I’m an author in Virginia, with a small press, writing awards and great reviews. Sales on Amazon for me mean people in Alaska chose my books, know who I am as a writer. As long as the ‘big six’ choose to advance huge sums for ‘potential best sellers’ and spend money on lunches to bid on books and big book stores only order from one national distributor, I’ll side with Amazon, and let the ‘big six’ bemoan the state of book selling. They’re using the wrong model and eventually they’ll see the light. Amazon sells over 65 % of the books in this country, hard back, trade paper or e-books. They’ve just started Amazon Encore to vertically integrate the market, and publish their own authors. I don’t have a business degree, but I’d take 65% over 35 % of anything anywhere anytime.

We’re talking about ebooks here. What shipping? What handling? What front end? It’s a website and shopping cart. For 50-65%, that had better be some blammo awesome customer care I’m getting…

What publishers are trying to do here is sell us completely different products for the same price. They argue that it’s only the packaging that’s different, because the text is the same, but if that’s the case, we should be able to use that product the same way. We should be able to own it, share it, give it away or resell it when we’re done with it. Because we’re not permitted to use the product the same way, it can’t be reasonably argued that it’s the same product.

I’m not interested in arguing over delayed releases. People wait for mmpb, they can wait for ebooks. It’s no biggie, even though no amount of hooey blown up my ass will convince me simultaneous e and hardback releases will endanger hardback sales. If a lot of readers simply forget how badly they want those books in the months between release dates, that’s the publisher’s loss (and the author’s), but it’s no skin off readers’ noses.

As for McMillan’s spat with Amazon, I’d remind people (especially McMillan authors), that this publisher pays on net for ebooks, and anything that increases net profits for the publisher will increase net royalties for the authors. It may also give publishers wiggle room to reduce cover prices (although I’m not holding my breath that they will). It’s hard to price a product reasonably when the middle man is taking half or more of your cover price, isn’t it?

30% seems a more than fair cut for setting up a buy button and letting an automated shopping cart run the show. Taking 50% or more for what Mike Briggs referred to above as “pushing a few electrons around” is fucking insanity.

As I stated, I believe ebooks are more on par with paperbacks. So I personally don’t mind waiting for an ebook to be released along with the paperback release. I don’t expect publishers to release both the hardback and paperback versions at the same time and charge readers the hardback price for the paperback version. So I don’t know why the publishers started doing this the ebook version when it is clearly worth less than the hardback version. The publishers let that genie out of the bottle, now they have to deal with the backlash they created.

As a consumer, what I don’t want is to pay jacked up prices for ebooks that are essentially stripped down versions of the paperback. If they want consumers to pay higher prices for ebooks, they could at least include the cover image in the ebook. I have never bought an epubbed book that did not include the cover image. I have never bought a Harlequin that did not include the cover image. Yet quite a few NY pubs who slap a hardback price on an ebook somehow can’t manage to get the cover image in the file.

I don’t even mind if they set two suggested retail prices for ebooks, one for the hardback release and one for the paperback release. But only if they (1) include “extras” that would add value to the “hardback” ebook release, (2) reduce the ebook price when the paperback comes out so it sells at paperback price, and (3) have the prices remain suggested retail prices.

Macmillan is currently not doing the second, their ebook prices are higher than the paperback version selling at the same time. And they want to move away from the third toward fixed prices. It’s the discounts offered by retailers that get me to try out new authors. If other NY publishers follow Macmillan and succeed in doing away with discounted prices for ebooks, I’ll be buying less books by fewer authors.

I am also expected to wait 4-6 months for the e-format of mass market ppb @ double the price. That's what I object to.

Now I agree that’s ridiculous. If the paperback is already out, then, of course the ebook should be priced comparably to that.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think hardbacks are going to exist much longer for all manner of reasons, and then this argument will become academic, but meanwhile, I think that those who have to have the book hot off the press then the premium price should prevail.