When it comes to ebook pricing, I’ve changed my position on the matter almost weekly; sometimes I side with publishers, sometimes with retailers, sometimes with consumers. But I think this week I may have finally realized something that forces me into a more permanent point of view on the matter. It’s this:

Most publishers, in fact, are trying to intentionally slow the uptake of ebooks by consumers. I think that’s what the whole pricing issue is really about–driving away customers as much as possible, because ebooks don’t easily fit into the existing business model of the average publisher.

Last week, an industry insider circulated talking points among publishing types, instructing them on how to frame the debate in the media in order to convince consumers to accept higher ebook prices. This in itself is offensive–if your approach to innovation is to act like a political group, and to deliberately strategize how to abuse language so that you can confuse the issue, you’re sending a clear message that you don’t want to have an honest conversation with your customers.

In response, I posted a piece on Consumerist.com that explains the issue in plain language for publishers: if you want to raise prices, make the ebook worth the price. It’s that simple. Add value, raise the price.

I also pointed out four things that publishers should take under consideration immediately, instead of memorizing talking points:

• Stop calling consumers cheap; they want fair value.
• Stop hiding behind industry inefficiencies. Innovate.
• Stop asking consumers to trust you; demonstrate that you want the ebook market to grow, or be honest and admit that you don’t.
• Stop saying lower prices will destroy author incomes and modern culture; it derails any meaningful discussion.

Most complaints you read from publishers commit at least one of the above four sins. Why, take a look at this email I received from a publisher earlier this week when I suggested that she might sell more copies of a novella (a novella!) if she would price the Kindle version lower than $10 on Amazon:

What I think consumers don’t understand is there is still a decent amount of cost & time we as publishers have to put in to offer a book on Kindle (or B&N, etc.)…So, it wouldn’t be fair to us or the author to charge much lower. All publishers struggle to make ends meet and the majority of our authors certainly aren’t making a living off their book royalties, so for this reason I don’t think we can discount books — print or ebooks — any further.

Look at that: she implies Kindle customers are being cheap (as opposed to asking for fair value), she blames the industry for barely being profitable as it is, and she says authors won’t be able to make a living. Three in one paragraph!

So I finally get it. When publishers say they want to maintain a competitive marketplace, or they don’t want ebooks to cannibalize print sales, or they need to recoup the cost of publishing, what they’re really saying is simply: we want to make sure ebooks don’t take off, because we have no idea how to make that work within our current business model and we’re reluctant to try to innovate.

What they’re not saying is that they’re taking authors or readers into consideration. There may be a more profitable model out there for publishers and authors–one that includes lower prices for consumerst, in fact–but it won’t be discovered by one of the existing big companies. And the next time you read a publisher’s complaints about ebook pricing, make sure you’re not just being fed talking points.

“Consumerist: If publishers want more money for e-books, they should offer something worthy of the price” [Consumerist]

RELATED
Read more comments on this topic at the following two posts:
“Consumerist: If publishers want more money for e-books, they should offer something worthy of the price” [Teleread]
“Book Publishers Circulating ‘Talking Points’ To Counter Arguments That Ebook Prices Need To Go Lower” [techdirt]

(Money photo by aresauburn™)

I attended a Google Book Search settlement workshop yesterday hosted by the National Writer’s Union (NWU), the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The workshop’s panel included representatives of those organizations as well as an agent, a professor who has been studying the issue, and the executive director of the Authors Guild, which is one of the primary parties involved in the settlement. Here are the main themes from the event.

 

“A settlement isn’t the right way to settle this.”

New York Law School Associate Professor James Grimmelmann, who remained a largely non-partisan outside observer (although he has stated he thinks the settlement should be approved, with modifications), pointed out that a class-action lawsuit isn’t the right way to determine an issue like fair use under copyright law. It needs to be addressed by the government and not through private negotiations, he said, because it has huge societal implications.

Grimmelmann also pointed out that if the settlement goes through, it’s likely Google will emerge with a huge market advantage over any potential competitors, which may negatively impact any healthy competition in the marketplace.

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild and a lawyer, argued that the risk of losing the lawsuit was too great: if the courts found Google’s scanning to fall under fair use–as Grimmelman and at least one other legal expert think it could–then others would copy Google’s scanning project. “In our view,” he told the hostile crowd, “It would be catastropic.”

Grimmelman responded that the proposed settlement wasn’t the only valid solution, and that there could have been other paths to a compromise.

 

“The settlement is overreaching, and probably untenable.”

Lynn Chu, an attorney, author, and book agent, was the most vocal opponent of the settlement, calling it an “outrageously bad deal as a financial matter” for writers and a “typical entertainment industry scam.” At one point she implied that the Authors Guild had been misled by incompetent legal counsel, which not surprisingly seemed to anger Aiken.

Chu pointed out that the business model proposed by the settlement has nothing to do with the original lawsuit, which was solely about fair use. “You glued a business contract to a waiver,” she told Aiken, and accused the Authors Guild of appointing itself as an agent to the world’s authors.

She also criticized the proposed Book Rights Registry, which is sort of an ASCAP for authors appearing in Google Book Search, noting that it would help Google shift costs over to authors by forcing authors to take care of administrative and publishing tasks on their own dime.

“[The settlement] probably won’t survive an appeal,” she told the crowd, a sentiment that Grimmelmann seemed to agree with. Still, she cautioned, “There’s no reason to be apathetic.”

 

“The settlement isn’t really author-friendly at its core.”

Edward Hasbrouck of the NWU pointed out a worst-case scenario that could happen to an author under the terms of the settlement: You have a book included in the database, but your ex-publisher claims that because it has authorized a print-on-demand version of the book it still owns the rights, so you and the publisher agree to binding arbitration and you lose. Since the arbitration is legally enforceable, you will have permanently lost your claim of ownership over the digital copy in Google’s database.

Chu noted that Google reserves the right to audit the Book Rights Registry, but that the favor isn’t returned because Google claims trade secrets will be compromised. She also noted that authors can make their own deals with Google and don’t need to rely on the settlement.

Note: the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America hosted an online panel discussion this morning. You can read through it at http://sfwa.org/online-google-settlement-panel/.

Everyone who writes or publishes wants to know how to use Twitter as a promotional tool to drive sales, and to that end the British book reading website Lovereading–sort of the ugly UK cousin to Goodreads, only with a smaller membership and more directly tied to big publishing houses–just completed a survey of members to ask them about Twitter. The results weren’t favorable to Twitter as an effective recommendation source or promotional tool, with The Bookseller going so far as to write, “The book-buying public may be largely immune to suggestions from Twitter, Facebook and other sites.”

Uh oh.

But wait! Before you dismiss Twitter as an also-ran in marketing, check out who Lovereading surveyed compared to who uses Twitter the most. As with all online communities, the only way to successfully connect is to figure out what kind of person participates in Twitter, and how he uses the service.

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Joe Konrath’s scenario of the future, where an ebook can fluidly move across devices while being consumed in a variety of ways throughout the day, inspired me to write my own user experience scenario.

Below is a look at what kind of person might buy a personalized anthology, how a retailer might offer the service, and what it might cost. When it comes to personalized anthologies, the technology and the content already exist; it just requires some large-scale cooperation among retailers, publishers, and authors, which may take some years to work out.

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Wow! I’m so behind the curve on all the release-date drama over Stephen King’s newest book, Under the Dome, which based on critical reception and fan buzz seems poised to become one of his classics alongside works like The Stand and Misery. I completely missed the news, two weeks ago, that Scribner has decided to delay the release of the ebook edition by a month in order to help drive hardcover sales. This has understandably infuriated those Kindle-owning King fans who have been primed–thanks to Scribner’s own massive marketing campaign–to jump on the book when it comes out next week, but who will now have to wait another month.

I sort of get why they did it, or at least I think I do. Scribner wants consumers to understand that the hardcover retains pride of place in the world of release dates, and if you really want a new book you’ll have to pay a premium by choosing the hardcover. They also want to send a message (to Amazon? surely not to consumers, who have no say over the matter) that the $10 price point for new releases is unacceptable.

I also think I understand why they chose King’s new novel, which is the publishing world’s equivalent to an AT-AT walker. They want to ensure that the experiment works.

But did Scribner choose the wrong battle by trying to reinforce this false hierarchy of print over digital? I think they wasted an opportunity to reset ebook pricing expectations with consumers, and they’re wasting marketing dollars too.

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