Kindle owners stage e-book price protest
Wired's Gadget Lab blog has a story about how a group of about 250 Kindle owners are staging an online protest over Kindle e-books that cost more than $9.99. The weapon they're using is Amazon's own tagging system, as price offenders are getting hit with a special "9 99 boycott" tag.
The roving--and most likely growing--band of annoyed Kindle owners includes such folks as Connecticut librarian Crystal O'Brien, who spends "a few minutes every day in the Kindle book store tagging the more expensive digital books with the '9 99 boycott' tag and removing it once the price drops below the threshold."
Frame job: the Kindle version of "The Likeness" costs $4 more than the paperback.
(Credit: Amazon)I wish I'd known about the tag when I was searching for a new Kindle e-book the other day. I came across Tana French's "The Likeness" and was considering a purchase until I saw that the Kindle edition was priced at a shocking $14.27. What was so ridiculous was the $10.20 paperback version costs $4 less. However, I didn't notice the "9 99 boycott" tag until I read the Wired blog and went back to look to see whether it was tagged (it was).
Now, if you're new to the whole e-book pricing game, you might think Amazon's the villain here. But the unfortunate fact is that it's really the publishers who are behind the pricing.
Amazon isn't gouging the consumer, and according to my sources, may barely be breaking even on some best sellers that cost $10. You only need to look at the price of books in the eBook Store from Sony to get a pretty good idea that Amazon's trimmed its margins pretty close to the bone. (Typically, best sellers sell for a buck or two more in the Sony eBook Store--and Sony isn't turning big profits either).
Look, I understand publishers don't want to price the Kindle Edition too low for fear that it will hurt sales of the hardcover edition. But I still maintain Kindle best-sellers should cost a few bucks less than what the paperback version of the book would cost. Case in point: I'm not going to buy the paperback edition of "The Likeness" at $10.20. But I would have paid $7.99 for the Kindle version. Now, of course, no sale has been made.
To make my point, I'm slapping a 7 99 boycott tag on "The Likeness." An over $10 boycott is a start. But we really need to get to $7.99. Who's with me?
Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel. E-mail David. Follow David on Twitter. 
Perhaps you can explain that one to me. Hardcover equals production and distribution costs. E-book doesn't. These guys are going to be a successful as the music guys. Hello?
Each book must be edited, formatted, converted to various reader formats, adorned with a cover and sometimes other illustrations, and then marketed. These are not trivial.
And buying and operating a country-wide cell network which charges zero for airtime must have SOME overhead. Try it sometime.
If you want an example of the cost being less, look at videogames. There's a reason Gamestop finally got on board with digital distribution and MMOs in particular have used the method for a few years. They don't sell the e-products at a higher MSRP and they have higher margins when using digital distribution. Look at the financial statements.
"Each book must be edited, formatted, converted to various reader formats, adorned with a cover and sometimes other illustrations, and then marketed. These are not trivial."
True, but that's a fixed cost. The cost of digital distribution is much less than a print run. Digital books (with no resale value) should cost less than their physical prothers.
EX: Compare downloading a season of your favorite television program (paying by the episode) versus simply buying the season on DVDs. Usually, it's cheaper to buy and own any series on disc. It's clear something is wrong with the download pricing structure on all digital content.
Besides sheer greed, why is digital content not at least 30% cheaper?
On average I'd say most of those people are about average for smarts. Pricing is a marketing decision and there is an art to it, as well as some science. Then managment gets ahold of it and well, something else enters the picture.
Thus far, with the restrictions placed upon the kindle, they could make them in color screens, with backlighting, at $50 and I wouldn't buy one, strictly because of the policies that dictate your use of it.
All of this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that an eBook provides considerably less value to the purchaser. I cannot resell an eBook I don't want to keep. I cannot let someone borrow it. I am totally dependent on Amazon to keep the Kindle business running so that I can buy replacement Kindles and have access to my archived books. After all, if Amazon quits making Kindles, once my Kindle dies I'm unable to read the DRMed files. This reduced value should be reflected in reduced price.
Or to put it another way - Amazon, I will not pay hardback prices for an eBook and I'm not happy to pay paperback prices. And listen up publishers, while I have a Kindle I'll hold off my purchase until the Kindle price drops or I can pick up the hardback used.
@kimocrossman No you cannot resell an ebook even if you could get it off your kindle it would break the terms of service agreement.
This is astounding. Everyone knows that computer programming book authors are hardly making Steven King level royalties. Nor are these books promoted like a new John Grisham novel might be. In fact, the vast bulk of the cost of producing these books must be the printing and distribution costs.
So how is it that when those costs are entirely eliminated, the price drops just 10%?
The music industry had an oligopoly and they used that position to screw consumers on CD prices, even when CD production became cheaper than vinyl. Not surprisingly, consumers hate the companies that had that oligopoly. This is one of the reasons that people steal music without the slightest guilt.
The book publishing industry is filled with naïveté if they think they can get away with the same trick. Once e-readers become ubiquitous, if they don't change their business practices, their corporate control will collapse. Making the same mistakes the music industry made will only alienate their customers and guarantee that collapse.
Now is the time to take brave--maybe even desperate--steps to create a future for their industry, NOT the time to take desperate steps to increase profits for the next 2 - 5 fiscal years.
I have actually not bought some books I really wanted just because their pricing is too high for an eBook.
I am a member of Amazon.com Prime, so I can get books with free 2nd day delivery. Why would I want the eBook version for even only a dollar or two less?
If the publishers do no embrace this technology and act soon to make people want to purchase the eBook versions, they are going to lose the early adopters, who in this case are VERY avid readers.
You can not tell me that I should be spending anywhere REMOTELY CLOSE to the same price for an eBook as a print edition. The eBook, once formatted and on the server, only needs to be deployed to the device. The print book needs to destroy trees, use ink and glue to be constructed, loaded onto a fossil fuel drinking vehicle to get it to a store, where it then needs to be unpackaged, and shelved in the hopes that I buy it. If I don't it will be another in a line of items discounted to clear the shelves for a new title. All this does not also include the fact that we need to pay people at every step of this process to get this to the consumers hands.
eBooks are setup once, stored and only have to wait for someone to download it. No shelf space, not delivery, no rude store clerk to have to stock it or ring it up for me.
You can not tell me that only discounting it by a dollar or two per book that they are not making a larger profit.
Authors currently get pennies on the dollar when a book is sold, the lions share goes to the publisher. In a "soft copy" paradigm most of the publishers piece is irrelevant. Certainly the cost of the paper, ink, and printing presses is gone, but also the middle sales teams, and of course the fat publisher executive and board pay.
For a popular author not needing a publisher to front money or marketing, charging 3 bucks for an e-book would already earn the author several times what they currently make on hard copy. That is if they can sell equivalent numbers to pressed versions.
However sadly if the music business is an indicator; electronic distribution has brought us less choice as opposed to more as the publishers have used added marketing on fewer product to memorize the public. So we languish in the stupfying 15 word lyrics of Britney Spears soundtracks, and karaoke rehashes of American idol contestants, while true talent remains shroud by information overload.
I dont see him complaining about people not spending money on his books when you can get them for free.
In fact, he is calling for an end to DRM.
Bottom line is: Lower pricing incentives, open standards and open minds will allow the industry to flourish and grow.
1) People pay for convenience all the time. You pay more for one soda at a convenience store, instead of buying a case, because you don't want to have to carry the whole case around with you the whole time. The digital format can be viewed as more convenient, right?
2) You can't say magically the digital version should cost less just because it's digital. What should be cheaper, one book in a 200,000 printing run, or one book only 500 kindle readers want to read that still takes 2 weeks of preparation time plus ....
Sellers set the prices they think will yield a reasonable return based on their costs and the value to the buyer. If the buyers decide they don't want to buy, sellers will either lower the price, or decide to allocate their assets to other projects.
So, if I have a title that I am used to making $5 per copy on, then I have to charge $14.28 for the Kindle version to make that same $5.
Another way to look at it is that any of those $9.99 books are only netting the publisher $3.50. That then has to be split with the author.
That's actually probably pretty close to what they make on a paperback version at the same price, by the way, unless Amazon is giving the publisher a better deal than a normal retailer would give them.
However, on the Kindle version of a hardback book, the publisher is making considerably less, I would think, than it does when they sell a physical copy.
I could have this wrong, so if anyone knows the situation to be different, please advise me.
(Here's the actual wording from the agreement: "Provided you are not in breach of your obligations under this Agreement, we will pay you, for each Digital Book we sell, a royalty equal to thirty-five percent (35%) of the applicable Suggested Retail Price for such Digital Book ...")
- by MarieSornen April 7, 2009 11:13 PM PDT
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (55 Comments)I do not own a Kindle. Why, because using content other than Amazon purchased material is impossible or just about from everything I have researched on this product. Instead, I own a Sony PRS-505. Yes, I agree that the content for sale on the Sony store is outrageously priced, and for that reason I haven't purchased anything from that store in a good long while. I own the Sony because it easily and flawlessly supports the epub format. Why does this matter? In most large cities the community libraries now permit checking out electronic books. I get ALL my content FREE. Yes, that NYT bestseller isn't going to be available the same day the print edition is available but so what. If I absolutely MUST have a brand new book I can get it from the library in print or borrow it from a friend. In the current economy there is no justification for purchasing content. Now is the time for the return of the library and with modern libraries supporting electronic books either the Kindle books will get their pricing structure "fixed" or the market place will fix the Kindle out of existence.