Will eBooks supplant Paper-books?

[Ninefingers]

40 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Ninefingers,

If the reason for the flatness of the eBook market is people downloading free copies of the books from torrent sites instead of buying from legitimate sellers, those are "lost sales".

Yes, specifically lost eBook sales. 

I apologize, I'm missing your point.

Your original post asserted that physical book sales are up and ebook sales are flat and you asked for an explanation. I offered a couple possibilities, including the increased availability of piracy options to explain the discrepancy.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Ninefingers,

That's because my statement in response to your speculations is a tanget from the main line of this discussion.

[zapp]

Just to go back to the Kindle MatchBook program. It's still going and it's incredibly easy to redeem books now (no idea what it was like before). You're doing exactly what you would do with a standard ebook transaction on Amazon. The page for the kindle edition of that book will automatically show the reduced price if you've bought the physical edition and if you haven't it will show you the Matchbook price in the section where it shows page length, enhanced typesetting and other features that are part of the kindle version.

The trouble with it is the publishers have to agree to be part of the program and they're not all onboard. You can find what previous purchases qualify for the reduced MatchBook prices at the following page.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/ep-landing-page

It also allows you to search for other books that qualify for it but aren't part of your purchase history.

 

 

[Darth Richard II]

3 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

I had that, too, back in 2001, and it was the best $4000 I ever spent. I am sure that, by now, the procedure is safer and even more refined.

Oh I'm sure it is, I didn't have laser corrections surgery, it was a diabetic thing. Also, wow, thread tangent.

[David Selig]

On 09/09/2016 at 6:36 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

This is from January

January 2014. Pretty old news.

[unJon]

1 hour ago, David Selig said:

January 2014. Pretty old news.

Boom. That's back when like Trump was a birthed. 

[baxus]

16 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

I had that, too, back in 2001, and it was the best $4000 I ever spent. I am sure that, by now, the procedure is safer and even more refined.

Not to mention cheaper. Mine cost 1000€ total.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Very interesting read.Frankly, i read 99% of my fiction/non-fic in ebook form.If what the report below suggests is true,then the Big 5 are really screwing with readers like me due to abnormally high ebook prices, in order to force me to buy paper books (which are discounted on amazon and other places!) 

 

http://authorearnings.com/report/february-2016-author-earnings-report/

http://authorearnings.com/report/may-2016-report/

Quote

Big 5 publishers: Despite the greater profitability of ebooks over print books, some of these publishers have touted their shrinking ebook sales as a positive development. Meanwhile, we know from our own data (more on this later) and from Amazon’s press releases, that overall US ebook sales have actually gone up in dollar terms. The blue indie line shows where most of that increase is being funneled. Today, a quarter of all consumer dollars spent on ebooks in the US is spent purchasing indie-published ebooks.

The most important graph for authors shows the rapidly diverging rate of ebook author income by publishing path. The Big 5 publishers are now providing less than a quarter of the dollars earned by creatives for their ebook sales. Indies are taking close to half. As detailed in previous reports, higher prices and other missteps are a likely contributor to this accelerating trend, but the reality may be that major publishers simply are finding it difficult to compete with indie authors on diversity, price, quality, and frequency of publication, as this divergence has been increasing for the last two years — well before the Big Five’s return to no-discount agency pricing.

When we ignore the dollars that publishers keep, and measure only dollars that actually go to authors, we can see that ebook sales on Amazon.com are generating $1,756,000 a day in author earnings.

But less than 45% of those author-earnings dollars — from the largest bookstore in the world — is now going to traditionally-published authors. And less than a quarter is going to authors published with the Big 5. Is it any wonder that the traditional publishing media and historic author advocacy groups are reporting declining ebook sales and shrinking author incomes for their members?

We humbly submit that, for author earnings, these organizations are looking in all the wrong places.

$140 million a year in Kindle Unlimited payouts is going directly to authors, and yet that enormous sum of income is somehow uncounted by traditional author surveys. And as we are now able to measure, that sum is only the tip of the iceberg. There is also a vast swath of the market not being reported on at all, along with a whole host of authors not paying dues to author advocacy groups and simply going about the business of earning an income with their art.

The publishing industry is still changing rapidly, and how things will play out long-term is anybody’s guess. But we suspect that for the largest traditional publishers, taking their digital ball off the court and going home — as they chose to do in 2015 — won’t remain a viable strategy for much longer. It certainly won’t be a viable strategy for authors to sit idly by while detrimental pricing decisions destroy their incomes.

 

Quote

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Sometimes a change in strategy achieves the intended result… and sometimes it backfires.

The Big Five’s return to agency ebook pricing may have been just such a case.

Their ebook pricing strategy was intended, at least in part, to slow the erosion of brick-and-mortar print book sales.*(3) By preventing Amazon from discounting the Big Five’s ebooks at Amazon’s own expense, the Big Five could force the consumer prices of their ebooks artificially high — higher than what many consumers are willing to pay for digital books. The thinking among Big Five publishers was undoubtedly that this would encourage those consumers to buy fewer ebooks on Amazon, and instead buy more hardcovers and paperbacks in brick and mortar bookstores, thus preserving a legacy distribution advantage long held by the biggest traditional publishers… and one that was fading away fast as a higher and higher percentage of book purchases were being made online instead.

From November 2014 to September 2015, the Big Five publishers negotiated brand new two-year contracts with Amazon in which they fought aggressively for — and won — the right to prevent Amazon from discounting their ebooks. Prior to these contracts, Big Five ebooks were discounted steeply at Amazon’s own expense. Our data from 2014 and early 2015 revealed that Amazon was on average selling Big Five and other traditionally-published ebooks to consumers at breakeven prices and making zero or marginal gross profit from them. That’s almost no profit on traditionally published ebooks, while Amazon was earning a healthy margin on the sale of indie and Amazon-imprint ebooks. In effect, prior to the Big Five’s return to agency, Amazon was more or less selling traditionally-published ebooks at cost. They were subsidizing traditional publisher ebook profits and traditionally-published ebook author earnings by nearly 30%.

By reinstituting agency ebook pricing and forcing their own consumer ebook prices high while preventing Amazon from discounting those ebooks, the Big Five publishers put a halt to that. They willingly did financial harm to their own bottom lines and in the process also seriously damaged the sales and earnings of their own authors, in an attempt to wrest market share and control away from their largest and most profitable retailer.

Did they succeed in that goal?

According to both our data and Amazon’s own public statements, despite the Big Five’s return to agency ebook pricing, Amazon’s overall US ebook sales have continued to grow throughout 2015 in both unit terms and dollar terms. On the other hand, the Big Five’s share of those ebook sales has plunged precipitously in both dollars terms, and even more precipitously in unit terms.

That particular outcome was easily predicted — and probably inevitable. Perhaps the Big Five viewed it as a strategic sacrifice.

But at the same time, Amazon’s online print sales — driven by steeply discounted hardcovers and paperbacks, which in many cases were priced even lower than the ebook editions — ALSO went up. Significantly. In fact, our data points toward Amazon seeing even greater growth in their 2015 print sales than in their 2015 ebook sales.

As of mid-January 2016, Amazon.com’s print sales were running at a rate of 969,000 print books a day.

With the largest bookstore chains reporting 2015 book sales as flat or down, and book sales also down significantly for warehouse and club outlets, an uptick in local independent bookstore sales is a small brick-and-mortar bright spot. But it’s extremely likely that most if not all of print’s reported 2015 “resurgence” took the form of increased online print sales… at Amazon.com.

We suspect that the Big Five’s high ebook agency pricing, and Amazon’s steeper online discounting of print books, may well have had the opposite of the intended effect. It may have encouraged traditional hardcover and paperback buyers — including those who had zero interest in buying digital editions — to take advantage of those steeper discounts and purchase more of their books online, while buying fewer in brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Some very savvy analysts who cover the industry from the traditional side, and whose insights *(4) we value greatly, have pointed out that this particular outcome may not necessarily have been unanticipated by the agency publishers. But they still may have deemed it the lesser evil, if in the process they could also slow the consumer shift from buying print to “e”.

But either way, if true, it means that more print-book buyers are now shopping at a storefront where indie print books share a significant portion of shelf space alongside books from traditional publishers, and where indie print books are now fast-approaching a double-digit percentage of print sales.

It’ll be interesting to see in coming quarters if indie print sales continue to gain ground as more and more consumers are funneled into a marketplace that provides more equitable access to all authors.

 

[David Selig]

14 minutes ago, AncalagonTheBlack said:

Very interesting read.Frankly, i read 99% of my fiction/non-fic in ebook form.If what the report below suggests is true,then the Big 5 are really screwing with readers like me due to abnormally high ebook prices, in order to force me to but paper books (which are discounted on amazon and other places!) 

I think this is the main reason for the lack of growth in the ebook market. Big publishers are protecting their paper books business by keeping the prices of ebooks high and even giving bigger discounts for their paper books. And the ones who benefit from this are the self-published writers and small ebook presses who seem to be gaining market share in the ebook market very quickly by offering much better prices.

[maarsen]

Bottom line on the reason for buying a paper book over an ebook. How much will your first edition of any ebook get you a suitable length of time from now? 

[Gertrude]

That's not even close to the top of my list on why I buy books -dead last if at all, actually. If it is for you, then obviously paper is the way to go.

[Darth Richard II]

They'll probably both be supplanted completely by something that hasn't been invented yet that we can't even image right now.

[maarsen]

3 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

They'll probably both be supplanted completely by something that hasn't been invented yet that we can't even image right now.

Digital cuneiform. You heard it here first. 

[maarsen]

7 hours ago, Gertrude said:

That's not even close to the top of my list on why I buy books -dead last if at all, actually. If it is for you, then obviously paper is the way to go.

That is not why I buy books either. It is just a very good reason to give to my wife as to why I am not getting rid of them.

[Seli]

20 hours ago, David Selig said:

I think this is the main reason for the lack of growth in the ebook market. Big publishers are protecting their paper books business by keeping the prices of ebooks high and even giving bigger discounts for their paper books. And the ones who benefit from this are the self-published writers and small ebook presses who seem to be gaining market share in the ebook market very quickly by offering much better prices.

Another obvious aspect of the growth curve is the nature of the reader/buyer market. The vast majority of readers only read a couple of books each year, often in transit or on vacation. And of course books make fine presents. That is a significant portion of the market -mostly tied into the bestsellers- that won't go to digital anytime soon.

[Lily Valley]

On 9/16/2016 at 3:51 PM, Darth Richard II said:

Oh I'm sure it is, I didn't have laser corrections surgery, it was a diabetic thing. Also, wow, thread tangent.

This was my fault.  I'm terrified of eye surgery.

On 9/16/2016 at 3:25 PM, zapp said:

Just to go back to the Kindle MatchBook program. It's still going and it's incredibly easy to redeem books now (no idea what it was like before). You're doing exactly what you would do with a standard ebook transaction on Amazon. The page for the kindle edition of that book will automatically show the reduced price if you've bought the physical edition and if you haven't it will show you the Matchbook price in the section where it shows page length, enhanced typesetting and other features that are part of the kindle version.

The trouble with it is the publishers have to agree to be part of the program and they're not all onboard. You can find what previous purchases qualify for the reduced MatchBook prices at the following page.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/ep-landing-page

It also allows you to search for other books that qualify for it but aren't part of your purchase history.

 

 

Hey, thanks!  There's only three titles available of the books I have bought in the last year or so.  I'm going to fool around with the search function later.  I recently ordered a bunch of paper books.  Gotta say, I have missed the random conversations about books that I wind up having when hauling them around.  On the other hand.  The kindle fits in my purse and it's so nice not having the reading light wake me up at 3am.  (Obviously reading paper books today).

[The Wedge]

I love reading on my Kindle, but am put off by prices that would net me a physical copy.

One area of books where prices are too high are the the classics.  A Kindle version of "Of Mice and Men" runs $7.99.  This for a 90 page book that was edited and published ages ago.  Why not make things like this more accessible for readers who might want to re-read something they read back in high school?

[Pebble thats Stubby]

2 hours ago, The Wedge said:

I love reading on my Kindle, but am put off by prices that would net me a physical copy.

One area of books where prices are too high are the the classics.  A Kindle version of "Of Mice and Men" runs $7.99.  This for a 90 page book that was edited and published ages ago.  Why not make things like this more accessible for readers who might want to re-read something they read back in high school?

In the UK Electronic books are subjected to VAT where physical books are not.  this is one reason why Electronic books may be a higher price.  But I've normally found that as long as the book is not a new release then you can normally get them cheaper than physical books.  sometimes at bargain prices.

 

I just looked your Of Mice and Men  Kindle costs £4.99   Paperback  £6.29    there are some used versions available for about £1  + postage.

 

eBooks that are now out of copyright are free.

[The Wedge]

1 minute ago, Pebbles said:

I just looked your Of Mice and Men  Kindle costs £4.99   Paperback  £6.29    there are some used versions available for about £1  + postage.

 

eBooks that are now out of copyright are free.

I picked Of Mice and Men because it is routinely taught in American high school classes (or at least it was back in my day...).  It is not out of copyright, so any student who wished to buy a e-reader version would have to shell out $8.

For things like Steinbeck or Hemingway, I would think it would behoove publishers to make classics like theirs more readily available from a financial standpoint.

But then again, I guess if you own the cow you aren't going to give the milk away at a discount if you don't have to.

I keep an eye on the Kindle Daily Deals.  Once in a while they will put things on sale, so I've got a lot of Kurt Vonnegut in my e-reader.  I wish they'd do the same with things like Catch-22, To Kill a Mockingbird, and other mid-20th century books I'd like to revisit.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

1 minute ago, The Wedge said:

I picked Of Mice and Men because it is routinely taught in American high school classes (or at least it was back in my day...).  It is not out of copyright, so any student who wished to buy a e-reader version would have to shell out $8.

For things like Steinbeck or Hemingway, I would think it would behoove publishers to make classics like theirs more readily available from a financial standpoint.

But then again, I guess if you own the cow you aren't going to give the milk away at a discount if you don't have to.

I keep an eye on the Kindle Daily Deals.  Once in a while they will put things on sale, so I've got a lot of Kurt Vonnegut in my e-reader.  I wish they'd do the same with things like Catch-22, To Kill a Mockingbird, and other mid-20th century books I'd like to revisit.

I get why you chose that book.  When I was at school in the UK any books read for as a class we were given physical copies to borrow.  we wouldn't have to buy our own version.   Its only if you wanted a to read it again later you would need to buy it (or borrow from a library)    However that book is still cheaper as an E-book than a paperback to buy despite the added VAT.  

 

There is some kind of magic price figure.   cheaper books normally equals more sales.   but too cheep and you have to sell loads more books to make he same return.  I'm sure all publishers what to get that figure just right to maximize revenue.

the things with the classic books is they don't need to put them on the one day sales as they don't need the advertisement. Most people have heard of them already and will either buy them at the full price or not bother even if they were heavily discounted.

Recently released books on sale for a day can generate interest as some people will buy them and read them then recommend them to overs, by which time the sale is over.  it may also encourage people to check out other books by the same Author, thus potentiality generating more sales.