The collective insanity of the publishing industry

Post by eru » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

kevinr wrote: post #28

pgrote wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"* Price is an important signalling mechanism, and so---given the costs of book production---it's important to the publishers not to drive the perceived fair cost of books down below, no matter whether Amazon is currently subsidizing that or not." I think this is the number one reason. The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value. I buy a fair number of non-fiction books and loved when ebooks emerged…

> The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value. How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance? This is a serious question: just a few days ago I was suggesting that a friend, twenty published books over the last thirty years, books you may have read or heard of, start a Patreon so that he might, for the first time in his life, afford health insurance. People working fu…

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

GabrielF00 wrote: post #30

kevinr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside the secondary markets for a moment---which yes, I agree with you on---do you feel ripped off buying video games online? They are, after all, just really large files.

I don't buy enough video games to really answer that - usually I buy a couple of games a year during Steam sales and that's about it. I usually buy a couple of books a month (print and ebooks).

Post by kevinr » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:36 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #31

kevinr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value. How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance? This is a serious question: just a few days ago I was suggesting that a friend, twenty published books over the last thirty years, books you may have read or heard of, start a Patreon so that he might, for the first time in his life, afford health insurance. People working fu…

If readers value books, but not enough to make writing pay, isn't the economic thing to stop being a professional writer?

Post by yolesaber » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:43 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #36

I'm often laughed at when I suggest it, but I think the publishing world needs to look at what's happening with free to play games. You remove the barrier to entry so that as many people as possible will try your product (free). You identify those people who really enjoy your book and want to consume more of the same. You provide them with so much content that they can spend as must as they like. It's not unreasonabl…

Post by akie » Wed, Mar 02, 2016, 5:59 AM UTC

StefanKarpinski wrote: post #38

kevinr wrote: post #16

I have a small pile of friends in publishing, so I'll take this from the other side. The reasons for the publishers' apparent insanity are: * Contrary to popular belief, physical production is NOT the single largest part of a book's cost. In fact, even before ebooks, the cost of paper and ink and shipping was actually a pretty negligible part of the final cost. Most of the cost of a book is the highly-skilled labor i…

Legitimate question: what is the total cost of labor to publish a book, aside from writing it and physical production? It's hard to imagine it being more than $25k – a quarter-person's salary at $100k/year for editing, typesetting and design. At $5 per book, that's covered by 5000 sales. With ebooks, the rest is pure profit – or could go directly to the author if authors hired publishers to do that work instead of th…