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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Books Required Reading for Readers

Posted by Paul Constant on Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 1:05 PM

If you are at all interested in the e-book wars, you should read Ken Auletta's great piece in the New Yorker about how Apple took the wind out of Amazon's sails, and how Google might kneecap the both of them.

At the Yerba Buena Center, it took a while for Jobs to mention books, and when he did he said that “Amazon has done a great job” with its Kindle. “We’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther.” It would probably have been more accurate to say that Jobs planned to stand on Amazon’s neck and press down hard, with publishers applauding. The decision to enter publishing was a reversal for Jobs, who two years ago said that the book business was unsalvageable. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty per cent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” But if reading books was low on the list of things that the iPad could do, it was nonetheless on the list, which meant that Amazon had become a competitor. “There’s a lot of heat between Apple and Amazon and Google,” an adviser to Jobs said. “Steve expresses contempt for everyone—unless he’s controlling them.” An Apple insider said, “He thinks Amazon is stupid, and made a terrible mistake insisting that books should be priced at $9.99.”

I especially like a joke that Auletta mentions, about how the second book printed on the Gutenberg press was about the death of the publishing industry.

Comments (11) RSS

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"But publishers were concerned that lower prices would decimate their profits. Amazon had been buying many e-books from publishers for about thirteen dollars and selling them for $9.99, taking a loss on each book".

Publishers are fucking stupid, aren't they?

Posted by Fnarf

on April 20, 2010 at 1:27 PM

Further evidence: the dollar figures that Auletta gives. For a $26 hardcover, the wholesale price is $13, out of which the publisher pays its costs and earns its profits. The author gets $3.90, production costs are $3.00, and the cost of returns is $5.20, leaving a profit of $0.90.

There's a very important number up there that has been totally ignored by all the discussions I've seen so far on this subject. Even I have focused on the costs of book production, wondering if there's enough savings there to justify a lower price. But I missed something, and so has everyone else: cost of returns.

There are no returns of e-books. That means an additional $5.20 in the publisher's pocket -- giving them a profit of almost SEVEN TIMES as before ($6.10 vs. $0.90).

This doesn't address the other factors in e-book pricing, such as the lack of any kind of resale value. E-books are convenient but seriously inferior products -- they SHOULD cost less than the paperback version.

Posted by Fnarf

on April 20, 2010 at 1:39 PM

the publishing industry is a pure parasite, worse than the music industry. almost no editing is done these days, and authors make beans. and at the same time, ten dollars for an ebook is too expensive?

Posted by gulg on April 20, 2010 at 2:04 PM

full disclosure: I work for a relevant party, but not on anything remotely related to ebooks, publishers, or any of that.

Posted by gulg on April 20, 2010 at 2:05 PM

I, for one, do not welcome our new e-book overlords. I doubt I will seriously read any e-books. I would *much* rather sit in a chair with a book made of paper and leaf through the pages, cribbing notes in the margins, putting my bookmark in a page, and leaving the book in my knapsack so I can read it when I'm camping under the stars.

I suspect that only "best-seller" fiction will be the real market here. Relying on battery-powered buzzing technology to "access" something as sensual as a good book (weight, typography, paperfeel, cover art) will always be second rate.

I predict fewer books will be actually printed, but they will become more special and important. This trend is already happening, cf. McSweeney's works. Ink-on-paper lasts longer, as any archaeologist can tell you, than anything digital.

Like music where the focus has turned back towards the live performance, digital books will be easily traded and disregarded, but the published item may become revered.

Posted by treacle on April 20, 2010 at 2:08 PM

@5, on one point, you're definitely wrong. There will not be fewer books printed, there will be many more; and they will not be better, they will be far worse. For every copy of McSweeney's there is a nearly infinite number of cheap crap items being printed. Your prediction reminds me of people saying the computer was going to destroy the paper industry. Instead, the laser printer increased it a hundred-fold.

More book titles were printed last year than in the entire decade of the 1980s. This trend will continue.

Posted by Fnarf

on April 20, 2010 at 2:18 PM

This is the most thorough piece I've seen on the publishing industry in identity crisis mode and, as such, it's thoroughly depressing. Book as literature isnt even part of the conversation - book as product is the only way these folks speak. It's a business, I get it, but jeez, I like to think that it was once upon a time a businesss that cared about it's product on some level...

This is why I was in bookselling, not publishing. Conversely, it may be why I'm not in bookselling any more...

Also, for those of you out there always riding Paul for being anti-Amazon - it's awfully hard to feel good about them after you reads this article. They're the techie schoolyard bullies in the playground (and not simply aboout the pricing model, Fnarf).

Posted by Michael Wells on April 20, 2010 at 2:53 PM