Kassia Krozser and Lev Grossman talked to Jeffrey Brown on NewsHour recently about ‘the shifting world of book publishing’, and ‘how technology and readers are changing the industry’. I’ve only just got around to reading the transcript (thanks, Angelique). Most of what they say makes sense, apart from this statement by Lev Grossman:
And it sounds a little technical to say, also, but people have not really figured out how much an e-book should cost. Amazon tends to sell them for $9.99, but Amazon takes a loss on each book. And $9.99 is — it’s not enough for publishers to recoup the cost of producing an e-book. (My emphasis.)
I disagree. If publishers can make money on mass market paperback originals with a price point well below $9.99–many have and some still do–then they can make money on a book with no shipping, warehousing, printing or picking-and-packing costs. They just don’t make as much money. Publishers (by which I mean the Big Six) must adjust.
Books delivered electronically at low prices are already a huge part of the reader-writer landscape. (For example, around 30% of my royalties are now from sales of e-books.) If the publishers want to stay in business, they are going to have to figure out how to make money for the long terms at those prices. Those that don’t will fail and fade into the west. Newer publishers, writer-agent coops, and other strange agglomerations of stake holders, will take over. After all, the only two truly indispensable parts of the literary landscape are the writer and the reader. In my opinion.
What do you think?
Nicola Griffith 
I just wrote an article on the future landscape of publishing and writing for Electric Spec, so this stuff has been heavy on my mind for the past few weeks.
My dear hope is that Spec Fiction publishers lead the charge in Ebooks and alternative forms of publishing. After all, our readership is reading a great deal of content online. Some cozy mystery authors might not make 30% of their royalties from esales cuz their readership isn't accustomed to being there. But it's coming. And I think some Name authors could potentially price themselves out of paper and Big 6 distribution. JA Konrath is already seeing it with his esales.
I'm not used to being the luddite, but I still am not on the ereader bandwagon. I think we have seen for a while that charges are not for CONTENT but for FORMAT– right? A hardcover is more expensive than a paperback, despite having the same words. I think that chink is how books are going to be split.
The thing is– ebooks are infinitely reproducable. This is something to note. It makes a big distinction between the “I can give a friend my trade paperback when I finish” & shared electronic content. That said, all the DRM stuff is…highly problematic, starting with the assumption of copytheft.
Tricky.
Read an interview with John Grisham today where he rails against e-readers, and claims it not only cuts into profits for pubs, bookstores and writers, but it will make it more difficult for writers to get published in the first place. I would think that, in many cases, it may even make it easier. In any case, it's hard to stomach John Grisham complaining about profit margins.
ssas, the big narrative adopters right now are romance readers. Heavy adoption, too, by the tech field.
mordicai, eh, it's all about profit margins. Early last century, received wisdom was that you couldn't make money on paperbacks. Penguin proved them all wrong. And, yep, it's the assumption, by publishers, of theft that irritates me. I don't have the answers, except I know deep in my bones that pretending reality is other than it is (publishers sticking their heads in the print book sand and clucking to themselves about Amazon etc.) is a fool's game.
anon @ 12:13: he deserves his profit as much as any other writer–that is, if he's pleasing his readers, he deserves to get paid.
A book pubbed as an ebook usually costs as much as whatever the corresponding paper format is.
I think what Lev was talking about are new hardcovers that Amazon sells as $9.99 ebooks, in which case – yes – the publisher takes a loss.
Ebooks cost nearly as much to produce as a paper book if there is DRM layering attached. Remove the DRM and there are fewer costs.
The cost of PPB (print, paper, bind) is a relatively small one. The cost of getting the book through the publishing process and into publishable shape is higher: copyediting, proofreader, typesetting, interior design, exterior design, jacket art, etc. All the same on an ebook.
Sure, there's no shipping, physical storage or distribution for an ebook, but what there is are engineering costs, digital rights management costs, digital distribution and virtual storage cost. Most publishers simply aren't equipped to store ebooks on their servers. Most publishers can barely get a website functioning, fer crissakes, much less a shopping cart function on that website.
It's simply not accurate to claim that ebooks cost less to produce that physical books.
It's simply not accurate to claim that ebooks cost less to produce that physical books.
You're right–and I wouldn't claim it. I'm just saying that if a publisher can make money on mass market, they can make money on digital.
I don't know much about the technicalities of layering in/on DRM but it's not as though it has to be done by hand, one book at a time. Why does it cost so much? (And what, roughly, are those costs?)
Any info greatly appreciated!
Ebooks should sell no higher than $5.00. Books should be no more than $10. High profile authors can still get the $15 to $20 margin. If these prices were standarized across the industry, there would be more sales.
Also writers should begin releasing chapters behind a password access wall for a $10 fee.
If I was a first time (or still relatively new) author, I would offer 500 Twitter users, a password to my site where each day, I release a chapter a day (up to 10 chapters of a 30 chapter book) And ask that the users create a hashtag discussion and chat about it on Twitter. As an author, I would chime in here and there. The publisher, then adds relevant content to each chapter (for instance, a youtube link to a song mentioned or a wiki entry to an unfamiliar idea, a photo of a landscape).
This would be my lead promotion BEFORE the book is released. Then when the book is released, I have a crowd of at least 500 influencers, who will purchase or influence others to purchase by the interest they've generated through tweets. For those who want to continue reading a chapter a day, I'd add $10 to access the books online.
Books need to become viral. The best way to become viral is to create situations where discussions can happen about them. Publishers need to rethink publishing by saying “where would readers be lost likely to have a conversation about this book?” And then place the content there, for a reasonable fee.
Yeah, I realize romance is leading – my ebook sale is an erotica. But I do think SF/F readers are a solid bastion of electronic readership.
My husband actually develops web sales sites for a living and one of my best friends is a site designer. I've published a midrate ezine for four years. We have a new content management system that makes our job infinitely easier this year than years past. I've seen my husband's sites go up in months and they work.
Publishers are simply idiots (or getting a bad sales job from one) if they don't realize they can publish easier and do online sales economically and well.