Over the last week or so with the unveiling of Apples iPad, the term e-book has been seen more often in the media, most recently today with a trade spat between the publisher McMillan and Amazon over the pricing of said e-books.
I can already see where this will be heading and unfortunately the losers will be the publishers as they are trying to hold onto an old business model than no longer works for the digital age.
As we all know all new books come out as hardbacks and you generally have to pay a premium to be able to read them in this format, or alternatively wait a bit longer at the library as the new books are usually more popular and there is invariably less copies due to the price. Then they release the paperback edition a few months later, or in some cases up to a year later. Personally, in the case of Pratchett books I have gone out on the day of release to purchase a hardback copy as I simply can't wait for months on end for a cheaper release months down the line.
However, with the emerging market of e-books, the publishers want to reserve the right to keep a cost structure that reflects the hardback/paperback releases. Fair enough I say, but what they have to remember is, what they are essentially selling is a digital copy of a real book, it has next to nothing of substance as a real book has, it doesn't have the production costs a real book has, in fact it doesn't even have the associated logistical costs involved in delivering the book nor in dealing with resellers and their cut of the profits, so one would think that the publishers would make a huge saving by producing these e-books and pass it on to their customers. Alas this is not so, from initial signals from the publishers they want to sell e-books at the $15 range, a price Amazon doesn't like as they want to sell them at $10, which for me is a fairer price as all you are getting is a digital file.
I see why the publishers are trying to keep the pricing high, they want to protect their hardback sales, but I say that people who wish to buy hardback copies will still do so, in fact I don't think people will turn completely over to digital books any time soon, bookphiles are here to stay.
I can see a lot of people turning to piracy due to the price fixing of these e-books, much in the same way it has happened to music and films, after all, who wants to pay through the nose for something when you can get exactly the same thing for free. The publishers would be better off offering the e-books at the same release date at a fair price, people who appreciate an author will undoubtedly pay for the file or book, whichever format they prefer, I just don't see the point of penalising your customers to protect one format over another.
I hope in the future that established authors take matters into their own hands by publishing their own novels through a digital store, I'd say that the big guns out there don't really need the advertising associated with book releases, just imagine the buzz of a new Harry Potter book, hardly any advertising required as the media would go into a frenzy if J.K Rowling had a press release stating her intentions.
I'd suspect that the author would get a far better return from publishing this way as well as I think they are getting next to nothing in the way of renumeration out of the cost of a book to us. I don't know how much they get out of a £16 book, but I'd imagine it would be in the pence rather than the pounds, whereas if they distributed a file through the iTunes store they would get 70% of the cost price, makes more sense to sell digitally.
Although I already have thousands of e-books in my collection, I'd still fork out for real books from authors I enjoy, so my book buying habits have not changed one bit since the advent of e-books, in fact I'd say I buy more books now as I have already read the e-books and want to have a hard copy on my bookshelf. Where the book business is losing out from me is at the library, but the publishers have never moaned about library books, in a way this is a form of legalised copyright theft, one book being lent out to thousands, for free, imagine the loss to the publishers!!!
I don't hear an outcry for a ban on libraries, those horrible dens of copyright theft that promote child prostitution and fund terrorism.
I find myself thinking that now is the time for the publishers to get this right, learn from the mistakes of the music and film industries and action a plan for cheap e-books for all, offer back-catalogues for free, allow libraries to distribute DRM free files and not to be afraid of the word free. Sometimes 'free' means more, especially when there are other ways of monetising digital media by offering other merchandise for customers to spend their money on.
The old ways are dying, it will be the brave publisher who survives the upcoming tempest.
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