HFQ ebook Pricing - Unconsionable

khameirsith wrote:Are there rules on new books? Are royalties a percentage or fixed pricing?

If it's a percentage, then you're saying David only deserves a percentage of 2.99 ebook vs same percentage of hard cover?

The bulk of the profits from a book come at the release of the book. In order for the publisher and author to make money, you'd have to make both equally or similarly priced.

Is it really fair to David that you pay 3 bucks for his latest work?

Remember I am already paying for the Hardback so I am paying Mr Weber's royalty there and I am sure that there is still some royalty in the $2.99 I am paying for the additional eBook.

As for fairness, I am not holding a gun to anyone's head but adding a transaction so that I get both editions at a higher but worthwhile (to me) cost for the combo deal.

I believe there is quite a good thread in Baen Bar on the book pricing, from an author. Sorry I can't link to it because I have not logged into bar for ages and forgot my password.

IIRC, it is a multi-part post with discussions about how the relationship between an author and a book publisher differs from that between an artist and their record publisher.

Hmm, I want to read it myself now. Need to click that "forgot my password" link.

Since I was the original poster, I think it appropriate to add a few comments.

First, I was not implying that the ebook price should be deeply discounted at initial publication. I am aware that there are costs such as editorial that are the same regardless of format. That is why I deliberately mentioned only the incremental processes that would apply to physical copies, i.e. manufacturing, distribution, etc. My feeling is that the difference between physical and electronic copies should reflect the differences in fulfillment cost. As an example, if the marginal costs of printing, stocking, distributing a hard cover book is $5 then a price difference of $5 between physical and electronic would seem fair.

Second, I believe it is not Amazon that is setting the price of the ebook but rather Tor, the publisher. (There's a big disclaimer to that effect on the Amazon site). Contrast that to the policy of Baen books which is charging $9.99 for the ebook version of a newly published book (Germanica), with a $25.00 list price for the hard cover. To buy the hard cover you are directed to any of 15 online stores. Amazon is selling the hard cover for $16.24 and the Kindle version for $9.99. (Buy from Baen, it's DRM free.) So there is a $6.25 difference between hard cover and electronic for a newly published book which seems fair to me.

BTW, whoever made the argument about Amazon pricing the hard cover as a loss leader, you could say the same thing for pricing of an electronic version. A loss leader is a pricing strategy where a product is sold at a price below market cost to stimulate other sales of more profitable goods. In a book store like Borders it might have made sense to have a pile of books near the entrance that are priced below cost to get you to browse. With an online store, does it matter if a loss leader is physical or virtual?

At the end of the day, I am really arguing for a rational pricing policy for electronic versions (which would include fair compensation for the authors - an author should not be disadvantaged just because you're reading an electronic version of his/her book). It seems that there are publishers such as Tor that don't get it, while others such as Baen get it.

My bad - the publisher is Macmillan, not Tor. On the Amazon site it clearly states for the Kindle version that "This price was set by the publisher".

khameirsith wrote:So what is the real value of an ebook? Excluding the obvious argument that it costs next to nothing to copy/paste a digit file and minimal to distribute it.

What is the value of the book it contains without the paper/hardcover it was printed on.

That, I think, is the real question.

For a single Weber novel, I would happily pay up to 300 Rand. To put that in perspective, my disposable monthly income is R3300. The last I checked, one dollar sold for R13.60

Actually I did discuss the possibility of making the ebook a loss leader and why Amazon and the rest of the industry does not tend to use ebooks as such.

"ebooks are not usually part of a multi item transaction and so "Loss Leaders" are generally contraindicated."...."So they (Amazon) need the extra margin on the ebooks. Amazon's operating margin is razor thin, last I checked it was under 1% and I have seen it below .5% in the last couple of years."

As to who controls pricing on ebooks, I refer you to the stink and lawsuit over the "agency" model in 2012. US vs Apple Inc. The Justice Department found that the "agency" model that Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Apple, and several other companies to be price fixing. They ordered compensation to be given to customer who had purchased ebooks during the time period covered in the suit and for the agency agreements with distributors like Amazon to be abolished and not to be re-entered into for a period of several (I believe it was 5) years.

It should be noted that the investigation that led to the suit was instigated by pressure from.. duh duh da... Amazon.

So yes Amazon controls the price. They can sell it at a loss or mark it up as they see fit.

I'm not sure I agree with you on the settlement, I believe that one of the key outcomes was that e-books pricing could be controlled by the publishers. Although there was a two year window in which the publishers could not place restrictions on the retailers' ability to offer discounts on e-books, that window has now expired.

There's another book by David Weber, A Call to Arms, which publishes on Oct 6th. That one is published by Baen, and is $14.30 for the hard cover, $9.99 for the Kindle version. That book does not have a disclaimer that the price was set by the publisher. (Checking a few other new books, anytime that the e-book price is within cents of the hard cover there also seems to be a disclaimer as to who set the e-book price). I would argue that, where they can, Amazon seems to be pricing the e-books comparably to hard covers less the marginal cost of the hard cover version.

While I do realize the Amazon overall has tremendous pricing power due to its monopoly-like position (it can't be a monopoly because in our Bizzaro-world the DOJ didn't see fit to go after Amazon), I think that the e-book/hard-cover discrepancy is being driven by some unenlightened publishers, not by Amazon.

I guess the problem is that there is this fictitious thing called list price for the physical edition but not for the e-book edition. The publishers seem to want the e-book edition to have a high price just like the physical edition so as to buttress the perception of value.

However, physical editions are sold at a discount to list price while e-books aren't. If they would just discount both then there could be a $20 e-book list price to correspond to the $28 hard cover list price. Both could be sold at the usual 50% discount which would let the publishers pretend that they are maintaining the value of their intellectual property while the actual prices paid for each edition would have a fair relationship to each other.

Well I hate to rub it in but I got HFQ for $3.99, in a hidden kindle special shortly after it went on pre-order.

Mark Time wrote:As much as I enjoy David Weber's books I find the pricing of HFQ on Amazon to be outrageous. The Kindle version is $14.99 while the hard cover is $15.70. Of course there is an intrinsic value to David's work and he deserves all the royalties that he gets. (I'm assuming here that David's royalties are the same whether it's an electronic or physical copy that is sold.) What I find unconscionable is that there is only a $0.71 cent price difference between the electronic and the hard cover version.

You can't tell me that the cost of manufacturing, distribution, delivery, and remaindering of the hard cover edition is only $0.71. Pricing the electronic version so close to the hard cover version is merely price gouging on the part of the publisher. As much as I enjoy reading David's books, I'll hold off until I don't feel that I'm being taken advantage of.

David - go back to Baen.

So I paid $14.34 in June, and was able to add the ebook for $2.99 because I had ordered the hard cover. I'm sure Davis receives the same royalty regardless of the selling price, but even if not, I assure you that I would not have bought both versions at full price. As a matter of fact, this will be the first hardcover of his that I have purchased, everything else has been electronic.