brands and unbranded have to start cheap and build the reputation until they can charge more. Man, that kind of sucks as authors tend to be really good when they are starving and trying to get published, but once they've made it, they are spent and running on fumes. It should mean the cream rises to the top and stays more expensive.
Once the ipad/kindle become as ubiquitous as the ipod, I could see this happening. I could even see a low-cost small publisher merely providing the service of putting the book up on iTunes.
Yes, all things being equal, promotional support will continue to play a large part in the success of today's blockbuster books... same situation as music and movies.
Still, there are other options such as sub-leasing. If you own your own warehose, you have the flexibility of selling the warehouse.
Sure, if you have only 10,000 sf of warehouse space, you won't be able to reduce your space by 500 sf But if you are a large publisher and have 1,000,000 sf of warehouse space, you can definately reduce your space by 50,000 sf.
Rent is ridiculously cheap anyways. It's the labor involved with distribution that is expensive. And that can be cut at a moment's notice.
Well, you've got to reorganize your products, and cut off the space you're renting out, that's a big expense, and I don't know any landlord that is so easy going as to allow the renter to determine how that will go. Not now, when it's so difficult to find someone else to fill that now empty space that the landlord just spent thousands in blocking off, adding alarms to etc.
When we rented our third floor, it took a while because the other small tenants had to finish up their leases, though we bought one small guy out. 15 years later, when digital allowed us to give up some space, the landlord insisted that we give back half the floor and nothing less. I had to re-design part of my lab to accommodate that. It wasn't easy.
For a warehouse holding hundreds of thousands of books organized carefully, I feel as though it would be difficult to just give up some space. There would be less of each book but the same number of books for years to come. That's not an easy reorganization.
I tink a lot of what sites like that write as mostly BS. While there's fraud in every business, and just think of how many times you got something you should have paid for, but didn't, the fact till remains that most movies lose money.
All you have to do is look at the top ten listings. You'll see some pretty big budget movies sinking the second week into irrelevancy. In fact, many big budget movies do that the first week. What happens then?
That site is citing law suits where producers, actors who were promised a percentage of net profits in the biggest movie's that have ever been made are paid nothing because the studio claims there are net profits.
If Star Wars, LOTR, Spiderman don't make money, which movies do? What keeps these studio's in business?
I fully understand the marketing strategy and financial logic behind the higher premium prices for e-books, HOWEVER, I still believe it's all verging on ridiculous. I think a "sweet spot" from a CONSUMER VIEWPOINT for e-book prices would be between $3.99-$6.99. Yes, I know this is impossible financially due to the various royalties & costs involved by the publishers, but $12.99-$14.99 will make me very less likely to purchase their books. The ONLY exception would be textbooks. I will be willing to pay top-dollar for textbooks that don't weigh 10 pounds in my bag.
What the article here didn't cover,is that McMillian and others are proposing that when hardcover books first come out, the price will be $12.99 to $14.99. Over time, they will decline to $4.99. That seems fair. It's still below the price of a discounted paperback.
If a well known author really wanted to make some money, they'd hire their own editor, PR team, typesetter, graphic designer, etc. and simply sell direct to the public via iTunes. I got the impression that an author like Dan Brown already has some kind of production team or cross-promotional sharing agreement, if you saw him on the Today Show promoting his last book it seemed like he was there all week.
What will keep the star authors from taking their books direct to iTunes? . Nothing except for long term or exclusive contracts
Probably the same thing that tells us it is cheaper to hire a qualified electrician to wire a house than to do it ourselves.
As adage goes, ?a man who defends himself has a fool for a lawyer.
Just what would a writer know about managing a business. Even the best financial writers use a publishing house. Cripes, the legal fees alone would kill a novice author/self publisher, especially the likes of Dan Brown.
Dan Brown is on the promotional tour. It is part of his contract with his publisher and the marketing costs as tabled above by the New York Times. If he had to do or manage everything that it takes from creating awareness to hawking his wares himself, he couldn't do what he does best, that is, write.
Well, you've got to reorganize your products, and cut off the space you're renting out, that's a big expense, and I don't know any landlord that is so easy going as to allow the renter to determine how that will go. Not now, when it's so difficult to find someone else to fill that now empty space that the landlord just spent thousands in blocking off, adding alarms to etc.
When we rented our third floor, it took a while because the other small tenants had to finish up their leases, though we bought one small guy out. 15 years later, when digital allowed us to give up some space, the landlord insisted that we give back half the floor and nothing less. I had to re-design part of my lab to accommodate that. It wasn't easy.
For a warehouse holding hundreds of thousands of books organized carefully, I feel as though it would be difficult to just give up some space. There would be less of each book but the same number of books for years to come. That's not an easy reorganization.
I understand what you're saying. You're saying that it takes time to wind down warehouse space. But my point that it can be done.
Just because you have to pay rent for a temporary period of time while you wind down your warehouse foot print doesn't mean you should continue to pay rent and to distribute less profitable hardcover books when you have a more profitable alternative.
The reason for raising e-book prices has nothing to do with the cost of warehouse space. It has only to do with increasing profits, and stemming the growth of e-books.
Probably the same thing that tells us it is cheaper to hire a qualified electrician to wire a house than to do it ourselves.
As adage goes, ?a man who defends himself has a fool for a lawyer.
Just what would a writer know about managing a business. Even the best financial writers use a publishing house. Cripes, the legal fees alone would kill a novice author/self publisher, especially the likes of Dan Brown.
Dan Brown is on the promotional tour. It is part of his contract with his publisher and the marketing costs as tabled above by the New York Times. If he had to do or manage everything that it takes from creating awareness to hawking his wares himself, he couldn't do what he does best, that is, write.
All these costs have nothing to do with distributing physical books. With the e-Book in play, I could see a lower cost publisher that does everything that the current publisher's do minus printing, storing, and distributing the physical books.
Plus, with iTunes and Amazon, the middle-man expenses are much less, as you don't have to support stores like Barnes and Noble who need to pay rent and hire employees.
That site is citing law suits where producers, actors who were promised a percentage of net profits in the biggest movie's that have ever been made are paid nothing because the studio claims there are net profits.
If Star Wars, LOTR, Spiderman don't make money, which movies do? What keeps these studio's in business?
Anyone can sue anyone. Often, these suits aren't correct. Often, the person suing got a bad deal because his (or her) people doing the negotiating did a poor job (or worse, the jerks did their own negotiating!), and now want to make up for it. Sometimes the studios are hiding something. When you look at the studio profits, they aren't that great. Long gone are the days of movie moguls spending money like it is water.
That's ended everywhere.
When I started out in Advertising photography for McAnn-Erikson in 1969 (at 19), budgets were overflowing. When, a year later, I took over the main accounts at our studio, I was given a spending account that would choke a horse. Go to the best restaurants, they told me. Take a couple of your models with you, they told me. Show off at the disco's. Well, those were the days! but in the 80's things slowed down (after I got out), and have been slowing down ever since!
That's been true at all of the businesses associated with entertainment and the advertising industry. Cash is tight these days.
I understand what you're saying. You're saying that it takes time to wind down warehouse space. But my point that it can be done.
Just because you have to pay rent for a temporary period of time while you wind down your warehouse foot print doesn't mean you should continue to pay rent and to distribute less profitable hardcover books when you have a more profitable alternative.
The reason for raising e-book prices has nothing to do with the cost of warehouse space. It has only to do with increasing profits, and stemming the growth of e-books.
I agree. No problem there. I'm just saying that it won't be easy, especially in these times. In 2006, sure. The landlord would be happy to get space back. but today? Nah! Unless they're as nice about it as you seem to be. You know what the chance of that is. Getting space back that they won't be able to rent isn't something they would look kindly on. Particularly if they have to go in pocket to make that space usable. And it would depend on what is being paid per square foot. How much would the publisher really save by giving up some space after the costs of doing so are taken into consideration? If it's a small percentage, then it might not pay. It might not pay until 20% could be given back.
At any rate, it's just a supposition right now, as e-book sales are so low.
The prices of e-books are lower than the hardcovers they are replacing. That's what matters. Look at the links I provided in another post to see why Amazons pricing isn't sustainable, or if it is, why not only publishers, but writers as well will be getting the shaft.
What I find interesting is that no one seems to be looking at the smaller amounts the writers would be getting if Amazon's pricing was profitable for them. Why should an author be willing to take less than they're getting now? That makes no sense. All most people here seem to care about is how much THEY pay, not how much the author, or for that matter, anyone associated with doing the book, would be paid. If publishers are paid substantially less, then everyone working these will have to be paid less as well.
Are people here willing to take a cut in their own pay? I doubt it.
The $9.99 sample doesn't work because it's called the Amazon plan while you're reporting on the Apple "Agency" plan of 30%. and the Agency's 30% flat rate plan is based on higher Amazon selling prices forced by Macmillan and others.
Amazon's own plan has given publishers about 50% (traditional industry average) of PUBLISHER-DETERMINED LIST PRICE as opposed to Amazon's sale price. So, they have used "$9.99" ebooks as loss leaders and charge a bit more for older books. Macmillan and others pay authors from the 50% of List Price they set no matter what Amazon sells the book for.
The NY Times article didn't base revenues on a $9.99 e-book price because Amazon pays the publisher based on the HIGHER list price the publisher sets.
Anyone can sue anyone. Often, these suits aren't correct. Often, the person suing got a bad deal because his (or her) people doing the negotiating did a poor job (or worse, the jerks did their own negotiating!), and now want to make up for it. Sometimes the studios are hiding something. When you look at the studio profits, they aren't that great. Long gone are the days of movie moguls spending money like it is water.
That's ended everywhere.
When I started out in Advertising photography for McAnn-Erikson in 1969 (at 19), budgets were overflowing. When, a year later, I took over the main accounts at our studio, I was given a spending account that would choke a horse. Go to the best restaurants, they told me. Take a couple of your models with you, they told me. Show off at the disco's. Well, those were the days! but in the 80's things slowed down (after I got out), and have been slowing down ever since!
That's been true at all of the businesses associated with entertainment and the advertising industry. Cash is tight these days.
So what you're saying is that either (a) Peter Jackson, Tom Hanks... etc. got paid and they are lying and say they didnt or (b) the studio actually didn't make any money.
I find (a) much harder to believe than (b), since all the studio has to do to defeat the lawsuit is to produce the bank statements so we're back to Star Wars, LOTR, and Spiderman being money losers.
And before you say I'm over simplifying the lawsuits, I'd argue that I'm not.
In all three cases, the plaintiffs allege that (1) they were entitled to a percentage of the net profits and (2) they were not paid.
The studio defense is that the movie made no net profits, thus the the plaintiffs were not entitled to any payments.
What I find interesting is that no one seems to be looking at the smaller amounts the writers would be getting if Amazon's pricing was profitable for them. Why should an author be willing to take less than they're getting now? That makes no sense. ll most people here seem to care about is how much THEY pay, not how much the author, or for that matter, anyone associated with doing the book, would be paid. If publishers are paid substantially less, then everyone working these will have to be paid less as well.
Are people here willing to take a cut in their own pay? I doubt it.
Easy: Lower prices means more books sold. Though the author makes less money on each book sold, he will sell more.
That or authors need to renegotiate for a fixed amount per copy sold, whether e-book or physical book. But they haven't been doing that yet, so there's still no reason for e-book prices to increase.
I tink a lot of what sites like that write as mostly BS. While there's fraud in every business, and just think of how many times you got something you should have paid for, but didn't, the fact till remains that most movies lose money.
I'm not calling fraud, only creative accounting. Books aren't generally big budget production items.
e-books don't require warehouse storage? Then don't whine about the cost of warehouses; sell them and move along quietly.
Quote:
All you have to do is look at the top ten listings. You'll see some pretty big budget movies sinking the second week into irrelevancy. In fact, many big budget movies do that the first week. What happens then?
Everybody still gets paid except perhaps the producers and investors.
Tangent: Authors don't earn anything from book sales until their advance has been recovered. The uncertainties surrounding e-books might lead publishers to offer smaller or fewer advances. Authors will tend to be compensated more from their successes than from expectations of their success.
1 DOLLAR. That is the fair price for something that can be replicated for ever at no cost. The same for any CD, DVD or Blu-ray downloaded from their owners using P2P. They increase worldwide sales thousands of times. Piracy disappears overnight. Everybody wins.
If a well known author really wanted to make some money, they'd hire their own editor, PR team, typesetter, graphic designer, etc. and simply sell direct to the public via iTunes.
You know, they could hire all these people to do that and form some sort of a group and they could farm out their services to others who can't afford to hire their own people and to new writers. After all, an author only writes a book every year or two so they would have plenty of time on their hands.
Comments
If a well known author really wanted to make some money, they'd hire their own editor, PR team, typesetter, graphic designer, etc. and simply sell direct to the public via iTunes. I got the impression that an author like Dan Brown already has some kind of production team or cross-promotional sharing agreement, if you saw him on the Today Show promoting his last book it seemed like he was there all week.
What will keep the star authors from taking their books direct to iTunes? Nothing except for long term or exclusive contracts.
How does this author do this before they become well known? Who pays their expenses then? Should they mortgage their house, if they have one? Ty to take a loan out from a bank (which won't give it to them for this anyway)?
Guys like Dan Brown and Patterson get millions as an advance on every book they write. If they leave the publisher, that won't happen. Most of them are quite content where they are. The reason why most authors move to different publishers is because they don't think they're being promoted enough, aren't being given the best editors, etc.
How will that work when there is no publisher?
I really don't care what a publisher's fixed costs are. If I like or want the book, I'll buy it regardless of price. Just don't trot out a bunch of bull justifying these inflated prices for e-books when common sense would tell anyone that the price of a physical book is going to be higher than an electronic version, but an electronic version 'near' the price of a physical book... baloney!
There's a neurotic need to justify the price of an ebook being in the sub-$10 range because it is just electronic bits, while the paper versions have a "real-world" and somewhat lasting quality to them. That's just the plain wrong angle to take. There's only a loose connection between how much something costs to make and how much we are willing to pay for it.
With digital, more then ever, it will test people's ability to value the experience over the physical object. It's going to test how much we value reading a great book. If the collective we don't value a good book enough to buy digital fiction books for $15-$30, it'll be interesting to see how the industry will change if the range is really $5-$10 for first releases.
It's going to be like App Store economics, the good brands will command higher prices ($15), while the smaller brands and unbranded have to start cheap and build the reputation until they can charge more. Man, that kind of sucks as authors tend to be really good when they are starving and trying to get published, but once they've made it, they are spent and running on fumes. It should mean the cream rises to the top and stays more expensive.
Once the ipad/kindle become as ubiquitous as the ipod, I could see this happening. I could even see a low-cost small publisher merely providing the service of putting the book up on iTunes.
Yes, all things being equal, promotional support will continue to play a large part in the success of today's blockbuster books... same situation as music and movies.
Still, there are other options such as sub-leasing. If you own your own warehose, you have the flexibility of selling the warehouse.
Sure, if you have only 10,000 sf of warehouse space, you won't be able to reduce your space by 500 sf But if you are a large publisher and have 1,000,000 sf of warehouse space, you can definately reduce your space by 50,000 sf.
Rent is ridiculously cheap anyways. It's the labor involved with distribution that is expensive. And that can be cut at a moment's notice.
Well, you've got to reorganize your products, and cut off the space you're renting out, that's a big expense, and I don't know any landlord that is so easy going as to allow the renter to determine how that will go. Not now, when it's so difficult to find someone else to fill that now empty space that the landlord just spent thousands in blocking off, adding alarms to etc.
When we rented our third floor, it took a while because the other small tenants had to finish up their leases, though we bought one small guy out. 15 years later, when digital allowed us to give up some space, the landlord insisted that we give back half the floor and nothing less. I had to re-design part of my lab to accommodate that. It wasn't easy.
For a warehouse holding hundreds of thousands of books organized carefully, I feel as though it would be difficult to just give up some space. There would be less of each book but the same number of books for years to come. That's not an easy reorganization.
I tink a lot of what sites like that write as mostly BS. While there's fraud in every business, and just think of how many times you got something you should have paid for, but didn't, the fact till remains that most movies lose money.
All you have to do is look at the top ten listings. You'll see some pretty big budget movies sinking the second week into irrelevancy. In fact, many big budget movies do that the first week. What happens then?
That site is citing law suits where producers, actors who were promised a percentage of net profits in the biggest movie's that have ever been made are paid nothing because the studio claims there are net profits.
If Star Wars, LOTR, Spiderman don't make money, which movies do? What keeps these studio's in business?
So no one can actually show any proof that Amazon is taking a loss, yet no one seems to question this?
One way is when a company refuses to give any information out. When they are doing well, they shout it out.
There are lots of articles about the frustration, and the skepticism.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Amazon-K...news-5461.html
This shows what they get relative to what they pay. A good article overall. There's a lot more of this but I hope this is enough.
http://knowledgeproblem.com/2010/02/...iscrimination/
I fully understand the marketing strategy and financial logic behind the higher premium prices for e-books, HOWEVER, I still believe it's all verging on ridiculous. I think a "sweet spot" from a CONSUMER VIEWPOINT for e-book prices would be between $3.99-$6.99. Yes, I know this is impossible financially due to the various royalties & costs involved by the publishers, but $12.99-$14.99 will make me very less likely to purchase their books. The ONLY exception would be textbooks. I will be willing to pay top-dollar for textbooks that don't weigh 10 pounds in my bag.
What the article here didn't cover,is that McMillian and others are proposing that when hardcover books first come out, the price will be $12.99 to $14.99. Over time, they will decline to $4.99. That seems fair. It's still below the price of a discounted paperback.
If a well known author really wanted to make some money, they'd hire their own editor, PR team, typesetter, graphic designer, etc. and simply sell direct to the public via iTunes. I got the impression that an author like Dan Brown already has some kind of production team or cross-promotional sharing agreement, if you saw him on the Today Show promoting his last book it seemed like he was there all week.
What will keep the star authors from taking their books direct to iTunes? . Nothing except for long term or exclusive contracts
Probably the same thing that tells us it is cheaper to hire a qualified electrician to wire a house than to do it ourselves.
As adage goes, ?a man who defends himself has a fool for a lawyer.
Just what would a writer know about managing a business. Even the best financial writers use a publishing house. Cripes, the legal fees alone would kill a novice author/self publisher, especially the likes of Dan Brown.
Dan Brown is on the promotional tour. It is part of his contract with his publisher and the marketing costs as tabled above by the New York Times. If he had to do or manage everything that it takes from creating awareness to hawking his wares himself, he couldn't do what he does best, that is, write.
Well, you've got to reorganize your products, and cut off the space you're renting out, that's a big expense, and I don't know any landlord that is so easy going as to allow the renter to determine how that will go. Not now, when it's so difficult to find someone else to fill that now empty space that the landlord just spent thousands in blocking off, adding alarms to etc.
When we rented our third floor, it took a while because the other small tenants had to finish up their leases, though we bought one small guy out. 15 years later, when digital allowed us to give up some space, the landlord insisted that we give back half the floor and nothing less. I had to re-design part of my lab to accommodate that. It wasn't easy.
For a warehouse holding hundreds of thousands of books organized carefully, I feel as though it would be difficult to just give up some space. There would be less of each book but the same number of books for years to come. That's not an easy reorganization.
I understand what you're saying. You're saying that it takes time to wind down warehouse space. But my point that it can be done.
Just because you have to pay rent for a temporary period of time while you wind down your warehouse foot print doesn't mean you should continue to pay rent and to distribute less profitable hardcover books when you have a more profitable alternative.
The reason for raising e-book prices has nothing to do with the cost of warehouse space. It has only to do with increasing profits, and stemming the growth of e-books.
Probably the same thing that tells us it is cheaper to hire a qualified electrician to wire a house than to do it ourselves.
As adage goes, ?a man who defends himself has a fool for a lawyer.
Just what would a writer know about managing a business. Even the best financial writers use a publishing house. Cripes, the legal fees alone would kill a novice author/self publisher, especially the likes of Dan Brown.
Dan Brown is on the promotional tour. It is part of his contract with his publisher and the marketing costs as tabled above by the New York Times. If he had to do or manage everything that it takes from creating awareness to hawking his wares himself, he couldn't do what he does best, that is, write.
All these costs have nothing to do with distributing physical books. With the e-Book in play, I could see a lower cost publisher that does everything that the current publisher's do minus printing, storing, and distributing the physical books.
Plus, with iTunes and Amazon, the middle-man expenses are much less, as you don't have to support stores like Barnes and Noble who need to pay rent and hire employees.
That site is citing law suits where producers, actors who were promised a percentage of net profits in the biggest movie's that have ever been made are paid nothing because the studio claims there are net profits.
If Star Wars, LOTR, Spiderman don't make money, which movies do? What keeps these studio's in business?
Anyone can sue anyone. Often, these suits aren't correct. Often, the person suing got a bad deal because his (or her) people doing the negotiating did a poor job (or worse, the jerks did their own negotiating!), and now want to make up for it. Sometimes the studios are hiding something. When you look at the studio profits, they aren't that great. Long gone are the days of movie moguls spending money like it is water.
That's ended everywhere.
When I started out in Advertising photography for McAnn-Erikson in 1969 (at 19), budgets were overflowing. When, a year later, I took over the main accounts at our studio, I was given a spending account that would choke a horse. Go to the best restaurants, they told me. Take a couple of your models with you, they told me. Show off at the disco's. Well, those were the days! but in the 80's things slowed down (after I got out), and have been slowing down ever since!
That's been true at all of the businesses associated with entertainment and the advertising industry. Cash is tight these days.
a new report states that consumers have "unrealistic expectations" about how low e-book prices should be.
We've been spoiled by the price implosion in the App Store. Not everything's going to be free or 99 cents.
Anyway it will be interesting to see what the average eBook price ultimately settles at.
I understand what you're saying. You're saying that it takes time to wind down warehouse space. But my point that it can be done.
Just because you have to pay rent for a temporary period of time while you wind down your warehouse foot print doesn't mean you should continue to pay rent and to distribute less profitable hardcover books when you have a more profitable alternative.
The reason for raising e-book prices has nothing to do with the cost of warehouse space. It has only to do with increasing profits, and stemming the growth of e-books.
I agree. No problem there. I'm just saying that it won't be easy, especially in these times. In 2006, sure. The landlord would be happy to get space back. but today? Nah! Unless they're as nice about it as you seem to be. You know what the chance of that is. Getting space back that they won't be able to rent isn't something they would look kindly on. Particularly if they have to go in pocket to make that space usable. And it would depend on what is being paid per square foot. How much would the publisher really save by giving up some space after the costs of doing so are taken into consideration? If it's a small percentage, then it might not pay. It might not pay until 20% could be given back.
At any rate, it's just a supposition right now, as e-book sales are so low.
The prices of e-books are lower than the hardcovers they are replacing. That's what matters. Look at the links I provided in another post to see why Amazons pricing isn't sustainable, or if it is, why not only publishers, but writers as well will be getting the shaft.
What I find interesting is that no one seems to be looking at the smaller amounts the writers would be getting if Amazon's pricing was profitable for them. Why should an author be willing to take less than they're getting now? That makes no sense. All most people here seem to care about is how much THEY pay, not how much the author, or for that matter, anyone associated with doing the book, would be paid. If publishers are paid substantially less, then everyone working these will have to be paid less as well.
Are people here willing to take a cut in their own pay? I doubt it.
Amazon's own plan has given publishers about 50% (traditional industry average) of PUBLISHER-DETERMINED LIST PRICE as opposed to Amazon's sale price. So, they have used "$9.99" ebooks as loss leaders and charge a bit more for older books. Macmillan and others pay authors from the 50% of List Price they set no matter what Amazon sells the book for.
The NY Times article didn't base revenues on a $9.99 e-book price because Amazon pays the publisher based on the HIGHER list price the publisher sets.
This makes a huge difference.
Anyone can sue anyone. Often, these suits aren't correct. Often, the person suing got a bad deal because his (or her) people doing the negotiating did a poor job (or worse, the jerks did their own negotiating!), and now want to make up for it. Sometimes the studios are hiding something. When you look at the studio profits, they aren't that great. Long gone are the days of movie moguls spending money like it is water.
That's ended everywhere.
When I started out in Advertising photography for McAnn-Erikson in 1969 (at 19), budgets were overflowing. When, a year later, I took over the main accounts at our studio, I was given a spending account that would choke a horse. Go to the best restaurants, they told me. Take a couple of your models with you, they told me. Show off at the disco's. Well, those were the days! but in the 80's things slowed down (after I got out), and have been slowing down ever since!
That's been true at all of the businesses associated with entertainment and the advertising industry. Cash is tight these days.
So what you're saying is that either (a) Peter Jackson, Tom Hanks... etc. got paid and they are lying and say they didnt or (b) the studio actually didn't make any money.
I find (a) much harder to believe than (b), since all the studio has to do to defeat the lawsuit is to produce the bank statements so we're back to Star Wars, LOTR, and Spiderman being money losers.
And before you say I'm over simplifying the lawsuits, I'd argue that I'm not.
In all three cases, the plaintiffs allege that (1) they were entitled to a percentage of the net profits and (2) they were not paid.
The studio defense is that the movie made no net profits, thus the the plaintiffs were not entitled to any payments.
What I find interesting is that no one seems to be looking at the smaller amounts the writers would be getting if Amazon's pricing was profitable for them. Why should an author be willing to take less than they're getting now? That makes no sense. ll most people here seem to care about is how much THEY pay, not how much the author, or for that matter, anyone associated with doing the book, would be paid. If publishers are paid substantially less, then everyone working these will have to be paid less as well.
Are people here willing to take a cut in their own pay? I doubt it.
Easy: Lower prices means more books sold. Though the author makes less money on each book sold, he will sell more.
That or authors need to renegotiate for a fixed amount per copy sold, whether e-book or physical book. But they haven't been doing that yet, so there's still no reason for e-book prices to increase.
I tink a lot of what sites like that write as mostly BS. While there's fraud in every business, and just think of how many times you got something you should have paid for, but didn't, the fact till remains that most movies lose money.
I'm not calling fraud, only creative accounting. Books aren't generally big budget production items.
e-books don't require warehouse storage? Then don't whine about the cost of warehouses; sell them and move along quietly.
All you have to do is look at the top ten listings. You'll see some pretty big budget movies sinking the second week into irrelevancy. In fact, many big budget movies do that the first week. What happens then?
Everybody still gets paid except perhaps the producers and investors.
Tangent: Authors don't earn anything from book sales until their advance has been recovered. The uncertainties surrounding e-books might lead publishers to offer smaller or fewer advances. Authors will tend to be compensated more from their successes than from expectations of their success.
If a well known author really wanted to make some money, they'd hire their own editor, PR team, typesetter, graphic designer, etc. and simply sell direct to the public via iTunes.
You know, they could hire all these people to do that and form some sort of a group and they could farm out their services to others who can't afford to hire their own people and to new writers. After all, an author only writes a book every year or two so they would have plenty of time on their hands.
They could call this a "publishing group".