The Shatzkin Files


One brave publishing executive speaks out on ebook pricing, and we comment

Posted by Mike Shatzkin on September 1, 2009 at 10:49 pm · Under Authors, Digital Book World, eBooks, General Trade Publishing, Industry Events, New Models, Publishing, Supply-Chain, Vertical


When I did my two recent posts on ebook pricing — first one proposing “debut pricing” and then one taking it back as not viable — I got a note from a major company CEO saying that, of course, no publisher could discuss pricing with me because of anti-trust concerns. At the same time, I have been trying to staff a panel for Digital Book World on ebook pricing and was told by one of my Board of Advisors, who is from another of the big companies, that I shouldn’t expect any publisher to be able to discuss that issue.

So it was mildly refreshing to see that Arnaud Nourry, the global CEO for Hachette Books, expressed some pretty strong opinions about ebook pricing to the Financial Times in an interview. Nourry said publicly what I have only heard expressed privately before: that the aggressive pricing by ebook retailers (led by Amazon) where they actually sold ebooks at a loss could come to no good end.

On Amazon’s current policy of selling many high-profile new releases at $9.99, FT quoted Nourry as saying: “That cannot last . . . Amazon is not in the business of losing money. So, one day, they are going to come to the publishers and say: ‘by the way, we are cutting the price we pay’. If that happens, after paying the authors, there will be nothing left for the publishers.”

Nourry also expresses concern about the reported one million public domain titles that Google is releasing as free ebooks. Although the article is wrong in its reporting that Amazon charges $9.99 “for all its e-books in the US” (Michael Cader has reported several times that many are higher than that and, of course, many are also lower), we can understand Nourry’s expressed concern that “all the rest will have to be sold at between zero and $9.99.”

I agree with Nourry’s characterization of the present condition as unhealthy and threatening, but I think things look a little better for him and his fellow large publishers than his comments would suggest. And as powerful as Amazon’s position in, there is reason to believe it is at a high-water mark in the ebook marketplace and that, at the very moment Barnes & Noble is stepping up, the conditions are perfect for a competitor.

The downward pressure on ebook prices has been apparent for some time. I reported that John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, said at a panel discussion for agents (I was one of the panelists) several months ago that maintaining ebook margins was the key strategic concern for publishers over the next few years. Since Sargent made that statement, very shortly after the announcement of Kindle 2 and Kindle DX, we’ve had a reported surge in ebook sales, a host of new reader and retailer announcements, and the further entrenchment of the epub standard. These, combined with B&N’s entry into the market, are good news for publishers.

Epub is probably the publishers’ best defense against Amazon and the Kindle. With all other device manufacturers able to coalesce around a non-Amazon standard, we have a situation analogous to the VHS-Beta conflict of the 1980s and the Mac-Windows duke-out of the late 80s and early 90s. On one side, we have a standard that remains closed to enable “control” (Beta, Mac, Kindle.) On the other side, we have a wide-open standard to enable multi-player use (VHS, Windows, Epub.) In the two cases we know about because they are historical, the consensus was that the “loser” of the numbers race (Beta and Mac) provided a superior technological performance. Kindle does not seem to have even that element in its favor. Whether you use something larger that does e-ink (Kindle, Sony Reader) or something you’re carrying anyway that is backlit (the iPhone or any other smartphone) is a matter of personal preference. But does anybody doubt that a world full of hardware creators will soon make a device that is similar but demonstrably better than the Kindle?

Right now, Amazon has a huge head start on the narrative-reading consumer ebook market. By putting Kindles into the hands of (estimates are) 1 to 1.5 million of the heaviest book consumers, they jump-started ebook uptake and grabbed a huge lead in sales. Anecdotal information gathered from publishers and agents suggests to me that, right now, 70% of the ebook sales for most titles offered in Kindle and epub are Kindle. And a lot are still sold as pdf.

But Google just put a huge thumb on the scale by making one million public domain titles available in epub for free! Those can’t be read on a Kindle without a little bit of technological bridge-building. On the one hand, if Amazon makes that bridge-building transparent and shows that it is easy for people to load epub titles on the Kindle, they compromise the whole Kindle business model. But the perception of choice — and the relative number of titles that will show up under any consumer’s search — is attacking what has been one of Kindle’s greatest advantages: a bigger title selection.

Amazon made what looked from here like a major concession last winter when they released an iPhone app for Kindle. I am hesitant to read too much into my own behavior, but that was the catalyst for me to give my Kindle to my wife and do all my reading on my iPhone. So it was easy for me to switch over to B&N when they came back into the marketplace a month or two ago. And, you know what? The shopping experience is just as good as Kindle. My wife may buy Kindle books again, but I won’t. (The Kindle on iPhone mimics the worst fault of Kindle’s presentation on the device itself: it only presents justified lines, no ragged right!)

Of course, all this means that the blades and razors strategy is going too. When Sony launched the reader, it looked for all the world like they figured they’d make their money selling the books. That was Palm’s idea too nearly a decade ago. Amazon blew them away because they were real booksellers, which they parlayed into both more title availability (they had the contacts) and a better presentation.

It will be a big surprise to me if B&N and Indigo’s Shortcovers don’t rapidly become the dominant horizontal purveyors of epub-formatted titles. And every web site and blogger will sell ebooks in their niche (why not?) which will include offerings that might not make the full-line distribution system. The next question is how long it will take Amazon to start selling epub titles as aggressively as they sell Kindle and print books. Or make Kindle transparently epub-compliant, which amounts to the same thing. They’ll need to do one of the other to protect their overall franchise, but it might mean the end of a meteoric Kindle era (remember the Commodore 64?) when they do.

Oh, and one note on all that to Mr. Nourry. If I’m right about the overall situation, don’t worry about Amazon telling you they need more margin. Because they’re going to need your titles fully as much as you need their sales. Expect to start seeing movement on this first from the smaller publishers, some of which report that they have been pushed into relatively low-margin deals by Amazon. There will be competition among epub vendors; they’ll all want to have the biggest number of titles (and accept the challenge of curating and presenting that.) If you can get higher revenues by 25% or more in one channel, might you be tempted to try to “force” consumers to buy it there by withholding from the lower margin channel? You’d surely be tempted.

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  • Christine M.

    That's all dandy and I am really interested to see how things will evolve but there's one thing that seems to recurrently be forgotten by both publishers and commenters…. The Kindles and Kindle books are only available for residents of the USofA (unless you have a US credit card, but let's ot get into that). Everyone not living in the States is (almost) automatically a 'non-Kindle' customer. That sums up to a *lot* of customers, IMO, who might tip the scale, too, in the longer run.

    • /blog Mike Shatzkin

      No question you are right, Christine. I am in London at the moment where I
      just attended a StartWithXML conference I helped organize. Britain has a
      third or a fifth or a tenth the amount of ebook activity as the US
      *because* there
      is no Kindle! Kindle really jumpstarted the ebook revolution in the States.
      Last year I spoke in Copenhagen and a Norwegian publisher had me buy a
      Kindle for him when I got back, load some books on it, and send it over to
      him so he could have one!

      But even in the US, only a million or so people have Kindles. That's a tiny
      number considering we'll just about all be reading on screens of some kind
      in ten years. Or less.

      Mike
      ——————–
      Mike Shatzkin
      /blog
      [email protected]
      Founder & CEO
      The Idea Logical Company, Inc.
      Co-founder: Filedby, Inc.
      212-758-5670

      • Christine M.

        Well here in Canada (or should I say Quebec?) eBook readers (read: Sony's) has just had great free publicity since Archambault (which belongs to Quebecor World), one of the province's largest book/music/dvd stores company launched, about a week ago, the first French ebookstore; all the ebooks are Sony Readers-compatible and, lo and behold, they sell the Pocket and Touch editions both online and in-stores. On the English side, I'm still waiting for Chapters/Indigo to do something, since amazon.ca doesn't seem to be interested in my money (not that I would give it to them in this particular case, since I don't like the Kindle exclusivity scheme).

    • PublishMarket

      Plastic Logic, maker of the B&N reader, is based in Germany although I understand they have an American facility now. Intereade, maker of the Cool-er which was the huge hit at last spring's Book Expo, is from England. Does this simply mean that a UK distributor needs to climb aboard to capture the European market today?

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  • PublishMarket

    You need to check out multimedia books from http://www.publishandmarket.com — they can be read on ANY computer, employ full color, professional design, sound, music, interactive links, video and more. The best part is that you don't need a dedicated device, these travel with your laptop. More than just a book.

  • http://www.danholloway.wordpress.com/ Dan Holloway

    Bless publishers. All I think when I read this kind of feeling from them is that I was right: writers won't lose out in the digital age; nor will readers. It will be publishers.

    1. As a writer, I am a firm believer in the freemium model. I'm delighted to let readers have my work for free. I think I can offer enticing enough premium material for sufficient of them to buy it to keep me in a living. And that needn't be books.

    2. Why are they still talking about e-readers? the rest of teh world's moved on. Sure e-readers will continue to boom for 2-3 years, but seriously, the pace the publishing industry moves at, that's not a business model. They should be looking at cell phones rather than e-readers, and monetising serialisation and interactivity.

    Come on, guys. Writers have got there. If you want any of the new generation of authors to consider having a “publisher” as a serious proposition, you're going to have to give us a reason. At the moment, you're giving us reasons to avoid you. Which is a shame.

    • /blog Mike Shatzkin

      Sorry, Dan, but marketing is still going to require scale. Publishers are
      going to be necessary. They may be different publishers than the ones we
      have now in the long run, but aggregation at the publisher level will still
      provide value that will get paid for. Except for authors that have already
      had a publisher's help establishing themselves, VERY few will succeed alone.
      Mike

      • http://www.danholloway.wordpress.com/ Dan Holloway

        I'm not suggesting for a minute we don't need marketing. But it's a big logical leap from marketing to publishing. I wrote an article back in May
        http://streamwriting.com/blog/?p=116
        about the way the literary landscape would flatten out, with authors or their managers going directly to editors, designers, printers, marketers. My point about publishers is that they need to convince us they can ofer something other than these individual services which could go the way of other business sectors and break down into small, specialist highly focused and flexible consultancies

      • /blog Mike Shatzkin

        I agree with your model. It's why agents need to learn about self-
        publishing options and broaden their business models.

        Mike Shatzkin

      • http://robinmizell.wordpress.com/ Robin Mizell

        You're right, and what you suggest we do is already happening with clients' out-of-print titles. The “best” option today, however, will be obsolete tomorrow.

        It's great to be new to the business at a time like this. However, I didn't intend to evolve into a publisher. A concierge, maybe. Thank goodness for talented friends.

        Mike, I hope to make it to your Digital Book World conference. Thank you for your transparency, influence, and thoughtful predictions.

      • /blog Mike Shatzkin

        Thanks, Robin. I think agents re-thinking their role is one of the most
        important components of the value chain change for “writerly” work in the
        years to come.
        Mike

  • http://feralintensity.com/ Scath

    I publish on Amazon and am a bit confused.

    Amazon doesn't set the prices for e-books. The publisher/author does. Amazon receives 65% of that price, the publisher/author 35%.

    Kindle owners were the reason behind that $9.99 price; Amazon had advertised to that effect and Kindle owners were growing upset at the number of new e-books coming out (from traditional publishing sources) that were priced at only a couple of dollars less than the hard cover versions, so they instituted the 9.99 boycott.

    The only time Amazon has anything to do with an e-book's price is when it goes on sale. Even then, the publisher/author receives their full 35% of the original price. Amazon takes the 'loss'.

    • /blog Mike Shatzkin

      I don't believe you know what Amazon's deals are except for your deal. I
      certainly don't.
      But what publishers are afraid of, even if they are getting 50% of the
      retail price they set (which is more than you're getting) is that Amazon
      will gain enormous leverage with 70-80% of the ebook market thru Kindle and
      will then dictate prices. And if the market share were to stay that way,
      that's a reasonable fear.

      Mike
      ——————–
      Mike Shatzkin
      /blog
      [email protected]
      Founder & CEO
      The Idea Logical Company, Inc.
      Co-founder: Filedby, Inc.
      212-758-5670

    • PublishMarket

      Actually, the publishers did set the prices on their eBooks – but Amazon sold many of the titles at a loss in order to build their catalog. So, if the publisher's portion was to be $12.00, they got $12.00 regardless of where Amazon priced it.

      And replying to the earlier post wherein Mike and Christine scoffed at multimedia books, you may not be seeing the bigger picture. First of all, consumers are already getting tired of having dedicated devices that still preclude them from all the titles available. There is not one format that is common to all the readers. Epub format offers very little formatting so all the beautiful typography is lost. At the same time, they are all migrating toward accepting .pdfs and color screens will be the next generation. Reading on the typical laptop may not be for everyone, but there are touch screen models which rotate and Apple is rumored to be debuting a tablet with touch screen and virtual keyboard in the very near future. Why would anyone spend $500+ for an eReader when they could buy a laptop for the same price? Not to mention that Adobe Reader is resident on over 98% of the computers in use today.

      And Christine, while your books may be just fine as they are, there are creative writers who embrace the opportunity to communicate with multimedia. I'm not sure where your definition of 10″ notebook ends and the 9.7″ Kindle starts — but I can't see that .3″ as the cutoff for portability. On the other hand, you can write one of your books on the notebook, but you can't on the Kindle. Hmmmm….

      • /blog Mike Shatzkin

        I don't know about Christina, but I wasn't “scoffing” at multimedia books. I
        was saying I personally had no interest in them and I emphasize that I have
        no idea how representative I am of the public at large. Good luck with
        inventing a new art form that takes hold.
        I agree that Apple's rumored tablet will, depending on pricing, make a
        Kindle look very expensive for what it is. But there are actually a variety
        of device manufacturers out there all making machines that will handle epub
        files. Any number of them could end up making something comparable to, but
        better than, Kindle.

        We're capable of reading plenty of color now with iPhones. There will be
        more complex multimedia books generated because of iPhones.

        And I'm well aware that Amazon is selling ebooks at a loss. I believe there
        are new deals in place that compel the publisher to share the discounts
        offered to consumers, but the details of these deals are generally not
        discussed and leak out only anecdotally. What I said is that publishers fear
        that Amazon will, at some point, try to use their dominance in the market to
        force publishers to give them lower pricing. Kindle sales, at the moment,
        are a huge proportion of ebook sales. If they were to stay that way, that's
        a realistic fear. That's what Arnaud Nourry was taking about in the piece I
        blogged about.

        Mike
        ——————–
        Mike Shatzkin
        /blog
        [email protected]
        Founder & CEO
        The Idea Logical Company, Inc.
        Co-founder: Filedby, Inc.
        212-758-5670

      • PublishMarket

        I totally agree that Kindle dominance is something to be dreaded. For example, in the print-on-demand industry, Amazon made a good deal of money from carrying everyone's books, self-published POD or not. Then they bought Booksurge and suddenly were strong-arming publishers and authors that unless they let Amazon print their books, they wouldn't be carried. That may not sound so awful except that Amazon charged for their services, and not a little fee, and the industry as a whole thought the Booksurge quality wasn't up to snuff. That's why they didn't opt for Booksurge in the first place. There's a class action suit against Amazon for just this policy. It's perfectly reasonable to think them capable of a like action when it comes to Kindle, particularly when they “steal purchased books off in the dark of the night.” Of course, the clash of the titans is being waged now between Amazon and Google over the public domain titles.

        And you are absolutely right that iPhones do read in color now – I have no fewer than five apps on mine right now that do just that. I'm still banking on the Apple tablet rumor, though…some are even saying it will have a cell chip and may be the hushed reason they denied Google their voice app use.

        One thing is for sure…authors are the big winners. As the markets divide, there will be less competition and far more options, particularly when you look at the bottom line royalty. So, no matter which medium you use, communication and entertainment are becoming just that much more elegant and convenient. Publishers will, indeed, need to re-examine their role in the supply chain and give a bigger bang for the buck.

      • /blog Mike Shatzkin

        Authors who can run a business for themselves are the big winners. Authors
        that wanted to write in private and let the world take care of them — and
        who could write material that people wanted to buy — are not. Authors are
        going to have to create their following in ways they were not asked to do in
        the prior regime.
        Mike

      • Christine M.

        A 10″ notebook, the 9.7″ Kindle DX, the 10″ Apple iPad…. all the same to me. To begin with (and here I speak of my personal preferences, I am in no way speaking for anyone else), I wouldn't spend $500+ on a dedicated reader. Sony's new eReader Touch and Pocket Editions are just dandy (or the Cool-er for that matter, when it'll regularly be in stock at their website–and it's quite cheap, too), if you ask me. Carrying around a 10″ device would be a pointless burden to me, since even a HC book (which i rarely buy anymore) would be smaller, size wise. I won't go over 6 inches, which is portable. I already have a 'portable' laptop (15.4″ widescreen, 6 lbs) so I don't need anything that much bigger than a mmdb, since I would be able to carry it around easily. I used to write in the bus and/or the Tube but I would write in a notebook. Again, I don't see the interest of writing on a 10″ notebook in my lap during rush hour. But then, to each their own. Personally, I all I need is a not-to-expensive device that will read books and that I won't have to charge every day or so (which what my friends owning iPods Touch/iPhones have to do since they use their device quite a few hours everyday). I already own an iPod (Nano), a laptop, etc. I just need a reader.

      • /blog Mike Shatzkin

        Christine, I think we're about to see a proliferation of devices and we'll
        be reading on all of them. My own hunch is that today's Kindle will look as
        quaint as a Commodore 64 by about three years from now. There are so many
        variables: backlit or not, quality of color, connected or not, battery life,
        screen size…and all of us use devices for different combinations of tasks.
        Your own instincts seem close to mine; I read books on Palm Pilots 10 years
        ago and just gave up the Kindle for the iPhone over the last six months. But
        a whole lot of people who read on Kindles and on laptops can't understand
        reading on a small screen. To each her own.
        Mike

      • Christine M.

        Those people must never have read the Lord of the Rings Omnibus mass market paperback then! Seriously, I'm fine with the idea of a vast choice of devices of all sizes offering all sorts of options being available on the market. Everyone has a very precise idea of what they're looking for when they shop for anything electronic (or even cars, for that matter). Plus, the more options there are, the cheaper they'll turn out to be.

  • boballab

    Well one publisher had the vision long ago about this: Baen Books. Baen Books offers their ebooks in three different versions. The first is that they sell electronic Advanced Reader Copies (eARC) for $15, months before the Hardcover comes out. So you pay slighly higher then the norm to get a 3-5 months jump on anyone buying paper. These eARC's are the authors final submital to the publisher just before final editing. The second method is that when the paper version comes out they replace the eARC with a polished final version for a price of $3 to $6. The third version is a serialized service called webscriptions that give you 5 ebooks for $15. All of their ebooks are DRM free and in multiple formats. The other thing is you can read free sample chapters on their webscription site before even buying the book. So when you buy an ebook from them you really own the thing and can move it around as you please. The downside is they are primarily a SF/Fantasy publisher. They also have their own Free Library where you can get ebooks, typically the first couple in a series, for free.

  • maxguevara

    Hello Mike,

    I totally share your frustration. Some months ago I tried to start a debate on eBook prices with a couple of UK publishers and was totally discouraged by one of them, a very preeminent figure, who said the same thing: ‘nobody would want to talk about pricing policy with competitors’.
    I think this is a real shame. Everybody in the publishing industry is together in the same boat: currently facing huge technological changes and powerful (and sometimes extremely bullish) companies, such as Amazon, that won’t think twice before squeezing publishers in order to increase their presence in the eBook market. This is the moment when publishers should get together and think strategically as a sector that is going through profound transformations.
    Totally agree with you when you say that ‘Epub is probably the publishers’ best defense against Amazon and the Kindle’. This will be very interesting to watch… and be a part of.

    • /blog Mike Shatzkin

      Max,
      I think the reasons for objections are different in the US and UK. In the
      US, it is clearly illegal to discuss price with a competitor. What the CEO
      who commented to me was saying was that discussing it with me, since I talk
      to all the competitors, could amount to the same thing.

      The situation is different in the UK because the publishers there are not
      faced with a near-monopoly player in the ebook space such as Kindle is in
      the US. That's a mixed blessing, because the Kindle presence — threatening
      though it is in many ways — also really jump-started the US ebook market.
      And that hasn't happened yet in the UK. But with the iPhone, a coming
      Kindle, and a plethora of other devices to feed off a big epub title
      reservoir, the jump-start might happen without a monopoly player and that
      would actually be much better! And perhaps worth waiting for.

      Mike

      • maxguevara

        I partially agree with you, Mike. The thing is, although there are no Kindle sales in the UK territory yet, many UK publishers have subsidiaries in the US and even those who don’t can go into an agreement with Amazon to have their eBooks distributed there, and I believe this will impact on the pricing of their eBooks overall.
        Btw, yesterday I read a statement by Dan Franklin from Canongate that really puzzled me: ‘“with e-books, publishers are calling the shots— through metadata, we price it one way and that’s the way it’s sold”’. I don’t know what he means since most of the eBook retailers are not bound to charge the end consumer the rrp that is informed in the metadata. I would be interested to know what you think.
        M.

      • /blog Mike Shatzkin

        Max, the statement about publishers controlling their ebook pricing puzzles
        me as much as it puzzles you.
        The US Amazon pricing won't be available in the UK. What will be interesting
        will be to see what Amazon's pricing strategy is in the UK. When they
        started selling Kindles in the US, there was no competition. It's a
        different situation.

        Mike

  • debtcontrolman

    One of the interesting discussions. Gilbert and Sullivan understood it with the lines, roughly, 'you are right and he is right and all is right as right can be'.

    What is most evident is the extent to which publishing is going to be splintered, with technology enabling many more options. All the examples discussed above are successful options, but each with its limits.

    Like traditional publishing the mix of activities is not much different; it is the scale on which they are done that contrasts with the past. One factor that is becoming quite evident is that the statistics of sales gathered and published are missing an ever-growing band that publishes POD and ebooks in quite non-traditional ways.

    And I think there is a major misunderstanding about the conflict between the ebook and the print book. This stems from the issue of reading from a screen.

    The activities of Amazon, Google and so on mostly mimic other, older models. For 'every book you can think of' who remembers Foyles in Charing Cross Road in London? Book retailing in large units, mail order, free samples? Nothing new, just adapted.

    And I think there is a major misunderstanding about the conflict between the ebook and the print book. This stems from the issue of reading from a screen; a minority sport? I don't think so.

    Today there are few that do not do more actual reading from a screen than they might ever have done of paper. The internet has introduced major portions of the populations to monitors – only a small jump from TVs after all. Add all the small screens and the day of the screen is already here.

    It is significant that, allowing for the effects of the downturn on all figures, sales of print books has held up better than the majority of products. And if you examine the POD market you will see a growing 'underground' there too. For proof of the known change check the number of titles in US in 2002, and in 2008. I saw a five-fold increase.

    Of course the ebook is going to rise and flourish. Many love the portability and availability. Equally the evidence or logic that the print book will disappear is scant. It is reading as a whole that will grow.

    And I pretty much guarantee that publishers will continue into the distant future, but more like those of 60 years ago than the corporate disasters of finance management.

    Writing, reading and publishing look to me like glowing lights in a grim decade ahead.

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  • http://brentnewhall.com/ BrentNewhall

    Interesting post! A few notes:

    I personally don't see the Google move as a “huge thumb on the scale,” as so many of the books that they offer are already available for the Kindle. Kind-hearted folks have been posting free, public-domain books to the Kindle Store ever since it was opened to the public. As an active member of the official Amazon Kindle Forum when the Google deal was announced, it was met with a collective yawn. No Kindle owners were interested; they had been reading those books on their Kindles for months.

    I'm also a little leery of predicting the future of anything, much less this dynamic market. It means a lot to be the first major mover in a space. To use a different example, look at the iPod: it wasn't the first, but it offered the superior user experience. Others came after it. It still dominates the market today.

    Not to say that this will necessarily happen with Kindle, of course. Who ever knows?

    • /blog Mike Shatzkin

      So many may be offered on the Kindle and the quality of much of the rest
      might be crap but a) Amazon doesn't promote anything like 1 million titles
      available and b) makers of new readers (who are selling to a much less
      sophisticated public than those that bought the FIRST batch of readers) will
      make a point of how many titles you can load on it than you can't load on
      the Kindle.
      Your point about “first major mover” is also true of Amazon. They weren't
      first any more than iPod was.

      But I think Kindle is going to be caught up in a format change. Think
      Betamax.

      Mike

  • Mari

    I have an issue that publishers like Macmillan are asking ebook readers to pay $14.99 retail for a paperback that costs $7.99 retail. It's appalling. Are we consumers really buying these ebooks at almost double? I hope not. We should be boycotting and send mass emails to publishers like Macmillan…and I'm spreading the word. I got my reader because I read a lot and it’s incredibly convenient for me. Now, I’m being punished for not killing trees and wanting to carry 20 books around with me wherever I go. Since I’ve purchased my reader (2 years ago) I actually buy more books and the thanks I get is the insult that they expect me to pay almost double.

    • http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3308 Dan Holloway

      Mari, I agree this is ridiculous. But one thing you CAN do with an e-reader, even in this climate, is discover some amazing new Indie talent that's happy to use e-books as a free giveaway to showcase their work. There are many sites on the web like Finding free e-books, ebook just published, and smashwords, where you can discover some fantastic new authors for nothing.

      Publishers take note – as readers get hold of the idea that free doesn't mean bad, and start discovering great talent for themselves, groups of entrepreneurial writers are going to start exploiting the freemium model and emerging as players in the next phase of publishing

      • http:// Mike Shatzkin

        First of all, each consumer should make his or her own decisions, including the decision to organize others.

        But publishers know that when they charge a higher price, they get fewer customers. Their objective is to maximize revenue; that's their job. If the number of customers goes down less than the price goes up, they've done their job.

        AND let's remember that prices are really set by retailers, not by publishers. Those $9.99 books you're getting are thanks to Amazon or B&N, not to the publishers. And they can also decide NOT to subsidize a title, in which case you'll pay more (IF you buy, of course.)

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  • http://devinbriar.blogspot.com Doug

    I'm interested in the anti-trust aspects. Are we looking at a Explorer redux? How are novels and textbooks, that contain a vast amount of the information/quoteable material of the internet able to be monopolized, when Freedom of the internet is so often touted? The idea of a public library seems lost to those that don't have the right e-book library card, that isn't free by any means.



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