All's well that ends swell
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Kindle's best sellers are free
PUNTERS BUYING Kindle ebook readers doesn't translate into ebook sales, according to Cnet.
When Amazon launched its ebook reader, it claimed the gadget would mean the end of old style ink and paper books. However, while the use of ebooks is increasing, it's looking like punters are not interested in the type they actually have to buy.
The list of 'best-selling' Kindle titles is dominated by free books such as public domain copies of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and "Pride and Prejudice".
What this seems to be saying is that Amazon's customers think that £9.99 is too much to pay for an ebook.
In turn, this has some observers wondering why the price is so high and the answer is actually historical. If a book costs £10 on the shelf, it would probably cost about a £1 to make, the writer would get less than £1 in royalties and the publisher would collect about £3 for profits, marketing, administration and editing. The rest of the money goes to pay a distributor to get the books into the shops.
But Amazon is not a publisher, it is a distributor and it collects between 50 and 60 per cent of the final book price. While the book publisher would probably be happy to sell an ebook for £5, Amazon would be losing a huge wad of the money that it would be collecting from distributing traditional books. Amazon seems to have addressed this problem by keeping the price of ebooks close to the levels of hard copy books in the hope of getting the best of both worlds.
But publishers are reportedly starting to become dissatisfied with Amazon's approach. The recent recession has bought many distributors crashing to the ground. Book shops are unable to pay the high margins that distributors have demanded, and many have closed. Amazon on the other hand, which has a fraction of the costs of a traditional distributor, has thrived.
Now publishers are starting to ask themselves, why do we bother with distributors, particularly when it comes to ebooks that we could sell ourselves?
All it will take is a publishers' agreement, a set of standards and a tame manufacturer of ebook readers and Amazon's Kindle experiment could be toast. µ
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"price it differently in each area."
That's half the annoyance of consumers. Why should I pay for an ebook or a downloaded game/music/tv series (i.e. anything that is downloaded) at a different price than someone in another country even though its the same download from the same servers in the same location?
Oh and before people flame this post; yes I realise my dream of everyone paying the same is unrealistic. Yes, its all about supply/demand and its all about not undercutting non-download sales (e.g. real books, dvds, cds etc)... but I still reckon that particularly for DVDs/CDs they are becomming irellevant and its unfair that downloads cost the same as the physical media. </rant
Get a sense of humour please.
http://www.baen.com/library/
Along the same vein as the webscriptions (same organization), this is authors / publisher offering the first couple books in a series sans DRM in hopes you'll buy the rest, seems like it's working pretty good for them.
Liam
Are you insane? We needed stronger DRM? Like what biochips!?
Seriously if companies needed to make money they need to reduce their prices & price it differently in each area.
Not all the world is the same.
Same goes Game Developers. PC Games need to get rid off DRM. One off the reasons why I didn't buy GTA 4 & Riddick Dark Athena was coz of this stupid DRM.
Look at the booming MP3 demand when DRM was removed. That's just proof people are willing to pay if it's priced right & they have freedom on what to choose!
The problem is the Amazon model still has DRM. If I buy a "book" I'd like to be able to keep it safe, forever, maybe lend it to friends, without knowing that under it all Amazon still has control, and they could make it vanish via the powers of DRM.
Same goes for music, I don't have a problem with paying for MP3s, I can put them on my non apple phone, or play them on my laptop. I also know in future if I change my phone or laptop, or hard drive dies, the backup I have will work on any other mp3 capable device.
It’s obvious we need stronger DRM. How can any sane person disagree? Every time you read a public-domain novel, God kills a kitten.
If you're faced with an eBook for $10 or a real book for $9.99, what are you going to get (considering the real book can be lent or sold second-hand)? From a consumer pov, it's a no-brainer, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if people were sticking with physical print media.
A fairer deal would be eBooks at roughly half the price of a print book, with at least half of that going to publisher/author. The cost of distribution is significantly lower, after all.
One key thing to realise is that there is a real cost to going in with high prices - there is a limited window before Kindle and eBook formats get cracked and people get used to downloading them as casually as they now do TV series or games, which could do significant harm to the medium.
The most downloaded games on Xbox Live are free too, that doesn't mean people aren't buying games.
I didn't see anything in here mentioning actual sales at all, just that people will download free books if the option exists... which seems pretty obvious.
err...no. Publisher (aka 'the middle man') employs guys like editors, proofreaders, people that take care of those pesky things like book design, marketing (no really).
You can often see writers thanking these people. They do so not out of sheer politeness, but because these people really help them to actually write the thing in a readable manner and help them get in touch with their readers (forget BS like Facebook solving all these things automagically, as there are people avoiding it).
Have you read literature dumped into txt file without reasonable fonts, formatting... ? Not that enticing and readable, isn't it?
So, artist: 10%,
Publisher: 10%
Some random people who contributed nothing: 80%
The middleman has to go, obviously. He is a pestilence upon society.
The right price for an ebook is a dollar. I'd pay two if I knew the artist got 50% or more of what I'm paying. Apart from that I'm happy to download my books off torrent and sending my money to the author directly with paypal.
I ain't funding assholes if I can avoid it.
book writers - why would they need any middle man. for charity?
Look into Webscriptions at www.baen.com for SF/F e-books at $5.00 each or $15 for a whole month's output (usually 4-7 books). Don't rightly know how much that is in your preatty, colourful money measured in weight.