haikujaguar posted Novelr's post about 99 cent ebooks. She's in favor. I'm not, but that's going to get obvious. I'll just continue the dialogue here because it's too much to go into on Twitter.Novelr gathers links about the inevitability of 99-cent e-books. I think they're right on this one. Songs are 99 cents. Why are novels $15? (Please don't tell me that songs don't take as long as novels to write. Some novels are written in a week; some songs take years. It's all art.)
Whoa. Let's back that truck up.
Here's the thing--the argument here is not that novels are somehow higher art than music--no one makes that argument. And a 3 minute song with pro mastering and recording probably takes a lot longer than people think, likely as long as it takes fast writers to create a novel. Not the point--the hours that go into something are not printed on the label.
The point is that the unit value of "song" is not the same as the unit value of "novel." The comparison is more song ==> short story or song ==> chapter, and album ==> novel.
Go on iTunes. Most albums? Are still about $10-$15.
A song is a part of a whole. A novel is a whole. They do not equate. Sure, there are singles, but most people still put out albums, not 14 singles all in a row. It takes three minutes on average to listen to a song. It takes hours, and often days or weeks, to read and enjoy a novel. The entertainment output is enormous. It takes longer to read a novel than to play some video games--and if you want to talk about price gouging, let's break out my XBox, shall we? Now, of course, one listens to songs more than once, and so you might end up with several hours worth of pleasure out of a single song. Many people also read novels more than once, and you can never tell when you click the buy button if this book/song will be one you love forever and read/listen to over and over, or one you get bored with and forget about after a week.
Ultimately, I'm a little tired of people telling me my work isn't worth very much. That we should accept Apple--APPLE--price points without hesitation or consideration, that all units are the same units, all art is the same art. Obviously, sculpture, paintings, murals, and jewelry should also all cost 99 cents each. Actors should only get paid 99 cents per performance. Dancers should only get 99 cents per dance. Architects should get 99 cents per building. Concerts should also charge 99 cents admission. It's all art--the units are all interchangeable, and should all be tied to iTunes pricing.
This is madness, to me.
Because of the 99 cents model on iTunes (and piracy), most musicians who are not the Black Eyed Peas or some such have moved to a donations model to support themselves and continue to make albums. Writers do this too--we all have tip jars, but far fewer people throw in because writing in general gets a bit shat upon as an art form. (And the fact that it takes longer to consume means many people just download a file and never look at it again. Don't think your piracy figures equate to actual readers.) Anyone can do it, obviously. They're all greedy hacks. That's why Amazon users figure ebooks should be free. You're not doing anything special, how dare you ask for money for it? That's like begging.
Do I think ebooks are priced too high? Probably. I think the price should be more like a mass market paperback--which is not 99 cents, you'll notice.
You pay 5.99 for a mocha, dude. Why would you not pay it for a book?
Moreover, why would anyone insist that everyone charge the same for their books, that the "market" settle out to conform to Apple's idea of pricing circa 2001? What that's actually saying is: no one should make more than a little bit of money from writing. It's a hobby, not a job anyone needs to be compensated for. You need that skilled barista to make your fancy mocha, but a writer? Unless the idea is that publishers would still pay advances as they do now, but only charge 99 cents for the ebooks. Which does not compute. Or that publishers should vanish altogether, which point we have already discussed ad nauseam. Of course even at 99 cents, some people will be successful, but that number will be even smaller than it is now.
No one benefits from a field that is bled dry of talent and especially risk-taking talent so that downloads can be brought down to 99 cents. I am not cool with this, and you shouldn't be either. I will happily overpay for every ebook if it means writers get to eat and feed their families. I overpay for shit all the time without making righteous judgments about what it "should" cost in some impossibly ideal world where everyone has insurance and no one is hungry and everything in the entire universe costs 99 cents.
I agree that ebooks should be cheaper than paper books. But I don't agree that they should be six or seven times cheaper. And I think, personally, that hardcovers are overpriced. 25 was pushing it, lately they've been 30. I realize that, economically, that's one way that publishers are trying to compete and stay in the profit zone, but as a buyer, I don't buy nearly the number of hardcovers I used to. I have a "buy" threshold. If I want a book and it is at or under my threshold (and it varies by genre and by author for me), I buy it. If it is priced above that, I wait for a sale or to find it used. If a book is on the dollar shelf at Powell's, then yes, I do in fact look at it with suspicion because I wonder how bad it must be to be so cheap. If I've heard of the author or the opening really grabs me, I might snap it up for a buck, but I'm more likely to go get something I want for 7.99. Those are just my buying habits, obviously. Buyers are different and there is definitely a bargain crowd (nothing wrong with that).
The question is, are ebooks like music? I don't think they are. I think that the album comparison is slightly better than the single song one, but it is still a different thing.
However, fortunately for those of us who don't think ebooks should always cost .99, ebooks are, in some ways, like hamburgers. There will be people who want the .99 hamburger from a fast food joint, and then there will be a lot of people who don't mind paying 7.99 or more for a hamburger from a sit-down sort of restaurant. Both places stay in business and tend to attract different kinds of buyers. As a publisher, it just depends on what kind of buyers you want to have. There are arguments for both sorts.
And yes, 2.29 is closer to 2.99 which is what some consider the idea price for an ebook. It will be interesting to see how the pricing of ebooks shakes out. I don't think .99 is sustainable (and it seems really unsustainable for a traditional publisher who has much greater overhead than an indie). The next few years will be crazy interesting to follow.
Another mistake is the connection of price and quality. We do not currently pay more for "better" books—the hamburger thing is inapt. (Also, people who do buy 99c hamburgers ALSO buy the 7.99 one.) Right now, one of Cat's books costs the same as virtually any other trade paperback on the shelf, whether it's from the LEFT BEHIND series (worse than Cat's book) or REVOLUTIONARY ROAD (better than Cat's book). Consumers in the overwhelming majority of purchases, are paying for format and pagecount, not for quality.
There's no particular reason to believe that a 99c ebook is unsustainable when there is a growing audience associated with buying them. Is it difficult for big publishers to meet that price? Yes. Whose problem is that? Big publishing's, just as it was small and mid-sized publishing for decades when paper prices went up, when chains and wholesalers demanded bigger pieces of the pie, etc. Those smaller publishers were consumed by their larger competitors, leading to today's Big Six. (Most of those varied imprints were once independent publishers will small offices and small staffs.) Conglomeratization—which was TERRIBLE for writers and ended dozens upon dozens of careers—once "made sense" in pure economic terms...for shareholders, not employees or writers. Now it doesn't make nearly as much sense anymore. So big publishing will have to collapse back into its component parts if it wants to compete with smaller outfits and even individual authors who can bring a book in at 99 cents and make a profit. That's not a bad thing; that's a GREAT thing, for writers and consumers and yes, even for editors and copy-editors. The competent ones anyway.