e-Readers as a long term library solution?

[alent1234]

Maybe after a few months, but I like to buy new releases when they are still new, you know?

Looking right now, I can't find any good current examples, as it appears the model is to overprice the kindle edition for the first few weeks of release and then drop it a couple dollars to make it slightly cheaper than hardback price.

For example,

http://www.amazon.com/why-so-expensi...MxS60483PB74JD

"The Drop (Harry Bosch)
Michael Connelly (Author)

Kindle Edition -- $14.99 --
Hardcover $14.73 "


Here is a currently priced book that has kindle cost same as shipped hardcover-

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/037...d_i=3321372011


edit: Sorry, can't get the link to work.

Not all are more expensive than the hardcover, but even being close should be a crime. I don't care what the advances in book making technology have been, I know the manufacturers are paying at least a couple dollars to create the book in hardcover and a couple dollars to ship it. Even if the hardcover is more expensive by a dollar or two, that is still unacceptable to me, considering how much the publisher saves by sending only an electronic file instead of a physical book.


"amazon takes a lot of the price. 30% to 40% or so."

I doubt it very much. Amazon sells both hardcover and kindle editions, and has no reason to throw away all the profit on hardcover books while trying to charge more on kindle editions.

yes they do

physical inventory takes up space and is a financial investment/risk. amazon has moved into the digital business because there is no warehouse space to take up and it's a lot less risky financially. you don't need to pay a publisher tens of millions of $$$ to buy up a book, have it delivered to your warehouse, stocked and then ship it out.

 

[Dulanic]

It is the publishers making the big bucks off ebooks... for now. The publishers are stupid... they would sell double the books if they lowered the price of ebooks. After all they can't be resold like normal books so that is a huge benefit to the publishers... but noooo Apple had to come along and go hey publishers...set your prices... we are cool with it which forced Amazon's hand.

You keep acting like this is Amazon trying to make the big bucks off ebooks which is far from the truth. Amazon is happy with selling a million items at 10% margin vs 100,000 at 100% margin where as apple would rather sell 100,000 items at 100% margin which is how the book pricing got the way it is.

http://gigaom.com/2011/12/15/publishers-still-missing-the-point-on-e-book-prices/

 

[abaez]

yes they do

physical inventory takes up space and is a financial investment/risk. amazon has moved into the digital business because there is no warehouse space to take up and it's a lot less risky financially. you don't need to pay a publisher tens of millions of $$$ to buy up a book, have it delivered to your warehouse, stocked and then ship it out.

Then the publishers need to move the digital business no?

 

[JustMe21]

We can thank Apple for helping to make e-books as expensive as hardcover books. Apple promoted the Agency model which many publishers liked so they forced Amazon to go along or lose rights to distribute their titles. Amazon wanted to keep newly released e-book prices around $9.99.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/apple-pitching-its-agency-model-to-book-publishers/5800

There are publishers out there that do care more about the readers than pure profit and one such group is Baen. http://baen.com/default.asp Their e-books are reasonably priced and they have a webscription model where you pay a flat rate and have access to all the books released that month with 4 being the minimum.
http://www.webscription.net/t-faq.aspx

 

[Chiropteran]

yes they do

physical inventory takes up space and is a financial investment/risk. amazon has moved into the digital business because there is no warehouse space to take up and it's a lot less risky financially. you don't need to pay a publisher tens of millions of $$$ to buy up a book, have it delivered to your warehouse, stocked and then ship it out.

That doesn't support your argument. If amazon wanted to move into digital for the reason you say, their incentive would be to sell it as cheap as possible while still making some profit. Trying to overprice ebooks for a 30% profit and competing with their own hard-cover books costs them more warehouse space and financial risk, not less.

Your argument doesn't agree with your original statement, in any way, at all.

 

[alent1234]

It is the publishers making the big bucks off ebooks... for now. The publishers are stupid... they would sell double the books if they lowered the price of ebooks. After all they can't be resold like normal books so that is a huge benefit to the publishers... but noooo Apple had to come along and go hey publishers...set your prices... we are cool with it which forced Amazon's hand.

You keep acting like this is Amazon trying to make the big bucks off ebooks which is far from the truth. Amazon is happy with selling a million items at 10% margin vs 100,000 at 100% margin where as apple would rather sell 100,000 items at 100% margin which is how the book pricing got the way it is.

http://gigaom.com/2011/12/15/publishers-still-missing-the-point-on-e-book-prices/

amazon had the first successful ereader, the first mover advantage and tried to sell books like best buy sells CD's, as a loss leader. since they had such a huge physical books presence the publishers couldn't do too much. until apple came to the rescue. i think the deal is that publishers cannot let anyone sell their books cheaper than apple

now that the publishers are in charge they are pricing themselves out. there are thousands of $.99 to $2.99 books on amazon that are worth reading. even if they are not literary genius. and amazon is going into publishing now.

 

[Dulanic]

until apple came to the rescue. i think the deal is that publishers cannot let anyone sell their books cheaper than apple

now that the publishers are in charge they are pricing themselves out. there are thousands of $.99 to $2.99 books on amazon that are worth reading. even if they are not literary genius. and amazon is going into publishing now.

lol do you even read what you say? Apple recused the publishers? The publishers already make a shitload more by not having to print ship and store books.... Apple let them rip off the consumer. It makes sense that paper books are cheaper than digial books? Seriously, did you fail math?

I hope more and more authors get away from the mainstream publishers. There are a lot of unknowns who have made quite a bit of money on Amazon without a publisher.

 

[alent1234]

go look at bertelsmann's financials. their profit is like 3% of revenues. that's about what food companies make. cell carriers have better profit margins. Mcgraw hill is better but also less than 10%

amazon was selling their books for under cost hoping to corner the market and pay for this with other businesses that amazon owned, like selling baby diapers. if they did corner the market then they would force lower prices on them. apple let the publishers charge what they wanted. since books are DRM'd it's not like people could take their kindle books to another platform.

printing the books is not where the costs are. it's in getting a book into readable form and marketing it. pressing CD's is cheap, but paying for a year of studio time and financing music videos is not. it's almost like Nike sneakers. cheap to make but the costs to bring the product to market and design it is why they are so expensive

 

[abaez]

What is the wholesale cost of one copy of an e-book? I find it hard to believe Amazon, at $10, was selling an electronic book for under cost.

 

[Dulanic]

go look at bertelsmann's financials. their profit is like 3% of revenues. that's about what food companies make. cell carriers have better profit margins. Mcgraw hill is better but also less than 10%

amazon was selling their books for under cost hoping to corner the market and pay for this with other businesses that amazon owned, like selling baby diapers. if they did corner the market then they would force lower prices on them. apple let the publishers charge what they wanted. since books are DRM'd it's not like people could take their kindle books to another platform.

printing the books is not where the costs are. it's in getting a book into readable form and marketing it. pressing CD's is cheap, but paying for a year of studio time and financing music videos is not. it's almost like Nike sneakers. cheap to make but the costs to bring the product to market and design it is why they are so expensive

Seriously, if you want to start pulling random shit at least link stuff. You are so full of shit. Bertelsmann's return on sales was over 10% for H1 2011.

http://www.bertelsmann.com/bertelsmann_corp/wms41/customers/bmir/pdf/Interim_Report_2011_0.pdf

Not to mention you are comparing a huge company with many arms that are not purely all for publishing books, so your comparison is meaningless.

BTW... Amazon's profit margin is something like 2.8%... far lower than the publishers.

 

[Dulanic]

What is the wholesale cost of one copy of an e-book? I find it hard to believe Amazon, at $10, was selling an electronic book for under cost.

Amazon gets charged ~$12 as of 2009.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091206/2048537223.shtml

 

[abaez]

... That's incredible. I wonder what the actual cost of an e-book is to the publisher..

 

[Dulanic]

... That's incredible. I wonder what the actual cost of an e-book is to the publisher..

Pretty messed up that the publishers sets the wholesale price AND the sale price isn't it? Thank you apple for "saving" the publishers as alient seems to think.

 

[JustMe21]

Figure this as an example for the way it is now and how Amazon did it before.

Agency Model - New Amazon E-book and retail price of hardback book is $14.99. Amazon gets 20% (as set forth by the Publisher) or $2.99 while the Publisher gets $12.00.

Wholesale Model - (Same) New Amazon E-book price $9.99 - Retail hardback book is $14.99. Amazon orders gets the ebooks for the wholesale cost of $12.00 each. Amazon loses $2.99 and the Publisher gets $12.00.

Even with the Wholesale Model, the Publisher was getting the same amount, but it made it hard for anyone else to market ebooks because Amazon was doing it at a loss. Amazon was hoping to force publishers to bring down the ebook cost vs hardback/paperback cost and set a standard e-book price for new releases because they had the lion's share of the market at the time. Sure Amazon may have lost money on the ebook, but they made it up because people were coming to their site to buy stuff as-well-as their Kindles.

With the Agency model, the Publishers are able to expand on who sells their e-books, so they make more money. Sure all the e-bookstores make money too, but the consumer has to pay the same full retail price for an ebook as they would for a hardback book.

Had the other players interested in ebook sales stayed out longer, the Publishers may have caved to Amazon's demands at gone with a $9.99 price point for new ebook releases, but it's a moot point now.

 

[Dulanic]

Had the other players interested in ebook sales stayed out longer, the Publishers may have caved to Amazon's demands at gone with a $9.99 price point for new ebook releases, but it's a moot point now.

Said perfectly. The only thing that pises me off is wholesale price of ebook = wholesale price of hardcover. However, the hardcover has much higher overhead to the publisher. The publisher is the one who benefits here by far and they refuse the "share" the extra profit by either lowering ebook pricing. Instead they shove it to the consumer because what other choice is there?

This crap the publishers are pulling is just going to bite them in the ass when piracy rates go through the roof because their pricing is so out of wack.

 

[MagickMan]

It's already happening. Instead of buying books people just do P2P, torrent, or newsgroup searches now. $15 for a new ebook is pathetic, if they drop it to $10 for a new release and $4-5 for older books they'd make much more money.

However, they don't want to side with consumers, they just want to be litigious bastards and keep squeezing people. F**k `em.

 

[chazdraves]

I certainly didn't expect this thread to make a comeback. A lot of good discussion here. E-books have room to grow to be sure, but Gutenberg and the like are a joy and a real boon if you enjoy some of the greatest works of humanity for free. Like anything, if the market won't support it, the model will fail. Vote with your wallet.

- Chaz

 

[Muse]

It's already happening. Instead of buying books people just do P2P, torrent, or newsgroup searches now. $15 for a new ebook is pathetic, if they drop it to $10 for a new release and $4-5 for older books they'd make much more money.

However, they don't want to side with consumers, they just want to be litigious bastards and keep squeezing people. F**k `em.

I can understand this attitude. Obviously, they should make e books cheaper than material books. No printing, no warehousing, no transportation, no shipment, no trees, no paper processing. Damn, once digitized what's their overhead? Practically nothing! They shouldn't charge so much as 1/2 for digitized books. Do you think the author gets more for digitized sales? I'd think not. There's no justification, it's just squeeze the book buyers for every penny they're worth. People are going to get wise. Authors who are not yet successful are going to look for alternative means of distributing their works online. Is there any reason why this can't happen? Do the big publishing houses have a stranglehold on the industry? I'd think that to be egregiously anti-fair trade.

I certainly didn't expect this thread to make a comeback. A lot of good discussion here. E-books have room to grow to be sure, but Gutenberg and the like are a joy and a real boon if you enjoy some of the greatest works of humanity for free. Like anything, if the market won't support it, the model will fail. Vote with your wallet.

- Chaz

My first e reader will arrive in a few days. I will check out Gutenberg early on. Sounds good to me. Thanks.

 

[Chiropteran]

Even with the Wholesale Model, the Publisher was getting the same amount, but it made it hard for anyone else to market ebooks because Amazon was doing it at a loss.

Yeah, except that is flawed reasoning. It's hard for anyone else to market ebooks because the publishers charge the same for ebooks and hardcover books.

How does that even remotely make sense?

Amazon did the smart thing and priced ebooks lower, until the publishers put an end to it.

But hey, I think the publishers are living on borrowed time at this point. This sort of behavior is leading them to extinction, with amazon adding self-publishing options and digital distribution just being so easy in general.

 

[Muse]

But hey, I think the publishers are living on borrowed time at this point. This sort of behavior is leading them to extinction, with amazon adding self-publishing options and digital distribution just being so easy in general.

I know two people personally who have just started publishing on Amazon. My cousin's son for one, who met his new love online and with her started their own publishing label and have put out a couple of books on Amazon. They both have nothing but 5 star reviews, I guess about a dozen reviews all told at this point. I haven't talked to him about the mechanics of it all, but evidently it's not very difficult to basically publish your own books on Amazon. I saw actual paper copies at my cousin's house, but I just checked and there are Kindle eBooks available. The paperbacks are $17.97 each, but the eBooks are $2.99 each. Now that's more like it!

 

[JustMe21]

I just wish Amazon would support an open standard like epub or make the mobipocket format open and update it a bit. From my novice experience creating mobipocket and epub ebooks, I like the layout of an epub ebook better because the Table of Contents is easier to navigate and epub supports reflowing words around pictures.