E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead • Hacker News Board

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#41

Post by hullo » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #5

helipad wrote: post #4

I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks. A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing: Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00 All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy. Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel insulted by the pricing…

Turns out Amazon knew what they were doing when they were selling ebooks for cheaper. The publishers come in with agency pricing and boom, sales plummet.

That really depends on what you mean by that. With the initial release of the kindle, Amazon was selling major publisher new release ebooks for less than $10 by simply eating the difference between their wholesale cost and the markdown. Agency means Amazon gets a reliable 30% margin on them. All evidence supports that publishers are generally speaking selling exactly as many ebooks as they want to be selling, since they have granular control over pricing - it doesn't help digital readers, but it does keep a moat around their physical business, which ultimately serves print readers.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#42

Post by bduerst » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:02 PM UTC

TheGRS wrote: post #15

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-light option). But the price of n…

The marketplace is getting worse for e-books, not better.

Amazon has been pushing the "Kindle Unlimited" subscription model and changed how authors get paid for those consumers, which favors shorter stories. Authors have taken to breaking out a book's chapters and releasing them individually [1] to capitalize on this model.

Conversely, this gives them more shelf space in Amazon's recommendations, and because they are the same book, it lowers the signal to noise ratio in the marketplace for finding something relevant to read.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013RJDCPU/ref=series_rw_dp...

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#43

Post by pasbesoin » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

Nav_Panel wrote: post #22

TheGRS wrote: post #15

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-light option). But the price of n…

I hold fairly different opinions, though I agree that digital reading sources can make sense for completely new books read for pleasure. As a longtime physical product, paper has a lot of benefits. My dad can give me a book he read in college, just grab it off the shelf. I can go buy books extremely cheaply secondhand, sometimes free. I can't imagine paying $10 for an ebook when I can go to a used bookstore and pay $…

Additionally, human beings depend strongly upon spatial orientation. Printed materials dovetail with this. Many recount being able to recall information in part based upon its location within a printed text. IIRC, there was... I think it was a lengthy New Yorker piece, a number of years ago, that went into this. Including the "messy" professor's/researcher's office, until one has a conversation there with them and observes them quickly referencing all sorts of material based upon where they place it -- throughout the office and within specific piles.

I wonder whether VR technology will enable us to better engage this in the digital landscape.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#44

Post by fahimulhaq » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

douche wrote: post #30

fahimulhaq wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious. What are the missing features in technical/programming ebooks in your opinion?

The biggest one for me is that it is hard to read them on the typical I thought about getting a Kindle DX when they were making them. Although even then, my copy of Code Complete is as big as a 19" monitor, when it is open and laid flat.

I agree. I also thought of getting a Kindle DX but then settled for iPad (though I don't use it much now, I have to admit). The iPad feels heavier when you are trying to read for longer periods (and I can't really hold it with 1 hand all the time). Kindle is smaller/lighter so it works out great for fiction books but not for technical books.

Paper books are also heavy and you can't carry them everywhere so I mostly read the technical eBooks on my computer.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#45

Post by superuser2 » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:03 PM UTC

TheGRS wrote: post #15

I hope this isn't the trend going forward. I don't get the traditionalist love of paperback books most of the time. Like the sort of people who go on and on about exploring book stores or the smell of new paper. I love my Kindle and I really hope to be able to use it as my primary reading source, its just so convenient, light, portable and unobtrusive (especially with that newer back-light option). But the price of n…

Paperwhite makes reading better than it was on paper. The screen looks just as good (pixel density makes a HUGE difference), it's a comfortable rigid rectangle that's a lot easier to hold than most paperbacks, and most importantly the backlight means I can stop wrestling with cheaply made yet expensive AAA-hogging clip-on lights.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#46

Post by chestnut-tree » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

helipad wrote: post #4

I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks. A new book is available for pre-order, and here is the Amazon pricing: Kindle – $26.35 Hardcover – $19.23 Audible – $27.61 Audio CD – $30.00 All logic suggests the electronic version should be cheaper. Prices like this will likely drive me, and others, to piracy. Yes, the value of the book is what I am willing to pay for it, but I feel insulted by the pricing…

"I've been really disappointed with the pricing of eBooks."

E-book pricing is a bit of a mess in the EU. Many countries have a reduced rate of VAT on print books, For example, in the UK it's 0%, in France it's 5.5%.

However, the EU deems e-books an electronic service and has ruled that they should be charged at the full rate of VAT, not the reduced rate applied to print books. It's pretty ridiculous really.

In fact, France and Luxembourg have been applying reduced VAT rates to e-books for some time leading to the EU Court of Justice to rule that they are in breach of EU rules and must apply the full rate of VAT to e-books. A very consumer-unfriendly policy.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#47

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

TheGRS wrote: post #35

fahimulhaq wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious. What are the missing features in technical/programming ebooks in your opinion?

My experience with technical books in ebook form has been pretty lack-luster so far. I personally like to have my screen dedicated to the IDE and to have the book over on some other screen. This is so I don't lose context in what I'm working on and so I can easily work through examples without putting the text away. Most of the time I only have the one laptop screen however, so if I'm reading an ebook on the same com…

> Reading a technical ebook on my kindle has its own set of problems. Examples are usually written for the paperback book (which are usually very wide), so the kindle will squish examples and put them across multiple kindle pages. I haven't tried using an ebook with a large tablet yet, so maybe that is the sweet spot.

Wanting for one of its uses to be as an reader for documents (technical and otherwise) formatted for non-compact print formats is what drove me to choose a Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 over smaller tablet options -- I find its quite good for that role.

> But my last issue is something I haven't seen a good solution for yet. Often I just want to flip to a section of the book for reference and I simply don't have a good feel for how to do this with an ebook right now. Flipping on an ebook usually requires going to a chapter you know holds the content and then paging one-by-one until you find what you are looking for.

Google Play Books on mobile (I assume on web, too, but I rarely use it that way) has a pretty good UI for this for flipping through pages; I find that its the one option I've found that's comparable with paper for flipping through pages (not equivalent, its a different experience, but it ends up being, to me, about as easy, quick, and useful.)

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#48

Post by ChrisLTD » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:06 PM UTC

I only buy ebooks these days. I love having access to the same material on any device without needing more bookshelves in my small apartment. However, I wish I didn't have to pay a premium for that convenience. I certainly cringe whenever I see a paperback price that's $2-3 cheaper than the ebook. I try not to even look at the used price.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#49

Post by aetherson » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:07 PM UTC

While lots of people are pointing to pricing as the reason for this decline, and that's obviously a big factor, I think you also have to look at the decline of the tablet here.

Phones just don't produce a really great reading experience. Actual computers are obviously never going to be a big market. Dedicated e-readers probably don't make sense to people who aren't voracious readers. And tablets are increasingly being squeezed out of the market.

Re: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far from Dead

#50

Post by Booktrope » Wed, Sep 23, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

More bad information about the publishing business from the NY Times. Ebook sales aren't declining generally; it's big publisher ebook sales that are declining. Ebook sales for self-pubbed authors and indie publishers are growing rapidly. If you have any doubts about this, check out the authorearnings.com website, which tracks sales of ebooks on Amazon and other platforms.

Buried in the article is information from Amazon that ebook sales are continuing to rise. But this article isn't about ebook sales -- it's about big publisher ebook sales.

The article also says that dedicated ebook reader sales have declined. This is true but not because of a shift away from ebooks. It's that ebook reading is shifting to tablets and phones, a trend that is widely recognized in the industry, but not in this article.

The reason that big publishers (and some smaller publishers following the traditional model) are losing ebook sales is that, in the big Hachette - Amazon dustup last year, the big publishers won the ability to keep ebook prices ridiculously high and to prevent discounting by Amazon. So big publishers routinely price ebooks about the same or higher than paperbacks. Of course their ebook sales are suffering! But self-pubbed and indie publisher books are priced much lower than print books, and are of course gaining market share very quickly.

The NY Times reports on publishing are all biased toward big traditional publishers - after all, that's essentially what the Times is. (To the Times' credit, they have a public editor who critiques their stories, and the public editor has said that the last two major stories in the Times about Amazon failed to meet journalistic standards.) They ignore information like what's on authorearnings.com because they're trying to get people to believe there's a trend away from ebooks. There certainly are some people who decide what kind of book to buy according to what they think the latest trend is. But if you're looking for accurate information about the book business, don't expect it from the Times.