Have you ever seen Shit My Dad Says on Twitter? Check it out. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Really funny stuff. Justin Hepburn, who set up the account as a place to share his father’s snippets of wisdom, currently has 1.4million followers, a TV deal, and a new book which is a collection of stories and essays (also called Sh*t My Dad Says).
I’ve checked out the preview on Amazon for the book and decided that it was something that would make for a quick and fun summer read.
I also picked up an iPad a few weeks ago and have been very impressed by how many things I use it for (full review coming next week). What I haven’t really spent a lot of time with is buying / reading full length books on it from the iBooks store. At the risk of not enjoying the experience, I figured Sh*t My Dad Says would be a good starter book.
However, the iBooks store currently doesn’t stock it. Not that big of a deal, right? I’ve heard that you can just grab a Kindle app and purchase / read any Kindle books on your iPad.
But here’s what I found when I went to Amazon to purchase the Kindle version:
Notice anything strange?
Here’s a quick observation on the difference between bytes and binding…
If you look hard, you’ll see that the new hardcover edition is priced at $8.79 and the Kindle edition (digital download) is $9.99. A brand new, hardcover book should NEVER cost more than an e-edition. Ever. Call me cheap, but the cost associated with moving a couple megabytes of text is infinitely smaller than the cost of printing and shipping a hardcover book. Never mind the antiquated royalty system between publishers and authors, I’m not going to touch that here. The whole purpose of e-readers is to (hopefully) do for reading what iTunes did for music (granted, there are some bad byproducts to this system as well) by making it convenient, instant, scalable, and cost effective.
But as the model stands right now, I think e-books in their current form and pricing structure are majorly flawed, no matter how cool the reading device is. Amazon is asking me to pay more for what is essentially the same experience as a paper book (without being able to share it with someone else when I’m done – another rant altogether).
Publishers need to either charge less because consumers recognize that there is substantially less cost involved with distribution and substantially more restrictions when it comes to sharing an e-book vs. a paper book – OR make the e-book a completely different experience than the paper book- one that is worth a premium price. How? I can think of a few ways:
- Ability to share chapters or the whole book with friends after completing it.
- The ability to annotate pages, add hyperlinks and share notes with everyone else who has bought that ebook.
- Enable book club style features where every reader can interact with other readers in real time through the book, commenting and suggesting other books.
- Allow for authors to have Q and As IN the book or allow users to peel back pages to see earlier drafts.
Things like this would differentiate the ebook experience, provide a kick ass way of interacting with other readers and essentially make each book come with its own built-in online community (not to mention sell a lot more Kindles, Nooks and iPads so more people could take part in that experience). Need more? Seth Godin has another awesome idea for a paperback Kindle.
Am I asking for too much here? Do you think the problem is that the tech is in its infancy at the moment, or do you blame the publishers (or authors)? Do you have an e-reader device and has it made you read more – if so, how would you weigh in on the pricing, buying experience? Fire away in the comments, please.
I have yet to buy an e-reader for many of the reasons you mentioned (book price, lack of sharing, etc.). I hope the market starts adjusting to take those cons into account.
I think publishers are throwing up the most roadblocks to reasonably priced, reasonably shareable e-books. Also, there was an interesting tidbit I learned from an agent: that e-book capabilities may be (or are?) causing potential issues with movie deals. Essentially, a standard movie contract disallows any form of previous publishing that involves music or moving images, which is one thing that is supposedly going to be an advantage of e-books once they’re out of infancy. http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-enhanced-ebooks-will-cause-havoc.html
Rae,
I agree with you comment on the road blocks – this is insane. But I had no idea about the issues with film industry. What a mess. At the end of the day it’s all about money, right? What I wonder though is if the rise of e-readers and e-bookstores will entice authors to skip the publishing houses, cut the red tape and go direct to consumers the way a lot of bands are doing. So instead of a few percent royalty rate, they’d keep 100% (even if they lowered the price it would probably be more lucrative).
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!
I disagree with a few of the points that were brought up in this post.
I do agree that the electronic publishing industry is still in its infancy but I’m not sure how we would know what costs or investment Amazon or any other distributor has incurred to this point in their e-book reader and distribution network. In fact I would imagine that it is costing Amazon quite a bit to market and deliver e-books, but I admittedly have no information to support that assumption.
When any new format of media emerges its consumption costs are almost always significantly higher than the format it is aiming to replace. DVD’s, CD’s, Blu-ray, color televisions, HD programming, all emerged with higher price points because there had been a significant investment made that ultimately led to their creation. Why should this be any different? Should Amazon eat all the R&D, bandwidth, distribution, storage and marketing costs just so that they can sell cheap e-books? I don’t think that they should.
I would also not expect Amazon to encourage nor allow the sharing of e-books as a fundamental part of their service. Would that benefit the consumer? I don’t think that it would because that loss in revenue from pass-along would have to be made up on all of the original purchases thus making for more expensive e-books. The idea would be similar to the newspaper industry saying to their subscribers “Feel free to pass your newspaper on to your neighbor and encourage your neighbor to pass it along as well”, who would that benefit? The person getting the passed on paper but not the subscriber who was forced to pay more for their subscription.
Just my opinion.
Scott,
Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment. You do bring up some very good points regarding the upfront cost of a new technology and the cost of adoption. You do see if with Blu-Ray for sure, and you did see it with DVDs and those ultimately came down. I guess I would love for publishers (and authors) to look at some non-traditional models for distributing their works. One maybe not so good example (but it was top of mind) is iTunes. They have succeeded in getting people to pay for software again, in addition to paying for their other forms of media. I think that self publishing plus a very reasonable pricing structure (most apps are free, .99 or only a few bucks) allows the content to reach many more people than the traditional music / software distribution model (thanks in large part to the pricing structure / ease of purchase). I’m curious if authors soon decide to skip the middle man so to speak with digital books and go directly to their readers.
In terms of the sharing aspect – you’re very correct that it doesn’t benefit the content creator – but neither does the paper version. For me it comes down to wh owns the content on my device – me? Apple? Publishers? It’s a murky thing right now, but if I own the content, I feel like I should be able to consume it on any device – and why not ‘lend’ my copy to a friend? Even with restrictions (maybe they only get the first two chapters to sample – or my copy is deleted while it’s on another person’s machine) I’d be comfortable with that.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
tonight when we finished, Hey mom you know that could be me. You know ranideg is tough for me, and I have a hard time. I told him I know, but you can do anything you dream of My son’s reply I know mama, and I know I’m not alone. . Your book choked me up as a mom because I see his struggle, but his response left me thinking he will rise above this and he will do great. He also left me blubbering! Thank you for this book and how the story is told he heard he could do this thing called life and come out on top.