Comments on: The screw you ebook deal

By: batgirl

batgirl — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 20:41:26 +0000

Jan Strnad makes a great point about exclusivity deals and format choices.

Wylie has every right to do what he has done but I also hate the exclusivity part. These are authors I read and would purchase if they were available in almost any other format as my ereader can read almost every other format.

Instead, Wylie has lost multiple sales from me. The question for Wylie is how many more sales out there has he lost by restricting the format. Maybe the deal is worth it to him and his authors (or authors’ estates) but I’m not going to cry when they scream about unauthorized copies floating around the Net.

Give me a legal copy to purchase that I can use on the ereader of my choice and I will, otherwise they can STFU as far as I am concerned.

By: Jan Strnad

Jan Strnad — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:29:32 +0000

I’m all for Wylie circumventing the publishers and marketing his clients’ work straight to ebooks. What, exactly, do publishers have to offer this group of established authors?

I don’t like the exclusivity. What choice does B&N have now but to issue its own exclusive titles? We’ve seen this stage of format wars before, in Beta vs. VHS and HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray, and it simply adds confusion to the marketplace and causes frustration to consumers. “Do I buy a Kindle for books A, B, and C, or a nook for books X, Y, and Z? Or do I just sit out the ebook thing until they get their s**t together?”

As long as Amazon plays this “exclusivity” game, there will market confusion until someone wins…and it may not be Amazon, it might be everyone else and the ePub format.

And $9.99 is too much for most ebooks, especially those laden with DRM.

By: Mike Orange

Mike Orange — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:10:07 +0000

Chris, you’re right, of course. And of course there are different contributors with different perspectives and biases.

This is just the second article in a week with anti-Amazon content that is long on opinion and vitriol, and short on accurate facts. David Rothman’s article of July 20th and this article both sound like they were written in fits of rage.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with criticizing Amazon when criticism is due. And while I felt David’s article was sheer petulance, at least this article had some point it was trying to make. But the author’s use of misinformation, half-truths, and overly emotional language simply dilutes his point and makes his motivations suspect.

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:55:02 +0000

Tone matters.
Articles critical of Amazon (and many postings “refuting” articles that aren’t critical of Amazon) tend to be loaded with emotionally-charged, negative terms that really have no place in a rational discussion of what are at heart cold, practical business decisions.
Too many of the “amazon haters” are simply dismayed that the company doesn’t just roll over and play dead for their opposition and that their business plan, despite their personal disapproval, seems to be rolling merriy along, capturing buyers and generating income left and right.
Rational discourse requires divorcing rhetoric from logic and these kinds of poison-pen articles, do neither side of the debate any good.
Some might think emotional debate draws in traffic but there is traffic and there is traffic and I don’t think many Teleread readers want this particuar site to devolve into a flame-filled battleground like the gaming websites with their warring hordes of fanboys and nay-sayers.
Some articles are best not linked to.
An effort to maintain a civil tone towards all players in the field would be greatly appreciated.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:42:55 +0000

What I find really funny about all this is that if we post articles that dare to suggest we like the way Amazon is doing something, we get accused in comments of being Amazon fanboys…but if we post something critical of Amazon, we suddenly have a “predictable [...] bias”.

You can’t please everybody no matter what you do, I guess.

By: Mike Orange

Mike Orange — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:17:46 +0000

DensityDuck, “screw you” and “ass”… and last time it was “sure as hell had better stop”… laden may have been hyperbole, but anything masquerading as even semi-serious journalism ought to be able to make a strong point without profanity. It reeks of barely restrained hostility.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 22:31:55 +0000

Not really seeing the profanity in there. Maybe you could point it out? I mean, it should be easy, since it’s so laden and everything.

By: Mike Orange

Mike Orange — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:49:29 +0000

More profanity-laden underinformed Amazon bashing? Really, teleread, you’re becoming a bit predictable recently. At least *try* to hide your bias.

By: Common Sense

Common Sense — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:48:41 +0000

I agree with tbrookside, the goal was to point out that authors don’t need the big 6 publishers to have successful ebooks and that they have other avenues for getting their books out there.

As far as I’m concerned, Amazon has always been on the side of the consumer. Their prices on almost everything are very good, I was buying books from them long before ebooks. Why should Amazon have to sell an ebook for $7.99 when the paperback is $5.46 at Walmart, Target, or the grocery store? The agency model screwed consumers and they know it.

As for the backlist, why would I ever pay full price for a book many years old? I can either reread my physical copy, or get it used or at a library. Backlist titles should be made available for a low cost.

By: Howard

Howard — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:46:00 +0000

It seems to me there is a lot of unjustified hype about this move by Wylie. Yes it seems risky. Yes it seems short sighted. But the claim that it damages anyone else but himself and/or his clients is completely OTT.
We are in the infancy stage of this new eMarket. It is good that people are experimenting with new models, even if this one seems a little crazy. Neither agents nor publishers should be monolithic groups acting in lock step. This is a market economy and let’s see over the next couple of years who comes up with the best and most successful strategies for the consumer and the different parties.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:22:48 +0000

@Alexander: Yeah, that was my first thought, too–”John Updike is an outdated has-been whose work is bargain-bin crap?”

Indeed, what Wylie is saying here is that there is no “backlist” anymore; publishers just have a catalog.

By: Peter

Peter — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:21:48 +0000

Can’t you get used physical copies of most of those Wylie books for less than $9.99?

I don’t like Amazon, because they started the whole exclusive format thing. But the more I think about it, as a consumer I don’t really mind exclusive deals. I just hope enough agents and authors are smart enough to sign them with other (hopefully epub) retailers, so that we don’t end up with a monopoly on our hands. If you’re counting on people reading on free apps anyway, why not?

By: Bruce

Bruce — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:47:27 +0000

I don’t own a Kindle, nor do I want to, so I’m not too happy about the Amazon exclusivity. I’m surprised at the contract, since I thought the Amazon deal is 70% of retail price, the price had to be $2.99 – $9.99 and less than the paperback edition, if there was one, and that one couldn’t sell the ebook at other retailers for less.

Here’s another issue with the Amazon exclusivity: no library ebook editions. The Kindle doesn’t support it (even though the mobipocket format does, go figure).

I’m also getting annoyed with the $9.99 figure. I’ve got a Nook, and I’m running into more ebooks where priced at $9.99, or even $7.99, yet there’s a paperback available on the B&N site discounted to $7.19, so I’m paying more for the ebook, which I can’t loan out or sell, than I would for the book. I just grumble and refuse to buy it.

Another thing with the $9.99 backlist. It’s all about money-grubbing heirs who have done nothing creative to deserve it. If I’m going to pay higher than average ebook prices, I’d rather it go to live authors who are still producing, to encourage them to keep writing, than to heirs of best-selling authors who are trying to squeeze every last penny out of the readers, many who probably already own copies of these works in print.

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:45:12 +0000

Whoops; that should read: “Exclusive contracts are a direct result of the elimination of *retail discounting* by the Price-Fixing Scheme.”

By: Felix Torres

Felix Torres — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:41:17 +0000

Sometimes it is best to keep quiet and wait for the dust to settle.
This being teleread, I’ll merely point out two other posts (one just before, one just after) that pretty much counter the whole diatribe.
First, it seems that the Wylie Agency (properly) scared the pants off the other BPHs who are now offering 50% ebook royalties on backlist titles instead of the paltry numbers that drove Wylie’s clients to the Odyssey solution. Sounds like a win for authors and a win for readers as more content is coming in e-form.
Second, the Wylie deal happened because Amazon matched the Price-Fix Five’s terms which, once the Price-Fixers disintermediated, resulted in royalties in the 60%-plus range for the authors. About *triple* what caving in the the BPH “open” rates. Ideological purity is nice; triple royalties on 80% of the market is better even if it means forgoing access to (at most) 20% of the market (which implies non-Amazon buyers don’t use Kindle apps or deDRM). Add in the kick in the pants to the BPHs and the deal is looking like a win for everybody exceptt the anything-but-Amazon crowd.
Long term, the sky is not going to fall.

We’ll see more exclusives but the practice is not going to be widespread as long as the BPHs actually pay reasonable royalties on multi-vendor contracts.

And, let’s not forget; exclusivity contracts are a *direct* reaction to the elimination of the Price-Fix scheme. If the BPHs allowed discounting of ebooks, Amazon’s competitors might have some way to compete other than proclaiming “we support epub!”.

This is just another example of the law of unintended consequences; by openly claiming for themselves 70% of the book price, the BPHs established a hard benchmark against which *their* services can be measured. And on backlist titles it is easy to see they do nothing to merit 50% or more of the retail price. Now they have to face a reality where, to keep authors from taking their ebooks to Amazon or B&N or alternate publishers, they have to flip the rate tables and offer up 50%-plus to the author and the agent and make do with the 20%-or-less rate they were offering authors just last week.

I’m thinking this is P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S.
Just desserts for the BPHs.
Bet they’re loving the new “AGENCY MODEL”, huh?