Book Publishing & eBook pricing

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I Shrugged
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Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by I Shrugged » Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:04 pm

Since we have at least two authors here, this might be a good place to ask about ebook pricing.

It seems to me that ebooks are a windfall for publishers; that there is a lot more profit in an ebook or a portfolio of them than in printed books.  It also seems that prices are absurdly high and there is no real competition to bring them down.  Sort of a cartel type of market.  I realize a person can find free and bargain ebooks, but the mainstream, current books are quite high priced for what they are.

Also, have ebooks caused an increase or decrease in "book" sales?

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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by flyingpylon » Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:32 pm

I found that once I stopped looking at ebooks as traditional books and simply based my purchasing decisions on the value (to me) of the information or experience, all of the other issues went away.  From that perspective, most ebooks are a steal.  If I get the information I want and the author (and/or publisher) makes a pile of money, it's a win/win for both of us.  At this point I find more "value" in digital versions and don't need the physical paper to perceive value.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by RuralEngineer » Tue Oct 22, 2013 12:10 am

I find myself less bitter about the price of the individual books, as they often have a great deal of value to me personally, and more furious about the DRM that restricts me to a particular e-reader.  For example, I received a Nook tablet for my first e-reader that was first gen and a piece of shit.  Since B&N is slowly going bankrupt I decided to get a plain Jane Kindle instead.  I love it so much more.  Not being back lit helps my eyes and the battery life is better.  Amazon isn't going bankrupt anytime soon so it feels secure.  However, now I have all kinds of books that are stranded in this shitty piece of hardware and cracking the DRM is a huge pain.  It's a freaking book.  I paid more for the e-book than I would for a paperback and I own the paperback outright.  It just doesn't make sense.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by I Shrugged » Tue Oct 22, 2013 7:52 am

RE,
I agree with all your points.  I do sympathize with the thought that value of any ebook is in the eye of the beholder.  But you've highlighted a big problem with the overall price bracket. 
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Pointedstick » Tue Oct 22, 2013 8:59 am

I agree completely, RE. The DRM is the only major stumbling block for me. If not for that, I'd literally buy eBook versions of every book I own and get rid of most of the paper copies.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Coffee » Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:08 am

The best price (sweet spot) to price your e-book as an indie publisher is $2.99.  But like all things, you need to price-test.  I have a few titles that I have to price at $0.99 otherwise they don't sell.  At all.  But my money-makers are all $2.99.

Many indie authors report to have success at $3.99.  I've tried that price point (early this year) and found that it cut into my volume of sales and was making less.

Typically (with a few exceptions) it's mostly the legacy publishers who have authors with name-recognition who can get away with pricing ebooks at $9.99.  A noteable exception is the guy from Extreme Early Retirement -- but he's kind of created his own name recognitions (at least within his niche).
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by MediumTex » Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:37 am

The experience that Craig and I have had is IMHO unusual.

It was one of those situation where luck, skill and timing all come together perfectly.

The publishing business is so crappy in general that I don't mind publishers making a little extra profit from e-books.

Apart from John Grisham, J.K. Rowling and other superstars, my impression is that very few books and very few writers make much money from their book writing.

I think that the PP book has done very well (and I very much appreciate those of you who have purchased a copy), but even a book that sells very well is still not necessarily going to be a big money maker for the authors.  A book that sells a few thousand copies is considered a big success in most areas of publishing, but it seems to me that a book would need to sell 50 times that number for the writer to really be able to make a living at it.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Coffee » Thu Oct 24, 2013 8:29 am

Some of the best business models in publishing are the one's that use the book as a front end/lead generation tool.  You see this a lot with the real estate investing books.

For example: If you guys owned the rights to all of Harry Browne's books, and also published a $200 a year "PP Newsletter" and also did seminars and cruises.  Then the PP book you've written-- even if it only sells 2,000 a year-- is the entry drug that upsells the customer to all the other offerings.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by FarmerD » Thu Oct 24, 2013 12:30 pm

MediumTex wrote:
Apart from John Grisham, J.K. Rowling and other superstars, my impression is that very few books and very few writers make much money from their book writing.

I think that the PP book has done very well (and I very much appreciate those of you who have purchased a copy), but even a book that sells very well is still not necessarily going to be a big money maker for the authors.  A book that sells a few thousand copies is considered a big success in most areas of publishing, but it seems to me that a book would need to sell 50 times that number for the writer to really be able to make a living at it.
I found this out firsthand.  Book authors usually only get a couple bucks per book sold, publishers make slightly more , while distributors take the lion's share. If a book sells 10,000 copies (and that's typically rare) it's considered a successful printing.  From this, you can get an idea how much a successful author makes.  I've written a couple books which reviewers have told me were excellent but after considering how much time I invested in writing the books, the difficulty getting published in the first place, the time it takes to get published, and the likely small income the book would generate, i felt it wasn't even worth it. 

That's why I know it was simply ridiculous for Clive to think you and Craig were getting rich off your book.  He obviously knows nothing about the publishing business.  While you won't make a ton of money from the PP book, you will have the thanks of a lot of people, which, I'm sure, was your goal anyway. 
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Pointedstick » Thu Oct 24, 2013 12:39 pm

FarmerD, do you think it's different for eBooks directly published through Amazon or Apple or something? The author's share of the revenue is like 70% there.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Libertarian666 » Thu Oct 24, 2013 1:25 pm

As a slightly famous technical author, I can confirm that is not the way to riches. I have had about 10 titles with my name on the spine, and the most I ever made on a book was about $30,000. Two thirds of that was for doing the typesetting, for which I was accidentally paid twice.

(Yes, I notified the publisher and tried to return the overpayment but they said they couldn't take it back.)
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by ns2 » Thu Oct 24, 2013 6:43 pm

Libertarian666 wrote: As a slightly famous technical author, I can confirm that is not the way to riches. I have had about 10 titles with my name on the spine, and the most I ever made on a book was about $30,000. Two thirds of that was for doing the typesetting, for which I was accidentally paid twice.
From an article by Fred Reed,

I knew most of this. What I didn’t know about was the new approach to pricing. Today, a physical book goes for twenty-six rapidly withering green ones, the Kindle version for maybe twelve. However, it turns out that books priced way low – $2.99 (Dawson’s price; he would understand that any man can be bought) – or lower are making lots of money. The principle is that people will drop a couple of bucks without worrying about it. They won’t pony up ten times that amount.

And crime fiction is apparently the hottest selling genre on the net. Science fiction, I’m told, is next.


I'm guessing novels for women including romance coupled with sadomasochism (as in 50 shades of grey) are also going to be doing well if they aren't already so I may start honing up on that.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by MediumTex » Fri Oct 25, 2013 10:12 am

FarmerD wrote: That's why I know it was simply ridiculous for Clive to think you and Craig were getting rich off your book.  He obviously knows nothing about the publishing business.  While you won't make a ton of money from the PP book, you will have the thanks of a lot of people, which, I'm sure, was your goal anyway.
I am pretty sure that Harry Browne's estate did a lot better than we did, since I am sure that our book caused a lot of people to go back and buy Harry Browne's books as well.

We also paid for the illustrations (from an outstanding artist, BTW) and the data for the charts and tables.

In other words, a big chunk of the money the publisher paid us went to pay for illustrations and data in the book.

It was definitely a worthwhile and enjoyable exercise, even if there weren't great financial profits in it for us.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Coffee » Sun Oct 27, 2013 10:29 pm

No, e-books are almost always less money (cheaper) upfront.  And you can lend them to friends without lending out your e-reader.  Amazon has a lend feature where it comes off your e-reader and goes to theirs... I think for three weeks.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by RuralEngineer » Mon Oct 28, 2013 12:39 am

Coffee, you're buying different ebooks than I am. Unless they're ancient or self published I usually end up getting hosed for at least $2 or $3 more than a paperback.

The only time I save money is if it's a brand new book that's only out in hardback. But sometimes they deliberately delay the ebook release to try and drive hardback sales anyway.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Rien » Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:05 am

Try writing a book in Dutch ;D

I did, and I am making a boat load of money with it...  a very small toy boat that is, the size of your thumb.....  all in all it pays me about 20 euro's a month. Hardly the stuff of legends...

Of course there are only about 20 million people (or thereabouts) that can read dutch, and it is a technical book which won't appeal to the masses. Even so, had I gone the traditional route I do not believe my book would have been published, unless I were willing to pay for it. In which case the book would have been a huge sinkhole.
So I use lulu and bravenewbooks as on-demand publishers in addition to selling it as an e-book. Even though the ebook is about 1/4th the price of the paper editions, I have yet to sell a single ebook.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by flyingpylon » Mon Oct 28, 2013 7:36 am

MangoMan wrote: If I can indeed loan my friend an ebook, why should Amazon or anyone else limit that loan to 3 weeks? If my buddy is a slow reader, and I am done with the book, wtf?
When you "buy" an e-book you're not buying a copy of the book, you are buying a license to read the book on a particular device or devices assigned to you.  It's a very different arrangement than buying a physical copy of a book, so when people complain that they can do X with a book but not an e-book, they are really comparing apples to oranges most of the time.  They can then complain that they don't like oranges, but that's a different matter.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Xan » Mon Oct 28, 2013 10:27 am

We really shouldn't ever use language like "buy" when referring to eBooks.  You're completely at the mercy of the publisher to give you permission to do ANYTHING with "your" book.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Coffee » Mon Oct 28, 2013 11:13 pm

RuralEngineer wrote: Coffee, you're buying different ebooks than I am. Unless they're ancient or self published I usually end up getting hosed for at least $2 or $3 more than a paperback.

The only time I save money is if it's a brand new book that's only out in hardback. But sometimes they deliberately delay the ebook release to try and drive hardback sales anyway.
If you're buying books from legacy publishers, then yes-- you'll pay more.  If you buy Indie books, you'll typically pay $2.99-$3.99. 

For example: The #3 book right now in the Amazon Kindle Marketplace is $1.99:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Promise-Stard ... 54606011_3

The #5 book -- Ender's Game -- is $3.98.

#6,8,10 and #14 are all under $4.
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by RuralEngineer » Tue Oct 29, 2013 12:51 am

The number one best seller when I go to Amazon is Sycamore Row by John Grisham and it's $11.99.  The first page of the best seller list is full of books like that, as well as some cheap ones too.

http://www.amazon.com/Sycamore-Row-John ... 54606011_1
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Re: Book Publishing & eBook pricing

Post by Coffee » Wed Oct 30, 2013 11:55 am

RuralEngineer wrote: The number one best seller when I go to Amazon is Sycamore Row by John Grisham and it's $11.99.  The first page of the best seller list is full of books like that, as well as some cheap ones too.

http://www.amazon.com/Sycamore-Row-John ... 54606011_1
Like I said: Legacy published ebooks will always have a high price tag.  But why buy those?  John Grisham is a shit writer.  I've found that indie writers are hit and miss, but so are legacy published writers, when you think about it.

P.S.  I've enjoyed the Grisham books I've read, but not any more than I've enjoyed the indie published books at 1/3 the price.
"Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is. "
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