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By: Maryann Yin,
on 2/22/2011
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Galley Cat (Mediabistro)
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DC Comics has reduced prices for their entire line of 32-page comic books. Each issue now retails for $2.99, marked down from $3.99.
The announcement offers this quote from co-publisher Dan DiDio: “We needed a progressive pricing strategy that supports our existing business model and, more importantly, allows this creative industry to thrive for years to come. With the exceptions of oversized comic books, like annuals and specials, we are committed to a $2.99 price point.”
As Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Batman, and Tiny Titans comics get cheaper, do you think trade publishers should also lower print prices? (via Edward Champion)
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
by Michael
It seems that Amazon finally caught on to the fact that the top 10 books on the Kindle Bestseller list were all free books—they’re now creating two lists, one for paid books, and one for free books.
As the LA Times Jacket Copy blog notes, at the very least, the “bestseller” label won’t be a misnomer any longer.
This is also as it should be. Comparing the downloads of free books to the download of paid books never made much sense—the whole point of making the book free is to entice people who aren’t willing to pay for the work in the first place. Without payment, it’s not a sale, it’s a gift. Including both paid and free books on the list is comparing apples to oranges, and I’m glad they’re making the distinction—as Apple does in their App and iBook stores. With more than half the books on the Kindle Bestseller list being free, it’s going to be interesting to see which books now appear in the paid list.
With more information about the paid books, I’m curious to see how pricing affects sales. We know that free books are frequently downloaded, but is there a big different between $12.99 and $9.99? Or $9.99 and $4.99? A quick look at the iBookstore bestsellers shows only 7 books under $9.99 in the top 50, and those books are not new and priced to move, but rather backlist titles available in mass market formats. But the titles in the iBookstore are much more limited, so it’s hard to really draw conclusions.
So what do you think? Was it a good idea to divide the lists? Or did lumping free and paid ebooks onto the same list tell us something important?
by Michael
April 1, 2010, marks not just April Fools’ Day (quite possibly my least favorite day of the year, in close contention with Halloween and New Year’s Eve), but also the day that the “Agency 5” switch to the agency model (see
my last post for more on this). I think most of us knew the transition wouldn’t be smooth, as entirely changing your business model in, oh, three months, isn’t exactly easy. And indeed, there are some hiccups along the way, with
Hachette Kindle books temporarily missing, and
Penguin unable to close a deal with Amazon (we received an email from Peguin regarding the issue this morning). There’s still some tension between Amazon and publishers, as evidenced by
the response from Amazon regarding the missing Hachette titles, and there will be more carefully worded missives publicly traded in the days to come.
Amazon can’t be happy with the iPad reviews that rolled in last night, either, because in several of them (great round up
here at Gizmodo), the reviewers mentioned that they preferred the iBooks reading experience to that of the Kindle. I am officially excited for Saturday.
By: DGLM,
on 3/30/2010
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Dystel & Goderich Literary Management
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by Michael
April 3 is right around the corner! For those of you who don’t pay attention to, well, any form of media, that’s the day that Apple’s iPad finally hits the stores. And, being the nerd that I am, I have to say I’m pretty excited. I love product launches, and Apple does them like no other. (I was very disappointed by the lack of excitement surrounding the launch of the Palm Pre when I went to purchase it on day one last year, but I digress.) I think our readers know how this relates to books, but in case you don’t,
Apple is launching their iBookstore that day, as well. They’ll be offering books from all the major publishers, with one huge exception: Random House. When Steve Jobs announced the iPad back in January, he said that 5 of the 6 biggest publishers were onboard for the iBookstore. The absence of Random House was conspicuous, but they
released a statement afterwards saying that they were working on an agreement with Apple. I’d assumed there’d be one in place by this point, but it looks like the iBookstore could very well launch without the largest trade publisher on board,
as reported by the Financial Times. Honestly, I was really surprised. Until last week.
That’s when
this article popped up on an iPhone fansite. It purported to show the working iBookstore, along with the prices. And the price for 27 of the 32 listed bestsellers that day? $9.99. The same price that publishers have been fighting against in the Kindle bookstore. I was thrown for a loop. The reasoning behind the to switch to the agency model was to take control of pricing and get rid of the expectation that ebooks cost $9.99. But here we were at that price again. Then, only two days later,
a new screenshot showing most (but not all) of the bestsellers at $12.99. Color me confused. This pricing kerfuffle brought to mind
this New York Times piece about publisher agreements with Apple. The piece suggests that Apple wanted the flexibility to drop prices for hot books that would be majorly discounted in print. As of today, it’s not at all clear what iBookstore pricing will be on April 3.
Thinking about the possibility of an ebook sold at $9.99 is troubling. In the agency model, retailers act as an “agent,” selling books at prices determined by publishers and collecting a percentage of each sale (30% in most cases). Authors are generally being offered a percentage of the net income from these sales—publishers are pushing for this to be 25%, so we’ll roll with that number for the purposes of this argument. In the agency model, with a book priced at $9.99, authors will earn $2.50 per book or less. Compared to the $3.75 they currently earn on a $25 hardcover (15% of list price), this is a dramatic reduction. Comparing this amount to what authors would earn under the current ebook market conditions is nearly as depressing. In the current sales scheme (the consignment model), a retailer is buying the book for about a 50% discount, then selling it at whatever price they like. Assuming the same $25 price list price for the ebook (which is pretty standard) and same 25% royalty for electronic books, the author receives a royalty of $3.13. (The question of why they would receive less than they do on the hardcover in this situation could be a blog post in itself.) If ebooks eventually make up 50% of the market (a number I believe is possible), that royalty arrangement will radically alter author compensation. That, obviously, concerns me. I’d really
Until recently, publishers didn't take e-books seriously because they only accounted for less than 1% of books sold. But now, according to Jonathan Kirsch, host of The Politics of Culture radio show, everyone in the publishing industry is paying attention to what he calls the "e-book revolution." He says it started with Amazon's kindle e-book reader--a product that did for e-books what iPod did for music. And last Christmas, e-book sales outnumbered print sales for the first time in history!
In Jonathan Kirsch's radio show yesterday, he interviewed New York Times digital media columnist Motoko Rich, Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blogger Peter Kafka, and e-book reader/fan and author herself, Dora Levy Mossanen about kindle, e-books, and ibooks.
Early adopters or mainstream?
Where e-book readers used to be for early adopters, it appears they have migrated to the general public. And surprisingly, these adopters are not the young and tech savvy, a lot of them are in their fifties and sixties and simply love books. With over three million sales in e-book reading devices (e-book readers) it's surprising to me that I don't see people using them in the general public. You'd think I'd catch people reading in restaurants on their lunch break, in the doctor's office, or at a bus stop. But although e-book sales represent the fastest growing proportion of the publishing market, they still only represent about 5% of total book sales, according to Motoko Rich. Rich also says that even though e-book sales occupy a lot of mind space and are the leading cause of anxiety among publishers, it isn't the way the majority of the world reads. In fact, three million e-book readers is small potatoes compared to the forty plus million print sales.
So what's the attraction to e-book readers anyway?
Author Dora Levy Mossanen talked about how she loved the ease and speed of the kindle--being able to carry twenty books with her at all times to fill the small pockets of her day by reading, being able to download a book within 30 seconds from any location, and having her newspapers delivered to her each morning. On the downside, she missed having a book cover and an author photo, which she often sought out in her local bookstore.
Will kindle stay on top?
While kindle is the industry leader, Peter Kafka argues that a multi-purpose devise (such as Apple's forthcoming iPad)--with its ability for web browsing and video in addition to book reading--will eventually displace a single-purpose device (such as the kindle). But for readers, committing to one e-reading product is pretty much the only option we have right now. There are many e-book readers--Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's Reader, Amazon's kindle, Apple's iPad--but as far as I know, they have format issues and aren't truly compatible with one another.
As far as reading quality, the kindle seems to be far superior except for the fact that it doesn't have a backlight option, like some others, which would be ideal for reading at night, say, in bed, where you'd still need additional lighting without waking up your hubby.
Publishers, Pricing War
Now, the Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that the big three retailers--Walmart, Target and Amazon--are rationing those selected bestsellers they have been deep discounting. This is ostensibly to prevent other retailers from buying from them in quantity and reselling these titles.
I believe that the only ones who are going to get hurt by the deep discounting and the rationing are those retailers who are doing it. First of all, they cannot continue to sell these books at these prices for a long period of time as they are losing a substantial amount of money by doing so; and limiting the number of copies per customer during the holiday season, especially, should discourage potential consumers and send them elsewhere.
In this poor economic climate for publishers and booksellers alike it would seem to me that working together to help our industry rather than undercutting each other would be far more constructive and productive.
What do you think?
-Jane
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Definitely a good idea. Being number one on the bestseller list if none of the books have actually sold is meaningless. The book may be great, but it may also just be the test book people download on their new Kindle or Kindle app.
That's what I did when I downloaded the Kindle application for my netbook. I grabbed a free one just to see how it all worked. I tried to pick one I *thought* I might like, to see if I could read for extended periods on the netbook. Unfortunely, I didn't care for the book and couldn't get past the first few chapters.
These are valuable points. It makes much more sense to separate these entities. It's similar to the concept of public and private school evaluations. People need to be able to judge things they pay for with a certain level of trust and expectation. Something that is free should be evaluated against other things that also don't need to be paid for. "Free" will entice more people by default, which skews the true picture of what you may actually be getting.
Definitely a good idea! Some people (myself included) will grab any free e-book we see because it's free and there's a chance it might be worth reading. Books that are bought require some thought, at least a "huh, this might be interesting" thought for the reader. They're two different sets. It is, as you said, comparing apples to oranges, and throwing the free books onto the list just dilutes it and makes it difficult to tell what's actually selling.
Comparisons aside, keeping the two lists together also kept customers from seeing the hot paid books all together. Since the top ten list is a form of advertising, (jump on the bandwagon with what everyone else is reading) it doesn't make good business sense for Amazon to deny the books that actually make money the space on the list.
I think the lists can stay together. I'm tired of paying high prices for best selling authors who aren't giving me a good read. I'd rather take my chances with a free book rather than a $12 one! Also, I don't just jump and get the best sellers...I'm always looking for something interesting for me - and the best seller might not be something I read:)
I think it is defineately a good idea to separate the lists. If a book is free, I would give it no thought about down loading it and giving it a read. I can always delete it if it stinks. But if I'm going to pay money for something, I want to know that it is going to be worth my while before I buy it. So it has to be good.
Please forgive the snarky-ness, but I can't believe it took them this long to figure it out. Of course free “sells” better.