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A Message from the Amazon Books Team

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Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#31

Post by crazygringo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #26

The best source of 'cheap' books is the library. The only cost is a little bit of inconvenience. Yet library usage is dramatically down over the last few decades. This suggests to me that there is little demand for cheaper books. The biggest 'cost' to reading a book for many is not the money spent to acquire the book, it's the several hours of leisure time required to read the book, time that could be spent doing som…

I don't know about you, but I'd estimate that at least 90% of the books I read are not available at my local library. I also tend to read tens of books in parallel over months, something I can't do with the library.

Alternative explanations for library usage being down is that paperbacks are already pretty cheap, consumers are interested in a "long tail" of books libraries don't have, and if you want really cheap then you can easily find a long tail of used books for $1-3 on Alibris.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#32

Post by cek994 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #30
dbecker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you include the value of your time, the library is a more costly option to acquire a book than Amazon for many affluent readers. And most libraries have a small fraction of the books one might want. The fact that people are choosing an efficient way to get the books they want is hardly evidence of inelastic demand.

You're saying that time is valuable. The cost of the book is the dollar price + the time to acquire + the time to read it. You're saying that the middle cost is significant. That suggests that the latter cost is also significant. Therefore lowering the dollar price of the book has little effect on the total in the above equation.

Grossly misguided equation. The cost of the book is the price + the time to acquire. The benefit of the book is in the enjoyment of reading it -- which implies that readers don't see time spent reading as a "cost", unless you believe they're seeing reading as a benefit and a cost at the same time. Believe it or not, people actually enjoy the process of reading and seeing a work unfold, not just checking a completed book off the reading list.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#34

Post by bryanlarsen »

cek994 wrote: post #32
bryanlarsen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying that time is valuable. The cost of the book is the dollar price + the time to acquire + the time to read it. You're saying that the middle cost is significant. That suggests that the latter cost is also significant. Therefore lowering the dollar price of the book has little effect on the total in the above equation.

Grossly misguided equation. The cost of the book is the price + the time to acquire. The benefit of the book is in the enjoyment of reading it -- which implies that readers don't see time spent reading as a "cost", unless you believe they're seeing reading as a benefit and a cost at the same time. Believe it or not, people actually enjoy the process of reading and seeing a work unfold, not just checking a completed b…

The cost is the movies, video games, time with family etc that you didn't enjoy because you spent time enjoying the book.

Let's put it another way. When do avid readers start reading a new book? When they finish or get bored of their previous book.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#35

Post by GFischer »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #25
clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

Price elasticity is only part of it. Another major factor is consumer surplus. Consumer surplus manifests itself in book sales largely through hardcover sales. The existence of hardcover editions and the fact that they are initially first to market (typically by many months to a year) provide a window of opportunity to tap the consumer surplus in the market, which they do. You'll notice that many hardcover editions a…

"There is no such market segmentation or opportunity to capture the consumer surplus with e-books"

What? If anything, it's MUCH easier to do so with e-books, with elastic pricing. Maybe it's not Amazon's current proposal, but I disagree with that part of your argument.

You do make a good point about consumer surplus.

Edit: I'm pretty sure e-book publishers can get creative ways to add to consumer surplus (be among the first 100 to buy the "premium" edition and get a character named after you in the sequel!), maybe something like kickstarter's model.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#36

Post by pronoiac »

clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

Amazon is pushing their agenda with propaganda, and I'd be more critical. I liked John Scalzi's take on it: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/30/amazons-latest-volley/

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#37

Post by BryantD »

John Scalzi comments further: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/08/09/amazon-gets-increasing...

I particularly like the point that self-pub authors ought to be happy that Hatchette is at higher price points, since it leaves the more lucrative markets for them. This is a tribal dispute for most authors on both sides.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#38

Post by lsaferite »

DanBC wrote: post #17
rjknight wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could just be bad writing, but Amazon's point about elasticity reads like a sleight-of-hand trick to me. They say: > So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. So, 74,000 people choose to buy the cheaper book. Great! But without the price cut, those people might have bought other books. Maybe some ot…

Well, if I buy two books at $15 each I would probably buy three at €10 each. So the individual book has more readers and some other book has more readers.

Was the currency unit switch an accident?

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#39

Post by mark_l_watson »

As an author I support Amazon's position because as they say, books compete with the video game, TV, movie, etc. markets, and keeping consumer book prices lower helps grow the book market relative to other forms of entertainment, and I would argue that books benefit society more than video games and TV (but not necessarily movies).

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#40

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Amazon is solving a problem that the individual author or reader does not share: they are making the delivery of books more efficient to the marketplace.

Books are in a strange place because the time invested consuming them far outweighs the equivalent cost of purchasing the book. I am not limited by price to the number of books I can consume each month; I am limited by time. Already many readers end up buying more books than they can read. In addition, free books are available at this place called the library.

Music, movies, and the rest of digital content is not like this. You can pick up a video game and play it for an hour, then put it down. (In fact, the stats show most apps are only used a few times, then never used again)

In an author-reader relationship, the author is trying to provide enough value for the reader to spend dozens of hours and many days consuming the material -- and more to the point, the express purpose is to somehow change the mindscape of the consumer. Good books require lots of time and change the reader forever.

So what Amazon is effectively doing is destroying the concept of reading by making it nothing more than an extended version of an mp3 song. But since you can't just consume a book in 3 minutes, more books will be sold and more books will remain unread. Books -- long form content -- will become superfluous. It's all low attention span, immediate pleasure consumption now. I imagine we'll see more and more readers buy an ebook and read a few pages and stop. The nature of reading will change.

And while this might result in more overall book sales, it doesn't do much for the individual relationship an author has with a particular reader.

There's nothing wrong with making books like every other form of digital content. Everything is bits, and bits gotta be free. But as a consumer of good books, Amazon does not have my best interests at heart. It's just playing a numbers game. My best interests actually might be books that cost 100x what they currently do: make me feel some pain and spend some careful thought about what I'm going to spend my time on.

I am not interested in delivering the maximum number of unread ebooks to the most number of non-readers. I am interested in choosing those 5 or 6 books each year that are worth my investment in time to experience. And as an author, I am not interested in maximizing sales. I am interested in maximizing impact. Amazon is friend to neither of us.

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