Well for the eventual raise in other book publishers I went ahead and bought 4 books I have been eyeing

You're right -- it's too high. Everyone I've ever talked to about ebooks thinks they should cost no more than a paperback.

I agree, especially given that ebooks have no printing and physical distribution costs associated with them. Perhaps what the publishers should do is release all ebooks at half the price of the cheapest currently available option. So if it's a $30 hardcover, the ebook is $15. When the paperback comes out for $10, the ebook becomes $5. That way you'd have the same model as you do for physical books, and people who want to read it immediately will pay more. Those who can afford to wait will do so.

I don't understand why Macmillan cares how much Amazon charges it's customers. Amazon isn't paying Macmillan more per e-book now, but they raised their prices to their customers. Why?

I believe in Macmillan's statement, they said that at $9.99 they were making no profit.

Amazon pays Macmillan (and other publishers) the same amount, regardless of how much they charge consumers for the e-book. The thing that worries publishers (and authors) is that Amazon is setting an unrealistically low price point for e-books, and thus clouds the market picture.

Here's a good piece on the conflict, from Laura Miller at Salon:

http://www.salon.com/books/laura_mil...llan_vs_amazon

This continues to be my problems with all digital media. The hardcovers are usually sold for $10 - $15 no matter what the MSRP might be so paying $10 for a digital version only seems fair. There is no paper cost, shipping cost and I can't resell or give away my digital copy. Digital books should be priced like paperbacks not hardcovers.

The publishers of course are greedy and want to sell a digital book for the same price as a paper one to make more money. Sucks that Amazon had to give in, but doesn't change the fact I won't pay more that $10. There have been many books I have waited out till they hit paperback and the digital price was reduced or I just checked it out from the library and read it for free.

I buy all my books from fictionwise and they have an interesting way of dealing with major new releases. They charge the regular full price, but give 75 to 100 percent of the cost back as store credit to buy other books. Don't know if this model makes them any money, but they were in business for years before B&N bought them. It is great though. I spend $20 now for a new book I want and after I finish it I have that same $20 in store credit to buy 2-3 other older books I want to read that are now at paperback prices.

Considering that most publishers are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, I don't think it's a matter of greed.

So instead of letting Amazon expand a new market for them they want to stunt it to protect their failing paper book business? It makes no sense. If Amazon is selling their hardcover at $15 and that is profitable how is a book that costs $5 less to manufacture and ship a loss at $10?

There is a limit to what people will pay and publishers have to adapt their business model to reflect it.

People investing in a $300 device just to read books are probably people that will buy a large number of them. Driving them away is not going to improve their paper book business.

Well, I think it was a brilliant move by Apple, but still very foolish for Macmillan. Jobs isn't stupid. He can't sell the iPad as another ebook reader. Not many people will pay two to four times as much for a device that has much crappier battery life and more expensive content. However, they will pay that much for a multi-use device. Personally, I don't think it is going to do well, but who knows. Jobs doesn't care about books. He said last year that no one reads any more. So he threw a bone to the book publishing industry and let them pick the pricing. This did two things. It made publishers say, "hey, we don't have to take whatever Amazon gives us!" That hurt the relationship between Amazon and the publishers. Second, since the publishers want to completely revamp the agreement between Amazon and the publishers on how ebooks work, it erodes Amazon's place in the ebook market, which is formidable. It also gave Apple a much better shot with what will be same priced books.

Amazon was only at the $9.99 price point because they subsidized ~$4.50 of the book price. Macmillan doesn't care about the ebook price - they want to completely revamp the relationship from being on where Amazon is a reseller, like they are for physical books, to one where they are an outlet, and have the decisions made by Macmillan.

This is incredibly stupid.

Macmillan has never been a fan of ebooks, period. They seem to look at them the same was the music and movie industry look at the electronic products - as threats. If ignored, they are right. They aren't up against huge networks of pirates trying "free information." They are up against someone willing to sacrifice enough of their free time that they will cut every page out of a book and scan it. They are up against people willing to upload it to a torrent, because they want a new book from someone else. They are up against people who Macmillan wants to force to be customers, on term Macmillan dictates, and for prices that Macmillan controls. That's not going to work, for the same reason DRM won't woek. People who wouldn't pay for it anyways will still circumvent it, and people who would pay for it get screwed.

They are right in that if they lower the price of ebooks slowly, they will make more money. It's not even a bad idea in and of itself - they've been doing it with paperbacks and hardbacks forever. But they are getting greedy with the pricing. For ebooks, all you do is run some text through some text/formatting macros and you're done. Authors deliver their books to publishers electronically. It still has to be proofed, but after that, everything is a file copy. No limit to the number of copies made, no print run that can finish leaving some people unable to buy your book, no real storage costs, no shipping costs, no inventory costs. On top of that, unlike regular books, electronic books have several hassles. Except for the Nook, you can't readily loan books to a friend. (Ok, that one is mixed - you never have to get it back either) There is a barrier to entry - you have to pay $200 minimum to even have the priveledge of reading an ebook. And those devices can break. Since the largest ebook readers all have DRM of one stripe or another, that means if you upgrade/replace a ebook reader, you get one from the same company, or lose the books that you've bought.

Couple the drawbacks with the fact that people just don't value electronic data that can be copied an infinate number of times as they do something they can hold in their hands and the fact that you can get best sellers for ~$15.00, and the price point is too high.

Their basic idea is all right, but the implementation is as bad as the first music publishers mp3 stores.

They should window it, but they should do it as a value add kind of thing. Like http://www.thebravery.com/store/ that. You kind of a fan? Just buy the paperback in a year. Just thinking on trying the author out? Buy the ebook for $3-$5. A fan, but not crazy? Buy the hard back so you don't have to wait. A super fan? Pre-order the hard back and get the ebook for free, or at most a few bucks. Publishers would be able to guage print runs better, and the only thing they would lose out on is the people who would pay full price for the hardback and an exhorbiant amout for the ebook, which realistically, is almost 0. But no, they want to do it like DVD/Blu Ray studios try to with their stupid digital copy. Take something that I can obtain for myself for free, and package in a crippled way that foolishly assumes nothing in your computer/portable device world will change, and if it does, you're out of luck.

Maybe I'm wrong and the music and movie industries are right, but I think the book industry is going to find that their ebooks won't sell as well at $15, and they are going to start freaking out about piracy which will be strengthened just like music piracy was made so much stronger when they finally forced napsters doors shut.

Honestly - don't you think they would handle what they did with Napster differently if the music industry could go back in time?

Interesting points, stp. I'm very curious to see if Apple can be a game changer in this market as they were in recorded music. So far I'm suspecting not, but I wouldn't rule them out.

I'm with you on both points. I've seen nothing compelling about the iPad, but you absolutely can't rule out Apple until you've seen the second generation.

This picture was used in an Engadget article about this:


As a response to this picture, Brandon Sanderson, the author that is completing the Wheel of Time has posted a photoshop challenge on his site asking people to photoshop ebook readers in with Wheel of Time pictures. Some of them are quite good.

http://www.timewastersguide.com/foru...php?topic=7401

Here is the link to the contest:
http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog...a-New-Tor-Book