iBooks prices still way too high

[Tulipone]

Being a simple person it seems to me that paying a paper supplier to get some paper at a printer to use his time, equipment, ink and expertise to print and bind a book then to put it with others into a box and take it to a distributor by truck and a truck driver (who probably needed to top up with fuel) for the distributor to store it for a while and then get it to a point of sale MUST be more expensive than emailing some carefully arranged electrons to iTunes who then sell them to the end customer.

The effort by the author and the artwork and publishers costs are similar whatever are they not?

Someone must be sliding a few extra coins somewhere.

 

[Crosbie]

To be honest - you don't seem to know anything about the publishing industry as it exists now nor in the past.

When and if we move get to a time where print is truly dead and there are only digital copies - then yes, it will be more economical, etc.

But right now - print is a multimedia platform - which means they are still printing hard copies AND creating digital texts. They still have all the marketing costs for both. They have R&D teams, lawyers, advertising, etc etc that are still all paid. There are new contracts and commissions based on print AND digital rights.

In short - it's not cheaper for them to publish it electronically. It might be easier and faster. But at current - not cheaper UNLESS you are referring to books that ONLY exists electronically.

Though what digital also does is cut out the resale/secondhand market, and allows for potentially limitless bulk sales. (Potentially, of course, since not that many have an ereader yet... but then, prices are so high, and you've got a chicken and an egg.) There's also that long tail an earlier poster spoke of.

I suspect we may see price drops as publishers test the waters with, and/or iTunes push for, sale price books. When attractively priced, high quality content coins in revenue and leaps up the charts, a message will have been sent.

So don't buy those £15/$25 greed bombs. Keep your eye out for the sensibly priced offerings, and then snap them up and tell your friends. Good publisher, have a cookie.

 

[gwangung]

Being a simple person it seems to me that paying a paper supplier to get some paper at a printer to use his time, equipment, ink and expertise to print and bind a book then to put it with others into a box and take it to a distributor by truck and a truck driver (who probably needed to top up with fuel) for the distributor to store it for a while and then get it to a point of sale MUST be more expensive than emailing some carefully arranged electrons to iTunes who then sell them to the end customer.

The effort by the author and the artwork and publishers costs are similar whatever are they not?

Someone must be sliding a few extra coins somewhere.

Would you prefer to guess or to do research?

Basically, I'm told by agents, editors and writers that the big costs in publishing is marketing, editing and talent acquisition. Paper costs, transportation, storage, etc. are relatively minor. They may or may not be larger than electronic storage costs, bandwidth and the various human costs involved with that; if distribution costs are a sufficiently small percentage of the total cost, then prices won't change, ebook or not.

 

[brentsg]

This is like saying if your credit card company could setup a website and get 2% of their customers to do online banking instead of paper, that they will save a bit of money.

At this point iBooks are a drop in the bucket in a world still dominated by print media. So for now it's probably more expensive than the alternative due to economies of scale and the fact that all this new technology requires equipment, people, and process.

Sure, we might eventually come to a point where the scales tip and it becomes cheaper. But I'm sure at this point they are dinosaurs living in a totally new world and trying to put together sales forecasts based on very little data.

Not to mention that a lot of the major costs involved don't change at all, because they exist in the same manner regardless of the back-end distribution process.

 

[gwangung]

Though what digital also does is cut out the resale/secondhand market, and allows for potentially limitless bulk sales. (Potentially, of course, since not that many have an ereader yet... but then, prices are so high, and you've got a chicken and an egg.) There's also that long tail an earlier poster spoke of.

I suspect we may see price drops as publishers test the waters with, and/or iTunes push for, sale price books. When attractively priced, high quality content coins in revenue and leaps up the charts, a message will have been sent.

So don't buy those £15/$25 greed bombs. Keep your eye out for the sensibly priced offerings, and then snap them up and tell your friends. Good publisher, have a cookie.

I think some publishers have a good handle on that. If folks have to have a book immediately when it's published, they'll pay more for that, and such publishers as Baen will price it higher. As soon as it's been on the market for a while, Baen will slide it down the price pole until it's $5 or $6. They do pretty well, I'm told.

 

[bootedbear]

It costs them LESS to publish them on a digital platform...

Incorrect. You're obviously not in the publishing business. Book printing is a commodity these days.

The vast majority of the cost in creating a book is in the creation of the content and in marketing. The cost of the physical media is just noise.

 

[Tulipone]

This is like saying if your credit card company could setup a website and get 2% of their customers to do online banking instead of paper, that they will save a bit of money.

But they do. I elect to not have paper statements as part of my banks 'green' policy. Both my gas and electricity bills are cheaper if I have online statements over paper statements. My mobile phone bill costs £1.25 per month more if I require a paper statement. My Community Charge bill is online to save money. Back to my bank - they send me a token device to set up an encrypted VPN to do as many transactions as I can online rather than having me clog up their teller in the bank. People cost money. Paper costs money.

I agree that the set up charges and fees are similar UNTIL it gets to deciding to use an electronic file or print a book. I think you are telling me it costs the same or less to produce (probably over produce) a physical book and distribute it than it does for the eBook. Tosh, I say.

 

[gwangung]

But they do. I elect to not have paper statements as part of my banks 'green' policy. Both my gas and electricity bills are cheaper if I have online statements over paper statements. My mobile phone bill costs £1.25 per month more if I require a paper statement. My Community Charge bill is online to save money. Back to my bank - they send me a token device to set up an encrypted VPN to do as many transactions as I can online rather than having me clog up their teller in the bank. People cost money. Paper costs money.

I agree that the set up charges and fees are similar UNTIL it gets to deciding to use an electronic file or print a book. I think you are telling me it costs the same or less to produce (probably over produce) a physical book and distribute it than it does for the eBook. Tosh, I say.

Then you're not necessarily thinking it through.

You're saying that paper costs and distribution is a major portion of a book's costs. That's not the case. Publishing is a labor intensive industry; it HAS to be, given that it's authors and editors as the main cogs. Ergo, that's where the cost is going to be.

 

[Tulipone]

What I am saying is that an automated process is cheaper than a mandrolic one. That physical attributes cost something. That if Tesco can flog a physical paperback for £3.50 I find it a struggle to believe that the market will not find significant economies of scale with ePublishing to match or lower the price that Tesco can charge. With their profits just declared they are in no way considered a charity.

 

[EldoInTheWeeds]

When big corporations price a product, they look at their cost to produce it, how much gross profit they need on the item, what the competition prices similar products for, sales history of similar products and what they think the market will bear.

They know their cost of production and how much profit they need, but they cannot base pricing on that alone.

In the case of iBooks, they have no sales history to look at. They also cannot look at what their competition has done, because they have little history with ebooks either (relatively speaking).

They also don't know how many people will switch completely to paper books. If they price the printed boork for $20 and the ibook for $10, what does that do to their overall profitability? Will brick-and-mortar retailers drop their printed titles because of it? (Yes.)

As far as what the market will bear, they have to consider that the people who will buy the iBooks (as far as iPad users go) just paid a minimum of $500 for their book reader. What is more important to those people, price or the convenience of reading the book on the iPad?

So they price the ibooks taking into consideration all those factors (and more). In the end, it is easier for them to lower prices than to raise them.

 

[gwangung]

What I am saying is that an automated process is cheaper than a mandrolic one. That physical attributes cost something. That if Tesco can flog a physical paperback for £3.50 I find it a struggle to believe that the market will not find significant economies of scale with ePublishing to match or lower the price that Tesco can charge. With their profits just declared they are in no way considered a charity.

Once again, you're assuming that physical costs are a major portion of what a book costs. If that was true, then you might have a strong rhetorical argument. Since it is not, then your argument falls apart. Economies of scale won't save you much if physical costs are a minute percentage of a book's cost.

(Also, I know that BAD e-books tend to be automated, but better, more readable ones aren't).

 

[Tulipone]

When big corporations price a product, they look at their cost to produce it, how much gross profit they need on the item, what the competition prices similar products for, sales history of similar products and what they think the market will bear.

They know their cost of production and how much profit they need, but they cannot base pricing on that alone.

In the case of iBooks, they have no sales history to look at. They also cannot look at what their competition has done, because they have little history with ebooks either (relatively speaking).

They also don't know how many people will switch completely to paper books. If they price the printed boork for $20 and the ibook for $10, what does that do to their overall profitability? Will brick-and-mortar retailers drop their printed titles because of it? (Yes.)

As far as what the market will bear, they have to consider that the people who will buy the iBooks (as far as iPad users go) just paid a minimum of $500 for their book reader. What is more important to those people, price or the convenience of reading the book on the iPad?

So they price the ibooks taking into consideration all those factors (and more). In the end, it is easier for them to lower prices than to raise them.

Okay, that makes some sense. If they continue to overprice and only sell a few, it will either destroy the platform or their emerging business. I am fed up hearing about the music business bleating about online piracy killing their trade and film distributors worried about people not going to the cinema anymore. The world does not owe a living to business, business needs to understand what people want and meet the demand.

 

[EldoInTheWeeds]

Okay, that makes some sense. If they continue to overprice and only sell a few, it will either destroy the platform or their emerging business. I am fed up hearing about the music business bleating about online piracy killing their trade and film distributors worried about people not going to the cinema anymore. The world does not owe a living to business, business needs to understand what people want and meet the demand.

And people need to understand that if they don't like the price of something that doesn't give them the right to steal it.

 

[Tulipone]

And people need to understand that if they don't like the price of something that doesn't give them the right to steal it.

I refer you to post 21 in this thread. I do not condone piracy my point, perhaps badly made, was that the market changes and business needs to change to be in accord.

Banks go bust because they are reckless or have bad business models - whilst fraud is a cost it has not been the major contributor to their near bankruptcy. If they cannot survive as a business I don't know why we support them either!

I suspect we are not going to see the problem in the same way, but I have certainly enjoyed the conversation. Thanks all for the reasoned discussion.

 

[JulianL]

If you think that ebook prices are too high then should you vote with your wallet and not buy anything until prices come down? I'm really torn on that question. My fear is that if people did that to the extent that ebook sales end up being way below publishers' projections then would they cut prices to stimulate demand or would they start backing off the whole ebook market? Alternatively, would hitting certain volume targets for their ebook businesses trigger a point where they're comfortable that they can amortize the fixed costs across a large enough number of units sold and so reduce price to further boost volume. Might we end up shooting ourselves in the foot by boycotting the market at this formative stage?

I really want ebooks to be sucessful. I want to read everything via an ereader (and I'd like iBooks to be the winner here). Right now my choice of fiction to read is influenced by whether I can get a book in electronic format and I'd love us to get to a stage where this doesn't restrict me.

From my outsider's (not in the publishing industry) view I see 4 categories of books:

1) Stuff out of copyright that is getting published free. This is pretty straightforward although, somewhat in sympathy for my point above, I buy certain books via things like Penguin Classics rather than download the free versions because I want publishers to sense a return from the ebook market.

2) New stuff. This is easily published in electronic format and is a matter of people like Apple and Amazon convincing as many publishers as possible, in as many regions as possible, that it is worth their while releasing their new catalog entries electronically as well as in printed form.

3) Back catalog stuff for which the electronic files are in reasonably good shape and easily accessible (not lost). This is one area where ebooks could get exciting if publishers got committed enough to release significant parts of their back catalogs because some of the stuff they release might not even be in physical print anymore so all sorts of new but still fairly contemporary (under copyright) gems might become available again.

4) Back catalog stuff where electronic source files are not readily accessible. Maybe this class of book doesn't exist at all but I suspect it does and those would be the biggest challenge because to republish them electronically would be a big investment for publishers (assuming that they want a decent level of proof reading and typesetting for the electronic version).

I'm really hoping for 1, 2 and 3 above so on balance I'm willing to pay what might be over the odds for my ebooks for a few years in order to play a part in priming the commercial pump and hope that the publishers sense revenue and get to the tipping point where they go for a volume ramp by cutting prices and increasing product range.

Rant over.

- Julian

P.S. I've been reading ebooks since 1999 when I started on my first Palm V device.

 

[Beau10]

Something interesting to note on price shifting -

About 2.5 weeks ago I decided to check out Ayn Rand's work. Decided on Kindle reader due to pricing + being able to read on iPad/desktop/iphone.

First up bought the Fountainhead. The Kindle price was $6.00. Bought it. Noted at the time Atlas Shrugged was $10. Finished it in a week, then returned to purchase Atlas Shrugged. $28! The Fountainhead also rose to that price... nearly 500% increase, insane. Saw this same pricing on iBooks & B&N. Today I checked out the pricing again, and now it's $19. Won't be home for a couple hours, but curious to see what it's at on iBooks and B&N thru my iPad.

Anyone else notice pricing swinging wildly like this?

 

[Jophster]

In all fairness to the book companies it is understandable that they focus on book trade as ebook trade is so insignificant that it is only an experiment.
But it is an experiment that they just don't seem keen on.

I could get into my whole ethos on the changes in media - I think Murdoch's concept of charging for news is laughable - but the end fact is that the very very least they could do is charge THE SAME price for an ebook and book equivalent.

However, my ideal situation (and how I think it should be) is that you pay to own some kind of license of a novel or publication, then leaving you free to use it as you wish, ebook, book, what ever, sadly that would be far to generous for any company to do so I would settle for equivalent pricing.

 

[Tulipone]

I have just tried to buy a book on both B&N and Amazon through the iPad apps. Neither will sell them to me as they are only available in the US. The range of books on iBooks is 'limited' so my options have decreased somewhat!

If I slightly avoid the truth I can buy them and they willing show me stuff I should not buy. If it were not so late, I'd start a rant about eCommerce also

 

[alecgold]

Then you're not necessarily thinking it through.

You're saying that paper costs and distribution is a major portion of a book's costs. That's not the case. Publishing is a labor intensive industry; it HAS to be, given that it's authors and editors as the main cogs. Ergo, that's where the cost is going to be.

If The paper, printing and shipping isn't pricey, why do they keep on printing on shabby paper with bad bindings even in hard covers that are pretty costly IMHO?
And often paperbacks are only 1/3 of the hard back prices, so either they are making a lot of money out of these hard backs or the printing, paper and binding costs are not as low as you thing they are.
Distribution, transportation, risk of not selling them, paper, printing, binding and all the things in between can not be cheaper than reworking an already digital file into an PDF or alike format. And every book written these days is a digital file when it is processed and printed, even if the writer used a goose feAther.

I have my own solution, there are just a few (less than 1500) ebooks in Dutch that I can buy, at rediculous prices. So I buy second hand cheap paper backs that I know I like, cut the spine out, run the through my simple adf printer/scanner, get n PDF file and have my own digital book.
And that is another problem with ebooks, I can get cheap paperbacks at 2 or 3 bucks each, in fine condition. But the book that my father read on his iPad can't be given to me like any cheap paperback, without breaking DRM.
And in that light I think the ebooks are really ridiculus priced. Only one person can read them, you can't share them with friends and you can't sell them second hand, but you need to pay the hard back price for them and sometimes even more?

That all being said, I love reading late at night on my iPad, just hanging lazily in my hammock.

 

[iserian]

If you want to drag into Itunes (import) you will need to remove the DRM and turn them into Epub if they are not already.

Both B&N and Amazon have App's on the Pad - so you can read them native w/no need to import.

One question. Can you import books from amazon or barnes and noble into iTunes? I suspect I know the answer (no), but it could make the difference.

Chris

 

[Tulipone]

If you want to drag into Itunes (import) you will need to remove the DRM and turn them into Epub if they are not already.

Both B&N and Amazon have App's on the Pad - so you can read them native w/no need to import.

So I see - just they don't sell the books to those outside the US - at least the ones I was looking at.

 

[gwangung]

If The paper, printing and shipping isn't pricey, why do they keep on printing on shabby paper with bad bindings even in hard covers that are pretty costly IMHO?
And often paperbacks are only 1/3 of the hard back prices, so either they are making a lot of money out of these hard backs or the printing, paper and binding costs are not as low as you thing they ck.

You answered your own question, you know. Cheap paper, in an area where they can cut costs. And paperbacks are, of course, cheaper than first run hard cover as publishers front load price to take advantage of early adopters. That's pretty basic pricing.

 

[brentsg]

At this point in the game I just want the convenience, so as long as it doesn't cost more I'm ok with it.

I can grab a book on impulse. I can read it on the go without taking an extra item with me. I can keep the book in my "collection" without it taking up storage space in my home.

Hopefully they'll get cheaper over time.

 

[Imsuperjp]

At this point in the game I just want the convenience, so as long as it doesn't cost more I'm ok with it.

I can grab a book on impulse. I can read it on the go without taking an extra item with me. I can keep the book in my "collection" without it taking up storage space in my home.

Hopefully they'll get cheaper over time.

I agree. I would rather have an electronic copy of a book if it's the same price or close. It doesn't take up space in my house, it's backed up online, don't have to worry about losing the book, I can sync it to more than one device and it saves me time and gas buying a book.

 

[brentsg]

On a similar topic, I enjoyed comics as a kid. I haven't picked up a single issue since like the mid '80s but I still have a soft spot, so I've read the occasional graphic novel or hardcover.

I see this as a huge opportunity for the comic companies to e-publish. Someone like me might be tempted to pick up e-subscriptions, when we won't even remotely consider hitting up the local shop. So far they've really failed. Marvel has a nice app, but they really need to rethink the subscription vs. spoon-fed issue model.