I’ve been a self-publisher since 1985 and, except when I was selling trade hardcovers via trade outlets (to about 2000), I have never made more “money while I sleep since I added ebook editions to every hardcopy title I can. I’ve also added titles that are only available as ebooks, have uploaded by ebooks to Sony, and will begin uploading to Kobo tomorrow.

I do not understand why most authors hitch their wagons to Big Publishing. The only plan those clowns have going reads: “Barnes and Noble,” a failing business model on all fronts.

0  0

0  0

Amazon’s pricing gauntlet was numb. The book market has long been based on cover margin pricing. They’re right in that the publishers are over-pricing ebooks, but instead of letting the market set the price — the same way a brick-n-mortar would — they chose to try to dictate cover price to a supplier. Stupid move.

Macmillan’s response was ill conceived. It was a lawyerly answer to an unfamiliar market action. The right answer for Macmillan might have been to pull all ebook production back onto their own servers. Sure they’ll sacrifice a bit of visibility in the short run, but they have the market clout to get that word out. After all, they don’t *have* to sell on Amazon. If they’d agreed to Amazon’s demand (“all ebooks sold thru the kindle store need *this* pricing”) by pulling the few ebooks they wanted to price over 9.99 they’d have avoided the whole fiasco. Power tripping tripped them up.

Market forces would have handled this nicely and I’m relatively certain that market forces will deal with the fall out as well.

My observation is that the more the “big guys” duke it out amongst themselves, the more opportunities exist for the little guys to start nibbling away at the edges. I don’t need Amazon to create a Kindle readable version of my book. I don’t need the 80 cents on a dollar that Macmillan pays for a unit sold.

We’re in the middle of a singularity event where I believe we’re going to see a fundamental shift in the way consumers acquire and use entertainment media. Whether that’s enhanced book, ebook, non-refreshable cellulose display, or espresso machined while you wait, the more the dinosaurs flail with each other, the better the chances for us lil shrews to chew off their toes.

0  0

0  0

0  0

Is the 70% Kindle “royalty” a good deal?

So, what no one is talking about is the little line that Amazon slipped into their announcement package: ” For each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs.”

They went on to say: “Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold.”

NO BIG DEAL, right?

Well, maybe not right now, but the e-book arena is expected to explode with all kinds of new features embedded in books – links, pictures, video, animation, and who knows what else – and what does that mean? BANDWIDTH. Cost to download.

That is what Amazon is really doing – positioning today for the huge files that will be downloaded in the future – and the ability to charge the publisher/author for the “delivery” of those files.

We may all be yearning for the days of 25-30% “royalty.”

What browser do you use? I wonder if it is a browser issue… email me off line – I want to make sure I don’t have a website problem.

0  0

So, what no one is talking about is the little line that Amazon slipped into their announcement package: ” For each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs.”

They went on to say: “

(no more text from this point on)

0  0

0  0

As to “lack of expertise” to create e-books enhanced, I can’t create p-books without help, so why would I need employ someone to help with enhanced e-books at a later time – it is just a different technology and we all know that you just have to keep up in this day and age or die.

Yes, I too don’t understand the hatred of Amazon. I love Amazon, they provide me a playing field level with the big boys, pay me promptly, provide me a huge database of customers who can see my book, collect the money from them for me, do promotions of their own to bring people to their site, provide their customers marketing programs that I can benefit from (free shipping – $25), provide ways for me to interact with my fans, etc. what’s not to like! I give them no more than I give other trade channels (in some cases less) and they provide me the world’s biggest book store. complain? Not me…

0  0

However, as I stated in my post, Amazon’s intention to charge .15 per MB of ebook content is no big deal. On static ebooks this comes out to an average of .06 per book, but what about enhanced ebooks?

First of all, I doubt most self-publishers have the skills or desire to create enhanced ebooks, which are really more like full-fledged computer programs. If this ultimately costs them sales in the brave new world of Vook-type ebook expectations, perhaps they’ll decide to get the necessary skills and motivation, or start hiring developers to create enhanced ebooks for them.

Secondly, it’s clear to me that this pricing structure cannot hold for enhanced ebooks, which will likely be classified as a different type of media, because the typical “Vook” enhanced ebook has a filesize of around 175MB. At .15 per MB, Amazon’s fee on such a book would be $26.25. There’s no way Amazon would charge this much, because if they did the product would have to be priced much higher than $30 just for the publisher to break even on its production costs—which are much higher for an enhanced ebook application than they are for production of a static ebook.

Given that ebook readers are already up in arms over the possibility of having to pay just $3-5 more for their Kindle books, there’s no way this business model would be viable – the product would be unsellable. Also, Vooks you can buy today all cost less than $10.

Jeff Bezos may be many things, but he’s no dummy. If, and when, the Kindle starts supporting enhanced ebooks, I predict their pricing structure will be entirely different than that of Kindle books.

And on a related note…I really don’t understand why so many people react with knee-jerk suspicion to any move Amazon makes. Yes, Amazon’s huge. Yes, it’s the dominant player among booksellers. And yes, it’s made some bonehead moves when it comes to removing buy links in the past, and may very well make those same mistakes again in the future. But again, Bezos is no dummy.

His priority is, and always has been, to serve the needs of consumers better and faster than any other retailer. He has a history of willingness to accept losses for years at a time in order to grow his business, or foster consumer acceptance of a new product or business model. People seem to forget, Amazon operated in the red for its first 5 years: a risk that has paid off in spades for Bezos.

It’s not as if he’s some evil warlord, plotting the destruction of entire swaths of media or the enslavement of consumers. He’s a businessman whose business depends on providing consumers with convenience at a competitive price. He’s not going to do anything to jeapordize the empire he’s built to date—at least, not on purpose.

0  0