After writing about Hachette vs the Internet Archive and talking a bit about how much publishers are charging libraries of ebooks, the news broke that Book Depository will be shutting down on April 26th. Because of this, I’ve been having a very interesting conversation with a friend who works in publishing about cheap books.
It’s no secret that Book Depository and sites like it are known for cheap books. Ebooks are also supposed to be “cheaper”, with Amazon famously incentivising authors and publishers to price their ebooks between $2.99 and $9.99 (the royalty rate for ebooks within this price point is 70%, outside this price, it’s 35%).
For my friend, this is an unsustainable practice. If we want to pay everyone fairly, then books need to be priced much higher to take in overheads. Buying cheap books printed elsewhere and then shipped to us by air might make financial sense, but does it make sense to authors? To publishers? To the environment? He raised a very good question:
Who is bearing the cost of producing creative works and what price are we (as consumers) willing to pay for it?
Of course, coming from my little perspective as a reader who cannot afford to buy all the books I read AND as someone who has self-published, I don’t think cheap books are entirely unsustainable. I think the current model is unsustainable because there are too many middlemen. If publishers are cut out (aka disintermediated – a word that I would like to use as much as I can because I barely get to use it), then it’s possible for authors to offer their books at a lower cost and make enough money to sustain their creative output. And if authors can cut out platforms as well and sell direct to customers (on their websites, for instance), then they can lower the costs of books even more.
In other words, while I agree that consumers need to be willing to pay for creative works and not expect them for free, I think that it’s possible for content creators (authors, bloggers, etc) to offer the works at lower prices if they can cut out the middleman.
To me, the challenge will be for publishers. With freelance editors and cover designers and marketing services around, what can they offer authors and readers besides prestige and less upfront cost? What is their niche and how will they add value?
I would love to hear your opinion! Do you think that sites like book depository and Amazon are making books too cheap? Who do you think should be bearing the costs for writing, publishing, and printing books?
Another complex topic! As usual, I think the answer is probably somewhere in the middle and has more nuance than most answers people want to admit. I do think sellers like Amazon are a problem because they are underpricing books. The media reported years ago that they can only do this because they were subsidizing the losses from the books by selling non-book products. I think that was an issue because publishers and authors felt they had to sell there (because it’s so large) but were being asked to price books at prices that were not sustainable. That’s not okay.
The low Amazon prices also told consumers that books sold elsewhere were “overpriced” and conditioned people to not want to pay what the book was presumably worth (in the publishers’ estimation). This did make it seem like creators’ work wasn’t valuable and probably caused issues for smaller booksellers who couldn’t match Amazon’s prices and still stay in business.
I do think the ebook licenses offered to libraries are overpriced, though. The least publishers could do is get rid of the time limits and make the licenses expire after so many checkouts, since the data suggests that most licenses expire after two years but before the max checkout are reached. Just like the libraries keep it. It doesn’t seem like a “lost sale” if people are barely checking it out in two years.
One idea I’ve pondered that I haven’t seen come up is that maybe (and I know this is probably controversial) there are too many books being published. Data I’ve seen indicates that most authors don’t earn out their advance and never get paid royalties. What if publishers released fewer books, but really focused on marketing them? Maybe some authors could get more money if the market weren’t flooded with thousands of books that seemingly aren’t being sold? The prices could stay lower if more product were being sold?
I know this probably seems like a terrible idea when so many people want to be published and can’t be. But the people who are published aren’t really making any money anyway?
You bring up a good point about how nuanced/complex this issue is – it’s possible for BOTH Amazon to be underpricing books (I believe it’s AWS that makes money, not their books department) and for Publishers to be overcharging libraries for ebooks and also academic publishers to be overcharging in general.
I’m not too sure about putting a limit on number of books published though. Self-publishing is already here to stay and any attempts by publishers to be selective will probably fail.
Also, I wonder about how “interchangeable” books are. To me, if I see two mysteries and both are by authors I don’t know, then yeah, it’s possible price is a factor in helping me decide which to get. But if I know and love an author, then I can’t just substitute another author for their books.
I wonder about backlist titles too – many of them are not huge earners and I wonder what % of publisher’s revenue are from them. From what I understand at the indie side, authors need to have many books because it’s easier to sell a bit of many books. If, for example, you have a 5 books series and a good readthrough rate, then it would be easier for you to sell 1000 copies a month compared to if you only had 1 book to sell.
I am trying to reply through WordPress since I can’t on your site, so we will see if this works!
I guess one of the reasons it makes sense for me for publishers to limit what they publish is that authors CAN self-publish very easily these days. So publishers could arguably pick up fewer books and invest more time in them. But perhaps it is actually more profitable for them to sell thousands of books and just see what sticks? I don’t know! But I’d love to see the data on this! (If it exists.)
Of course, limiting books published by the traditional publishers would likely mean more established authors would get priority over new talent, and that could have unintended, negative consequences, as well.
My general understanding of publishing is that some backlist books are popular, and likely subsidizing the publication of unknown quantities. So, even with all the drama around Harry Potter, for instance, it’s a backlist title with huge selling capacity and likely keeping its publishers financially afloat so they can essentially gamble on the financial success of new titles. Same with other established franchises (probably stuff like Narnia, Roald Dahl, Winnie the Pooh, etc.) Of course, these are the outliers. I imagine most backlist titles fade into gentle obscurity after the extra copies are sold off to a discount bookseller.
I can see this! Looks like commenting through wordpress does the trick (for now… I’ve found out which plugin has the conflict but it’s one that’s quite hard to replace!)
I suppose for traditional publishers, it would be quite hard for them to predict what is going to sell loads and loads of books. Mark Dawson is a hybrid author who started off self-publishing – that gave him a much better position to negotiate when the big publishers came knocking and I suppose examples like him and Hugh Howey are why publishers would prefer to make bets of many unknowns. They don’t know where the next big hit will come from.
But I do agree that most of the backlist probably isn’t selling much, although I think it still does sell, especially if an author continues to write and market their latest book (if I find a new release I like, I’m likely to go back and read their older books so I think there would be some demand there)
As someone not in the publishing industry (author or otherwise), I am only a consumer. I do fundamentally agree that digital creative work, such as e-books, shouldn’t be free. And I severely dislike Amazon’s monopoly on the self-published/indie industry that basically, it seems like from your post, “force” (incentivize) authors to price their books within a certain price range. However, there is something to be said about digital vs. physical purchases of books. Digital books appear to me to have less middle people than physical books. Physical books require printing industries and professionals, warehouse overhead to store them, not to mention shipping them. So I get why they’re more expensive, and those are the same reasons why I feel a digital book shouldn’t be the same price as a physical boook. I don’t mind paying for digital books, usually about to about $5.99. Moreover, I saw an interesting point elsewhere that what it the format for these files changes in the future? Then that’s my purchase down the drain.
I believe the marginal cost for producing a digital book is very little unless you have a lot of images (and hence a big file size, which affects the cost of delivering a book to a customer).
Godo point about the format. And not to mention that technically, we don’t buy ebooks, we only buy a license to them and generally we can’t bring our kindle ebooks with us when we move to a kobo reader, etc. So given that it’s not a permanent purchase, I wouldn’t want to spend too much on ebooks either!
Yes, you’re right, I forgot about the point that ebooks might not be able to be transferred to another platform. Definitely frustrating!
This is definitely a difficult topic. I totally get that authors often aren’t earning a lot of money from the sale of each book, but at least in traditional publishing you get an advance (which most of them don’t even earn out!).
And, yeah, everything Krysta said about Amazon.
It’s just really hard if you’re an avid reader to pay full price for a bunch of books, especially since the price has gone up recently. At $30 or $35 for a new hardcover adult novel, yikes. Maybe it’s not a big deal for the people who read a book a month. But if you’re reading one or more a week? That definitely adds up, and I totally get people looking for cheaper options!
I like the point about the frequency of purchases. If I only bought one book a year, then yeah price would be less of an issue, but if I read over a 100 books a year, that’s a lot!
Then again, I’m sure there’s an argument to be made that some people make clothing purchases very frequently and so the same could be done for books. But not everyone can afford frequent purchases (of anything) and I think that’s what we have to consider when talking about book prices – not just the mythical consumer with a huge wallet.
Tricky subject. Something I don’t really have a good answer for.
From a reader’s perspective, you don’t want to pay too much. Life is pretty expensive as it is. If I see an ebook priced at more than ten dollars, I’d need to be pretty sure that’s a really good book before making that purchase.
From a writer’s perspective, people need to realize that quality costs money. Everyone has bills to pay, that includes authors.
You definitely have a very good point about the challenges publishers face today. Brandon Sanderson made a pretty big statement by showing the world that maybe authors don’t really need publishers anymore. I don’t really know what publishers will be able to bring to the table in the future now that there are more self publishing authors out there than ever before. But I’m definitely curious about what they might be able to come up with. And this could be quite important too. Because a lot of new and aspiring authors aren’t exactly looking forward to go looking for an editor, cover designer, or even an audience all on their own.
Someone I talked to mentioned prestige as a benefit of being published by a publisher. And I can see that if you’re being published by Baen or Tor, that would automatically mean you have good SFF credentials which might help persuade readers to buy your books? But I don’t know what small publishing houses can offer that most authors cannot do on their own besides the convenience!
I saw someone asking on Twitter what publishers even offer these days, and I think you’re right with prestige and convenience. And I think the advance. Even if a small publisher offers you “only,” a, let’s say $10k advance (even $5k!), that’s more than a lot of people earn self-publishing. And I think I saw someone mention the publisher’s ability to get your book into bookstores, although even that’s kind of suspect now, with things like Barnes and Noble not really stocking middle grade.
Good point about the advance – that may be one reason why publishers need to charge more too, depending on how many books can earn out their advance.
OTOH, that also means that if an author knows their market, and can predict their book sales, then going independent would be better long term, given the difference in royalties. Of course, I suppose it would be very rare for first time authors to be able to do this – perhaps we’ll see a shift with established authors with big backlists turning to self publishing?
This is interesting topic. I’m not author but yes I can see how authors aren’t earning a lot of money. As a reader and coming from upper middle class and also as a stay-at-home parent, I can’t afford high prices of books. I have budget and I have to stick within it. So if the book, for me in Indian currency, is 500 or more, I would never buy. I have long list of book i really wish to read but prices are too high and nope, those books aren’t there in library.
Thanks for sharing your experience! It really does look like high prices deter voracious readers – it would be interesting to see how much of the book market is made of occasional book buyers who don’t mind the price and how much is made of readers who read frequently and have lower budgets (and who contributes in terms of talking about the book online, reviewing, etc). I think that might help publishers/authors figure out pricing too – you won’t want to price out the people who are most likely to talk about and hype up your book.
As a consumer, I can’t lie how fantastic it is to snatch books for cheap and to have countless options. However, I’m fully aware of how writers are robbed by some companies who have monopoly on the business. It would be a tough sale to crank up prices for readers who’ll then probably seek out books through library and ebooks instead of getting the full-priced physical copy. I have no idea what the ultimate solution would be but something done about royalties would probably be a good step in the right direction. Great discussion! 😀
P.S. I don’t know if it’s just me but the like button on your blog doesn’t seem to want to load. I think the only way for me (and maybe others) to like, is through the WordPress reader?? 😮 Were you aware?
Yes, it’s a tricky problem – readers quite naturally want cheap/affordable books while authors and publishers would want to be able to sell for higher prices so they can earn more! It’s going to be a long-term problem, I think.
And yes, I noticed! Like buttons and the reply buttons only seem to work in wordpress – I think it’s due to an image optimiser plugin conflict but I haven’t been able to find a solution yet (short of turning the plugin off, which would impact my bandwidth).
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