Making a living as a writer just got harder
Saturday, January 30th, 2010 09:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniSo, Apple introduced its new Shiny! Toy! a couple days ago, and revealed that the Apple Ebook Store will be selling ebooks at a more reasonable price point than Amazon.com. One of Apple's partners in this is Macmillan Publishing. Amazon.com is Not Pleased with this defection, so it's reported by several Macmillan authors and in other places that Macmillan books have been yanked from Amazon's US database. Just, so says one wag as a "temporary measure" to bring Macmillan to heel.
Read all about it: here and here
And they wonder why authors drink.
Speaking of which, I think I need more coffee.
Read all about it: here and here
And they wonder why authors drink.
Speaking of which, I think I need more coffee.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:15 pm (UTC)I usually am not in favor of Amazon (matter of fact I don't buy from them at all), but in this case Macmillan is clearly at fault for trying to force Amazon to increase their prices so Macmillan can then sell at the higher price point in the Apple ipad store.
As a consumer I've been looking at Macmillan as a liability for their authors for quite some time. E-books are here to stay.
Any publishing 'professional', who says readers who do not want to put on their coats and drive to the bookstore are not customers they want, deserves to be laughed out of business. It's just too bad that the authors are the ones suffering for the CEO's idiocy.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:22 pm (UTC)What burns my toast is the authors who are being crunched in yet another Battle of the Clueless Titans. There are already plenty of things we have no control over in our so-called "careers," and it just keeps getting worse.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:31 pm (UTC)I just cannot understand why most traditional publishers are so insistent that e-books are infringing on HC sales. I don't buy hardcovers (well, very very very rarely :). The idea that if they make an e-book as expensive as a HC and never drop the price, even after the mmp version comes out (as Macmillan has done), I'll buy the HC instead of the e-version is just idiotic. I don't buy the book at all, because by the time the mmp comes out I've either forgotten or lost interest in most cases.
The vast majority of actions by publishers these days make it abundantly clear they a) consider resellers as their customers and not readers and b) they couldn't care less what the readers of their authors really want.
I can only consider that really bad business practices, especially in an economy where it looks like publishing may become an endangered species...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 04:13 pm (UTC)Well, you may have seen this on the second round of stuff already (I'm writing late enough to likely be Not News...) but the Macmillan plan appears to have been an e-book price coordinating with the current dead tree price... starting at HC, and going down to MMPB, when that became available. Suricattus quotes the whole memo, but here's the key line --
"Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time."
http://suricattus.livejournal.com/1201664.html
-- Meg D, late as usual...
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 11:50 pm (UTC)You'll have to forgive me if I don't believe a word that comes out of these peoples' mouths. :)
After all, their CEO has come right out and said that he wants people to go out and buy paper books not e-.
Seems Amazon caved. I don't believe for a nano-second that they were doing it for the readers, but I'm even more convinced that Macmillan has no intentions of making e-books available to readers at reasonable prices.
Their history and public statements speak for themselves.
Will be interesting to see who was right about where this is headed in the end.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 11:42 pm (UTC)I think it is insane for the e-book to continue to cost $15-25 when the MMPB is out for $7-8.
I know that the fixed costs for producing an e-book are similar to the fixed costs for producing a dead-tree book - the only significant difference is materials cost, and that's ~10% of the cover price.
I know the publishing industry is almost as bad as the recording industry when it comes to transparency of accounting.
Until the cost of readers is in the range of hard-cover books, they are not going to be in everyone's hands. (James Bryant has a really good write-up on what an e-book reader should be.) They need to be able to survive in wet, cold, dry & heat, or be cheap to replace. When I can get something similar to the Kindle or Nook or whatever for $20-40, then I'll expect to see it everywhere. Until then, e-books are going to be a specialty market. My pricing might be a little low - how cheap did MP3 players have to get for them to be ubiquitous? I wasn't really tracking that. In all honesty, I think we need that kind of ubiquity before the MMPB pricing model will work for e-books.
Baen is held up as an e-book model - I wish they'd provide more information on exactly how the business model is working for them.
I have been known to pay $18 for an e-book. I may have paid ~$25. I have to really want them - there's a very small list of authors that get that treatment from me.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:25 pm (UTC)It'll be interesting whether or not people vote with their feet on this one. If I want a book badly enough I will go elsewhere to buy it. If I want really, really want it I'll even pay a higher price, if there is no other option.
I hope this doesn't affect you or Steve too badly.
Tricia
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 09:43 pm (UTC)Personally, I think that Baen has the best business model going for ebooks. The free library too hook readers, then sell them the back list at a reasonable price.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-31 04:37 pm (UTC)Oh, I think there's enough wrongdoing here for everyone, though later reports -- from Macmillan (http://suricattus.livejournal.com/1201664.html), mind you -- would seem to indicate that Amazon is displaying far more eggs than the situation called for.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 04:06 pm (UTC)(And, to pick MacMillan, the parent company of Tor Books, of all publishers. Well, I guess that's my SF-centric view, but you couldn't have picked a single publisher that would anger me, as a reader, more.)
As an Amazon customer and shareholder, I did send them a strongly-worded email with my views on this (via their web site; and also to ir@amazon.com, their Investor Relations email; and also to jeff@amazon.com, a putative-so-the-Internet-says address for Jeff Bezos), and also call up their customer service folks and left voicemail for their investor relations folks.
The customer service conversation was interesting. The first low-level person I spoke with was clearly familiar with the issue but didn't really have any recourse other than encouraging me to send email, but was willing to transfer me to a supervisor -- though there the call got dropped.
On the second call, none of the low-level person answering the phone, the 2nd-level person I was transferred to, nor the 3rd-level manager I spoke with were aware of the issue at all. I guess that means Amazon has not been receiving many phone calls about it, which seems a shame. I guess I would encourage anyone who is concerned about this to let them know what you think!
For me, it's do what you want in the emerging market of eBooks, but don't allow an eBook dispute to mean that you don't carry print books from a particular publisher.
(I wonder how I would feel if Amazon suddenly stopped discounting MacMillan books and just started charging list price for them. That would be hard to think about...)
p.s.: Saltation ARC (dead tree) spotted in the wild!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 07:02 pm (UTC)Macmillan not Amazon is the problem
Date: 2010-01-30 09:58 pm (UTC)Re: Macmillan not Amazon is the problem
Date: 2010-01-31 12:53 am (UTC)(Hmm, authors who act as their own publishers get the same rate as publishers (i.e. they don't pay anyone else for doing the job) -- in what way is this not fair? Amazon pays the same, whoever they buy from. As an author you can either go direct to Amazon, getting a 70% cut of whatever you sell through there, or you can go through a publisher who takes more of the money but distributes to other places as well. Seems reasonable to me.)
Both of them are cutting their own throats. Macmillan is being greedy (and stupid, I doubt many people will pay HC prices for an e-book, especially on top of the high prices of the readers), and Amazon will just drive people who want books from Tor and other Macmillan imprints to other places (and if they go there for some books then they'll likely buy other books there instead of Amazon).
As my grandmother used to say, "there'll be tears before bedtime..."
Re: Macmillan not Amazon is the problem
Date: 2010-01-31 01:12 am (UTC)Re: Macmillan not Amazon is the problem
Date: 2010-01-31 08:04 pm (UTC)It appears that Macmillan wants to use a more BAEN like approach to their ebooks where they start off at $15 for new hardbacks and go down as time passes. Much like BAEN offers a $15 eArc to those who can't wait for the publishing date to buy the book. That is followed by the Webscription bundle and then the single book prices. This is closer to the approach Macmillan wants. Amazon just wants to charge $10 all the time.
Funny you should mention that amazon has now announced another screw the author/publishing house deal for 70/30. If you check into it they basically want to claim all rights as a publisher if you take that deal to get you book/s onto the kindle. You effectively lose any right to sell ebook copies of you work anywhere else since they are now the exclusive publisher of you work. So it isn't the nice sweet deal it looks like. I wonder if they had a Liadin prepare the contract for them?
Re: Macmillan not Amazon is the problem
Date: 2010-01-31 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 10:11 pm (UTC)*okay... yes, I have bought books as part of a Baen Webscription that I would not otherwise have purchased. And liked them. Which I guess was all part of the Baen plot to get me to buy even more books!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-30 11:55 pm (UTC)-Eta