Joanna's Morning Links post today included a link to a Mike Shatzkin article about the future of Barnes & Noble. I found this statement particularly telling: "It is a virtual certainty that if a book has three different prices: print in the store, print online, and ebook, the printed book in the store will cost the most. This is not a formula to assure bookstore survival." If Amazon.com has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that books should be inexpensive. I know that authors and publishers wish Amazon had not taught us the lesson, but it's been well and truly taught. Publishers,...

It's been my experience that avid readers tend to be the sorts of people who take great pride in their intelligence. And intelligent people, for reasons that are obvious enough, aren't always forthcoming when they encounter complicated subjects they don't entirely understand. I mention this because I suspect that a decent portion of the e-reading community is having a hard time wrapping its collective head around the now-approved e-book pricing settlement situation. And that's a shame, because this particular case offers anyone who's interested a fantastic opportunity to observe the process of free-market capitalism in all its exquisite absurdity. I'll be the first to admit that all the...

Publishing industry consultant Mike Shatzkin has posted a look on his blog at what the settlement terms could mean for the near future of publishing as the publishers who’ve settled put the required contract changes into effect. Assuming things move forward at all speed, the terms could be in effect as soon as mid-September, well in time for the holiday season. Although Shatzkin was a fairly vocal critic of the settlement in past columns, he doesn’t waste any time complaining about the DoJ’s decision to let it remain unchanged. Instead, he talks about the business models publishers might consider...

I previously discussed publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin’s letter to the DoJ concerning the antitrust investigation against Google. Here’s one from about as far to the other side as you can go: self-publishing booster and blogger Joe Konrath. In his letter, Konrath accuses the publishers of keeping e-book prices high to protect sales of their high-margin hardcover books, and opines that Amazon is the only one really fostering competition. He also accuses the Authors Guild and Association of Authors’ Representatives of working not for authors as their names imply, but for publishers. Konrath links to several of his...

Publishing-industry consultant Mike Shatzkin has posted the letter he has sent the Department of Justice in regard to its proposed settlement with three of the five original Agency publishers. Shatzkin spends much of the letter establishing his credibility as a consultant, then points out the two fundamental problems he sees with the settlement. First is the one that he mentioned in his column the other day—if publishers sell directly to the consumer, they can’t sell at full price without Amazon eating their lunch, and if they discount Amazon may insist its own prices should be based on the publishers’ discount price...

On the Columbia Journalism Review, Ryan Chittum has a rebuttal to a number of recent posts about e-book production costs and price, including the post by Mathew Ingram that I covered here. Though the article is replete with quotes and counter-arguments, but the central thrust seems to be that publishers ought to be able to charge what they want to—but they really should be wanting to charge less. At base, copyright holders have the right to ask what they want to get for their work (which is why they were so concerned about Amazon selling ebooks...

Publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin’s latest column is a look at the motives behind Amazon’s competitive behavior, and how it might end legacy publishing. Perhaps the most interesting thing here is that Shatzkin spends the first half of the post giving the devil his due, explaining why Amazon has been looking so good to so many people with manuscripts they want to get out there. If you’ve got the manuscript in hand and you have a choice between [spending months to go from manuscript to published book and earning lower royalties] and having books to show your...

In Mike Shatzkin’s latest essay about publishing, collecting his insights about this year’s London Book Fair, an interesting paragraph leaps out at me. Shatzkin was talking to Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne about the DRM-free release of the Harry Potter books, and reports being startled by what Redmayne had to say about Potter piracy: Apparently, Potter ebook files started showing up on file-sharing sites pretty much right away after they opened. But before they could serve any takedown notices, Charlie says the community of sharers reacted. They said “C’mon now. Here we have a publisher doing what...

Ever since the Department of Justice first made noises about suing over agency pricing, interest in Amazon’s, the publishers’, and Apple’s pricing practices has revived, with everyone and his brother expressing an opinion. Just over the last few days, I’ve starred a couple of dozen commentary posts on my Google Reader trawls, which is a bit much to cover here, at least all at once. But I’ll hit a few high points. First of all, John Scalzi is a little grumpy about “consumers who apparently think the current drama surrounding e-books is like a football game.” He reminds readers...

Well, the Harry Potter e-books are out, and they’re making a splash. There are a number of reactions being reported on the web to various aspects of the announcement, and it interests me to look at some of them. For starters, Tim Carmody at Wired calls attention to the fact that Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both unprecedentedly referring customers to Pottermore to register and buy the books, then automatically adding them to their respective e-reader accounts. (And both of them are promoting the Potter e-books on their respective front pages as if the sales were their own...

What will the publishing industry look like if all physical bookstores go the way of Borders? Publishing-industry observer Mike Shatzkin doesn’t know, but he thinks publishers shouldn’t want to find out for as long as possible. Some publishers report that the growth rate of e-book sales seems to be tapering off, However, other publishers report that their own e-book growth rate continues. And as more e-books sell, physical book sales go by the wayside—and with them go the bookstores that are selling them. UK analysts, as reported in the Guardian, predict a 40% decline in all “high street” brick-and-mortar...

An interesting thing about the latest post from publishing-industry observer Mike Shatzkin, highlighting what he feels were the most important points from the Digital Book World conference he helped run: it largely focuses on DRM. Aside from Matteo Berlucchi’s call for publishers to drop DRM (which I covered here and here), Shatzkin also brings up a point about the relationship of DRM to sales at romance e-bookseller All Romance Ebooks. Shatzkin notes three interesting statistics that came up in All Romance’s presentation at DBW: Only 20% of All Romance’s readers strongly resist e-books with DRM....