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Except - Amazon does not set the price of books, the publisher does. Amazon does try and bargain with the publishers, because they sell more books for the Kindle when books are cheaper.
Except - Amazon does not set the price of books, the publisher does. Amazon does try and bargain with the publishers, because they sell more books for the Kindle when books are cheaper.
Not exactly. The publisher has a recommended price, and sometimes publishers can force retailers to charge a certain price (it depends on individual contracts between publishers and retailers), but saying that the publisher sets the price (beyond the wholesale price that the retailer pays) is not exactly accurate.
I've read Amazon's TOS, and they allow the rights-holder to set the price of the digital version. As I said before, I'm sure they lobby hard to get the price down.
I've read Amazon's TOS, and they allow the rights-holder to set the price of the digital version. As I said before, I'm sure they lobby hard to get the price down.
That could make sense for publishers to set it higher if they have large stockpiles of physical books that would remain unsold if the digital version were cheap.
I was thinking about getting the new Kindle 2 from Amazon, but when I looked at the prices of the e-books, I changed my mind - why are they so expensive?! Shouldn't they be cheaper since there is no printing/shipping involved? I understand that publisher's and writers need to get paid, but I think the prices of the ebooks more than cancel out the benefits of the Kindle.
For example, "Chretien Continued" is $101 as a hardcover, but $109 as a e-book! Another, "The Yankee Years" is $15 as either a hardcover or e-book? Is it really worth it to spend $400 for a Kindle ($359 + tax in NYC) and then spend the same amount, if not more, for a digital format of a book? I believe you also lose the "collectibles" feeling when owning a first edition hardcover of a book that can become a classic.
Anyone here agree with me or am I just missing something?
As an author, I still spend hours, weeks, years, compiling data and writing. I still pour my heart and soul into my works. I still work hard at my craft and still want to be rewarded for it. In a world where creativity and intellectual property are discounted, stolen, ripped off, and copied at will, the artists are suffering. The public demands new music and new books - yet think nothing of copying something out of a book and sending it to all 8 million people in their address books without attribution. They think nothing of downloading music without paying for it. They act as if free information is a birthright without considering the hard work that goes into creating and compiling it.
You want to continue to be fed? You need to make sure your creators of these works make a living at it. People download my e-books and then send them for free to hundreds of their friends. I still only made that first download fee. I can't feed my family on that. At least with hardcover it was harder to trot down to the nearest Kinkos and make a copy and mail it. These days, we authors watch in dismay as our works are not only swiped, they are dismantled and then passed off as term papers and newspaper articles by other authors.
It's been quite a week for e-readers, the portable devices that allow you to read books and other text on an electronic display. Just days after announcing a new version of its Kindle e-reader last week, and facing concern from authors that the Kindle 2's new text-to-speech feature might hurt sales of audiobooks, Amazon has announced it's amending the feature.
Rights-holders will now be able to "decide on a title-by-title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled," the company announced in a news release. No timeframe for the change was announced, but the company said it's already begun work "on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice."
Great, just great. Since the text-to-audio was the only reason I even considered it, that squashes that. I can't read printed books, and 99% of my audios come from the federally funded talking book library. Once in a very great while, either someone gives me a commercially done one, or I find one on ebay I can actually afford. But I'm limited to the choices others have made, so I make do rather than getting what I want.
I agree that the prices set by many publishers are absurd. If a new paperback costs $11 and the kindle version is $10, then my urge to get the kindle is eliminated. There is a strong reason for this, however. Large publishing companies make their money by ordering tens of thousands of copies of a given title using an offset printer that would bring their unit cost down to between $1-2 for a paperback. The problem: they now have 25 thousand copies of this sucker that they need to sell and fast. Thus, it does not behoove them to mark down an ebook copy to $5 as that would eat into their physical unit sales. They HAVE to sell those physical units, as they have a lot of capital tied up in them, not to mention warehouse costs, etc. So, when you buy a $10 ebook what you are really paying for is that publisher's warehousing costs for the physical book you didn't buy.
You will notice that kindle prices for older, classic, or public domain books is considerably cheaper, and in some cases free. That makes the kindle totally worth it. You can now build a full library of classic literature for little to no cost by downloading the electronic versions. In many cases, you can even go to Project Gutenberg, download the html or txt files and format them yourselves as you wish as a PDF file.
Also, as a micro-press myself (using POD and ebook technologies rather than large-scale offset printing), I find the kindle invaluable. For one, it lets me upload submissions as PDF documents, that I can then review more casually from anywhere I find myself (rather than being constantly in front of my glaring laptop screen). Additionally, as I use POD for my physical units rather than offset printing in bulk, it serves me just as well to sell an ebook for $3 as a physical unit for $8. I price my ebooks at the same profit margin as the physical units. A sale of either one makes me just as much money, but the ebook is considerably cheaper for the consumer. I feel like there must be an advantage to choosing the electronic version.
I feel like there must be an advantage to choosing the electronic version.
Well, apart from versatile portability, hygiene, and variable formatting, there's the conservation of trees, which none of us can afford to ignore at this critical juncture in the conservation and preservation of life on our planet.
E-books are not inexpensive to create and market. There is automation, credit card company percentages, formatting, editing, proofing, graphics, and the publisher's and author's compensation, as well as that of any agent and/or legal counsel involved.
It's a tad more complicated than rearranging the alphabet into a string of sentences and pressing 'send' folks!
Actually at least trees are a renewable resources. It takes plastic, metals and various chemicals to make an e-book many of which are highly toxic and hard to dispose of properly which is not happening at all.
If we were doing that these would cost much more (same goes for cell phones, computers etc.)
I haven't done the full research but I suspect that books are far greener than any e-device
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