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Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

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Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#101

It'll be fascinating to see how our relationship with books plays out over the next 10-20 years. On one hand, unlike music, books are very physical objects, their content very much associated with their form, used by many as decoration within their home. On the other hand, most of us only read most of our books once. I suspect that many, like me, then hang onto those books primarily for sentimental reasons (along wit…

My most annoying possessions are books and vinyl.

They are worth next to nothing to sell and I find it almost impossible to actually part with them. I've had some of them for 30 years+.

They are an albatross of culture around my neck.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#102
post #68
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends ... How much do people read? Nobody's too sure, but it looks like an extremely long tail distribution -- not just a matter of 80% of the books being read by 20% of the readers, but of 80% being read by maybe 5-10% of the readers. The $9.99/mo price point will work fine for the major publishers if the readers end up on average reading $9.99 of retail-value ebooks per month, but not too much more, and…

How is the deal structured? Per stream, per 'play', per open? What about books that have higher list prices? etc. Existing ebook rights contracts are based on the agency model (70/30 split with retailer, then some portion of the 70 for the publisher and author). What happens in this model? Authors and agents will probably want to hold out for 'streaming' rights as a separate thing, perhaps. Not sure how Oyster and Sc…

Scribd/Smashwords is 60% to the author (capped at $12.50) after the customer reads 30% of the book.

http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/12/smashwords-signs-distribu...

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#103
post #51

Lots of people in this thread are talking about this being scary for authors. When I was a kid, I got to read a ton of books any time I wanted. I got them at this place called a "library" where they let people come in and take books home with them to read for free . People have always had the option to read books without buying them. In those days, going to the library was effectively the same effort as going to a bo…

When I was a kid I got books from the library too. Then, like most people who enjoy reading, I began buying books of my own. Libraries are fine when you just want to find some books you haven't read before but owning your own books has significant advantages, which I hope need not be restated here.

How this goes for authors depends on how Amazon are purchasing the rights to the ebooks. Having seen what streaming has done to music revenue I can't say I'm too optimistic about this. Some authors will do fantastically well, of course, but the much larger number of people who make a modest income from writing may well see it shrink drastically. The problem is that this doesn't necessarily improve things for consumers. Super-successful authors are often producers of lowest-common-denominator material. If high quality writers who appeal to a much smaller audience are no longer able to support themselves by writing, then they either move downmarket or take up another line of work, which results is a loss of quality for consumers.

The problem with streaming is that proponents treat creative output like a commodity and then point to the laws of supply and demand to justify economic upheaval. But pure supply and demand only applies in cases of perfect competition, where commodity goods are actually perfect substitutes; I have no particular reason to buy oil/ gravel/ corn from supplier X if supplier Y can deliver identical goods at a lower price. This is not the case for creative works.

PS I don't mean this as a dig against Amazon in particular, but there is a potential monopsony problem. I worry about this a bit less with Netflix because the economics of film production and distribution are enormously different than for other media, and Netflix is more like a peer among distributors.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#104
post #80

This type of thing makes me wonder about the business model for authors. An obvious comparison is the music industry. It is common knowledge that almost no musicians make a majority of their money from sales of their music (and only elite acts really make any substantial money). Musicians basically give away their content in the hopes that it attracts people to their live events. Authors do the exact opposite and do…

The physical performance of a book is in the user's imagination, a private, personalized and high definition experience.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#105
post #51

Lots of people in this thread are talking about this being scary for authors. When I was a kid, I got to read a ton of books any time I wanted. I got them at this place called a "library" where they let people come in and take books home with them to read for free . People have always had the option to read books without buying them. In those days, going to the library was effectively the same effort as going to a bo…

I've always used Safari Books Online. I get every technical book I could imagine, and the company where I work pays for it.

Amazon unlimited seems good for the people that enjoy fiction, but I don't think they will be able to compete on the technical stuff.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see someone other than publishers providing risk capital for authors to live while writing?

Personally, I'm not convinced that risk capital is really that beneficial for writers. The vast majority of aspiring writers either don't finish or don't write something people want to read. (I don't mean that to be harsh, it's just that good writing is very hard and since there's so much of it already out there, competition for the reader's time is fierce.) At the same time, the capital needed to write is virtually…

There's really no need to talk about "enough", "acceptable", etc.

It's very simple - if there's less money available for a first book, less people will do it. This means that there will almost certainly be less authors, therefore almost certainly less great authors (though it's probably not linear).

Not to say you're wrong, just that talking about "I think it's sufficient" masks the fact that it doesn't matter what you think, there will in effect be less great books written.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#107
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a regular user of the local library, but I notice that most people in my "class" (i.e. tech people earning a lot) don't go there. It's easier to buy it on your Kindle for $10-$15 than to make a trip to the library. I'm gonna be a jerk and say that most people also like to hang out in expensive coffee shops with other members of their class, and not in the library where there are lots of poor people. It's a little…

Wow... I don't know what libraries you go to but libraries are generally not full of poor people...

In the Bay Area at least, libraries are where people without computers go to access the Internet. The Internet is the easiest way to perform a lot of basic life tasks, like interacting with the government. People without computers these days are generally lower income, so it's true that there are more poor people in the library.

In some areas, it is definitely significant that libraries have bathrooms and shelter. But the Internet is always a big draw. With more and more of life moving online, libraries are providing an extremely valuable service by making Internet access freely available.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#108
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends ... How much do people read? Nobody's too sure, but it looks like an extremely long tail distribution -- not just a matter of 80% of the books being read by 20% of the readers, but of 80% being read by maybe 5-10% of the readers. The $9.99/mo price point will work fine for the major publishers if the readers end up on average reading $9.99 of retail-value ebooks per month, but not too much more, and…

>How much do people read? Nobody's too sure We actually have a pretty good idea. According to Gallup/Pew research[0], the median American reads 8 books a year. Slightly less than a third read more than one book a month. I doubt any customer who reads less than one ebook (let alone a physical book) per month would find it worth signing up for this service. That leaves the service with mostly heavy consumers of books,…

The problem is, those figures aren't granular enough to use for marketing purposes. For example, it's known that about 50% of genre SF/F book sales go to about 20% of customers -- and about 45% go to less than 10% of customers! Some folks are reading over 100 books/year. (I know plenty of them.) We know there's a curve; we just don't really know it's shape in enough detail to predict how an all-you-can-eat book buffet will pay for itself.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#109
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends ... How much do people read? Nobody's too sure, but it looks like an extremely long tail distribution -- not just a matter of 80% of the books being read by 20% of the readers, but of 80% being read by maybe 5-10% of the readers. The $9.99/mo price point will work fine for the major publishers if the readers end up on average reading $9.99 of retail-value ebooks per month, but not too much more, and…

>How much do people read? Nobody's too sure We actually have a pretty good idea. According to Gallup/Pew research[0], the median American reads 8 books a year. Slightly less than a third read more than one book a month. I doubt any customer who reads less than one ebook (let alone a physical book) per month would find it worth signing up for this service. That leaves the service with mostly heavy consumers of books,…

I generelt buy for about 15-30 worth of books a month (mostly e). So the publishers would loose money on me if I can pay a flat 10.

Re: Amazon leaks Kindle Unlimited

#110
post #74

A few weeks ago Jon Evans of TechCrunch said this: "Despite my techie contempt for their business practices, I really do want traditional publishers to survive, because their employees — unlike, I suspect, Amazon’s — tend to genuinely love books in the same way that I do, and because good editors are worth their weight in gold. But it’s hard to see how they can thrive fighting like this. In the long run their only re…

In the long run their only real hope is to disrupt the Kindle ecosystem with a paid subscription model — a “Beats for books,” if you will. Not sure what "Beats" means in this context - essentially he's talking about Netflix for Books, yes? I'd also love this, not least because most publishers still adamantly refuse to drop DRM and the paid-subscription all-you-can-eat model is pretty much the only one (aside from ren…

"essentially he's talking about Netflix for Books, yes? [...] But I just don't see it happening."

already happened: http://www.scribd.com multiple publishers - not all, but neither does any music service provide "all".

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