Hold the Phone (or, in this case, Kindle)

[alanajoli]

Publishing hijinks are ensuing as Macmillan and Amazon duke it out. Macmillan wants Amazon to charge more for its e-books, and in the disagreement, Amazon responded by saying, effectively, "then take your ball and go home." The e-tailer is no longer selling Macmillan books in any format.

Yowza.

Jay Lake, John Scalzi, and Jackie Kessler all do

Comments

[vita_ganieda]

If you've read neither Foucault's Pendulum or the finale of Dark Is Rising, you need to get on that. And Pendulum isn't that ginormous, depending on the edition--I've seen really mammoth copies, and really quite slim ones. Er, no, I'm not speaking as someone who has gone through multiple copies, why do you ask?

[alanajoli]

I know, the Susan Cooper omission is *huge*. And since Foucault's Pendulum keeps coming up, I obviously need to fix that as well. Maybe I'll find a comfy paperback edition used... ;)

[jeff_duntemann]

Many of the costs of print books over ebooks happen after the production process is complete: Print/bind (obviously), warehousing, trucking, and retailer returns. The big win of ebooks over print is that there's no high-stakes gambling involved. Choosing a print run is a black art: If you print too many, you lose money. If you print too few and sell through, you may lose sales--and thus money--if you judge that another press run wouldn't sell through again.

By my estimates, as much as half of the publisher cost of a print book lies in physical UMC, inventory management, and what amounts to insurance against the uncertainty factor described above. (The rest is production, sales/marketing/pr, organizational overhead, and author royalties.) So I think it would be fair to suggest that the price of an ebook should be about half the price of a print book.

[alanajoli]

Of all of my industry folks, you're the person I'd expect to have the best handle on this -- so thanks! I'm mentioning your estimate in today's entry. :)

[lyster]

E-books have one main advantage over the print variety in my experience, and that's portability. I can't read The Count of Monte Cristo on my commute, as I've said before. However, portability isn't everything, and I'd still much rather have a physical copy of a long book and have a smaller book-in-progress to lug around than an overly-expensive e-book.

This Amazon thing has me a little jumpy, though, I'm not going to lie. Maybe it's time to make my book-bidding service a reality: there has to be a better way to produce content.

[alanajoli]

Maybe they just have to get the Big Brother out once a year or so. ;)