Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Downloadable Books. Would someone please explain to me why downloadable books on Amazon can actually cost more than ordering a physical book?  For example, Greg Bear's Eon sells as a download for $9.99, and the paperback version of the same book costs (on Amazon) $7.99.  It costs nothing to send me the download.  It probably costs very little print the book, too, but wouldn't you expect it to be limited by the price of the paperback edition?  What's really going on here is that book publishers have never liked electronic formats.  Their profits have the potential of being eroded; the primary reason is that with the internet as a presence and solid electronic delivery channels in place, their utility as middlemen is greatly diminished.  They're cut out, in other words. Obviously they don't want this to happen.  So how do you fight it?  You fight it by proving to the rest of the world that electronic distribution is a medium that doesn't really work.  The evidence you need is a small volume of downloads, so you can say that the volume is insignificant.  From this you can propose that it is simple to conclude that consumers don't really want downloads.  To ensure that volumes stay low, you manipulate the prices of electronic books to be quite high, so that consumers are discouraged.  This is also a hedge policy against future laws, which might set limits on profits that electronic publishers can take from authors.  Of course, as a consumer, I'm not going to pay $9.99 for an electronic version of a book I can buy in physical form for $7.99.  Does this mean that I don't want electronic books?  No.  It just means that they should be reasonably priced.  Authors currently make very tiny sums for each book sown.  This is justified in the physical world because of the expense of promotion, printing, shipping, sales, and so forth.  In the electronic world, most of those costs go away.  And yet, the prices stay roughly the same.  Ditto for the electronic music world, where all these arguments apply equally. Remember, it's a two part strategy.  Make the price of electronic media pretty much the same as physical forms, even though the true cost structure (author to consumer) is dramatically lower.  Then promote the idea that because of minimal usage, consumers don't really want it.   4:27:20 PM