Jennifer Becton's Blog, page 25
August 19, 2014
Get a Quote: Benjamin Franklin Edition
To be thrown upon one’s own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible.
–Benjamin Franklin, Poor Man’s College
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Every Writer Fails (www)
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August 13, 2014
Digital or Paper: Which Leads to Better Reading Comprehension?
According to a new study by Anne Mangen and her colleagues at the Reading Centre of the University of Stavanger in Norway, reading text on paper leads to better reading comprehension than reading on a computer screen.
The Methodology (emphasis added):
They randomly divided 72 of their 10th grade teens into two groups. Both were given two texts, a fiction piece and a factual piece.
One group was asked to read the two texts as PDF files on standard computer screens, the other read the texts on paper. The pupils’ individual reading skills and vocabularies had been charted beforehand, to make allowances for these variations.
The teens were then asked to answer questions that would show how well they had comprehended the text.
The Results:
The results clearly demonstrated that those who had read on computer screens had understood less than those who read on paper….
Mind and body are interlinked….
[Mangen] thinks educators shouldn’t decide to get rid of paper based on a blind faith in digital technology. Read the full text here.
It would be interesting to see this study replicated with an e-ink screen and a PDF/shiny screen. Or even an ebook on a backlit screen. I seem to find my reading comprehension is better with e-ink than on a computer screen. I hate backlit screens.
Mind and body are obviously interlinked. It stands to reason that the spatial component of physical books helps create a map of the book, thus aiding recall. All that gobbledy-goo about just loving the feel and smell of paper is nostalgic hooey. Spatial reasoning and recall are real reasons why paper might produce a more thorough reading experience.
And a big duh-huh on the last result: no one should ever put “blind faith” in anything.
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August 12, 2014
Best Motivational Speech $15 Can Buy (NSFM)
Who the hell hit the chicken switch?
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The Amazon/Hachette Drama Continues
Has anyone else reached saturation point on the Amazon/Hachette Drama?
I do not deny that the Amazon/Hachette standoff is important and ought to be followed, but the issue has devolved into teenage drama. The mean girls have passed the point of logic and are just being nasty for nastiness’s sake. They’re even forcing the whole school–I mean the publishing industry–to take sides. Popular Girl A (Hachette) has their petition and letter writing campaign, and Popular Girl B (Amazon) has theirs. It’s like middle school all over again. Whose panties am I supposed to freeze?
And just like middle school, those of us in the center of fight have limited information about what’s actually going on. Hachette seems to be saying that $14.99 is the sweet spot for ebook pricing, and they seem to have data that opposes what Amazon has published. Why aren’t they sharing this data? It should all come down to numbers. It shouldn’t be this hard.
What is going on in the background that we’re not seeing?
Here’s where it becomes tricky. If it is true that Amazon likes to make money and if their data is correct ($9.99 earns more money for everyone than $14.99), then why is Hachette resisting? Ebook prices would be lower, but everyone–the publisher, the seller, and the author–would make more money overall. If that’s not true, then Hachette should refute it by publishing its data. And if Amazon is right, then the issue is not ebook profits and pricing at all. If it’s not about ebook profits, then what is it about?
JA Konrath has several posts on his theory regarding legacy publishing’s desire to hold on to the paper book market. It’s a plausible theory.
Or is Hachette pissed off about the whole collusion thing and trying to stick it to Amazon? Also plausible.
But here’s the thing. I’m not hanging out in publishers’ boardrooms. I also do not possess Sookie Stackhouse’s ability to read minds. I cannot know for certain what someone else is thinking. I can guess based on (limited) information, but it’s still a guess.
And yet the Authors Guild, Hachette, and Amazon are all asking me (authors) to choose a side and lobby for it. Obviously, everyone has their own opinion about what’s going on. I do. But if a guild, publisher, or company calls on people to jump on the chick fight bandwagon, how about giving them the actual facts instead of pushing the drama?
Because they have shown no data supporting their claims, Hachette’s argument boils down to “Amazon is a big meanie.” That tells me nothing about ebook prices, sales, or profits.
How about you gals just handle this business dispute, and leave me out of it, K?
Here’s today’s melodrama.
Popular Girl A’s (Hachette) response letter to those who emailed regarding ebook prices as requested by Popular Girl B (Amazon).
William Ockham breaks it down.
Then there was a nice article in the Financial Times (a pay site) that claimed Hachette couldn’t sell their ebooks directly to the public and do so cheaper than Amazon. What bollocks! (Sorry I can’t quote the article directly. I really wanted to pick it apart, but I waited too long, and I’m not paying for it.)
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August 11, 2014
Newspapers with 100% Less Paper (www)
Media companies are dropping their print newspapers. Perhaps its because readers no longer buy them. Or maybe they’re just tired of ink-stained fingers.
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Who Sets Ebook Prices?
Amazon (AMZN) used to set the prices people paid for ebooks, but, thanks to an illegal price fixing conspiracy, they lost most of that power to publishers. Almost everyone–probably even the big publishers–would be better off if they got it back. Read More. (Emphasis added.)
“Amazon…used to set the prices people paid for ebooks.” WRONG!
This may sound like a matter of semantics, but it is really the crux of the dispute between Amazon and Hachette. Who gets to determine ebook prices? Is it the publisher or the bookseller?
Technically, it’s both and neither.
“The market” determines price. But “the market” sounds so intangible. What does that even mean?
The seller/publisher sets the sale price.
The purchaser determines the number of sales.
For example, Nail Polish Co. wants to make a lot of money–as most companies do–so they set their price at $70 per bottle of polish. (The seller sets the sale price: $70.) Purchasers refuse to pay $70 for a freaking bottle of nail polish. (The purchaser determines the number of sales: 0)
The seller then has two choices:
Ignore purchasers’ input, maintain the same high price, and go out of business due to lack of sales.
Take into account the purchasers’ input and lower the price.
A smart company would change their price based on the purchasers’ input (how many purchases they are willing to make at the given price). See my blog about The Sweet Spot.
The article goes on to say this:
Part of what’s made Amazon a success is its sophisticated pricing system, which automatically raise and lower prices on millions of items throughout the day. Prices change in response to varying levels of interest from buyers, competitors’ prices and other factors. And the bottom line for consumers is great prices on most products, while sellers tout Amazon as their most profitable outlet. Read More. (Emphasis added.)
So who is really setting ebook prices? The seller/publisher and the purchaser work together to determine the best price. Amazon collects data about spending habits and changes the price throughout the day to maximize sales and profits. The behavior of the buyer sets the price; Amazon just collects and uses the data. Click here to see some of their recently released sales information.
As indie authors, we have more limited data, but we can still set price based on our readers’ input. (More on that in The Sweet Spot post.) Without the buyers’ input, any price point is a pretty arbitrary number. It doesn’t matter who–the publisher or the seller–chooses it. Unless they pay attention the the readers (the market), then they are doing themselves, their authors, and their readers a disservice.
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August 9, 2014
Amazon: Indies Should Email Hachette????
Dear KDP Author,
Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year.
With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.
Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive.
Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers.
The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.
Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.
Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We’ve quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.
But when a thing has been done a certain way for a long time, resisting change can be a reflexive instinct, and the powerful interests of the status quo are hard to move. It was never in George Orwell’s interest to suppress paperback books – he was wrong about that.
And despite what some would have you believe, authors are not united on this issue. When the Authors Guild recently wrote on this, they titled their post: “Amazon-Hachette Debate Yields Diverse Opinions Among Authors” (the comments to this post are worth a read). A petition started by another group of authors and aimed at Hachette, titled “Stop Fighting Low Prices and Fair Wages,” garnered over 7,600 signatures. And there are myriad articles and posts, by authors and readers alike, supporting us in our effort to keep prices low and build a healthy reading culture. Author David Gaughran’s recent interview is another piece worth reading.
We recognize that writers reasonably want to be left out of a dispute between large companies. Some have suggested that we “just talk.” We tried that. Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store. Since then Amazon has made three separate offers to Hachette to take authors out of the middle. We first suggested that we (Amazon and Hachette) jointly make author royalties whole during the term of the dispute. Then we suggested that authors receive 100% of all sales of their titles until this dispute is resolved. Then we suggested that we would return to normal business operations if Amazon and Hachette’s normal share of revenue went to a literacy charity. But Hachette, and their parent company Lagardere, have quickly and repeatedly dismissed these offers even though e-books represent 1% of their revenues and they could easily agree to do so. They believe they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle.
We will never give up our fight for reasonable e-book prices. We know making books more affordable is good for book culture. We’d like your help. Please email Hachette and copy us.
Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch: Michael.Pietsch@hbgusa.com
Copy us at: readers-united@amazon.com
Please consider including these points:
- We have noted your illegal collusion. Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.
- Lowering e-book prices will help – not hurt – the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.
- Stop using your authors as leverage and accept one of Amazon’s offers to take them out of the middle.
- Especially if you’re an author yourself: Remind them that authors are not united on this issue.
Thanks for your support.
The Amazon Books Team
P.S. You can also find this letter at www.readersunited.com
Points to Consider
Consumers want lower ebook prices. Shouldn’t they be the ones to email Hachette, not KDP authors in particular?
Hachette authors are directly hurt by their high ebook prices. Shouldn’t they be the ones to email Hachette?
What about indies? Is it our fight?
Do Hachette’s higher ebook prices hurt us?
Do their high prices make less expensive books more attractive?
Do their high prices scare readers away from ebooks in favor of paperbacks?
Or does a reader with $15 to spend buy only 1 book as opposed to 15 $.99-books?
Hachette could have other motives (preserving their paper sales) or something else entirely. Maybe they just want to stick it to Amazon after the collusion debacle.
Amazon realizes that authors like to stay out of this nonsense, but then asks us to jump right in. I’m sorry for the Hachette authors caught in the middle, and I’m sorry that readers (me included) are being asked to pay artificially high ebook prices. Frankly, I think readers have a much stronger case for writing to Hachette than indie authors.
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August 8, 2014
Mary Bennet: A Novella in the Personages of P&P Collection
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Mary Bennet: A Novella
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A Novella in the Personages of P&P Collection
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Patterson Opines; Konrath and Eisler Do Their Thing
Saturation point anyone? I’ll summarize today’s antics.
James Patterson wrote a snark-fest of a piece on the Hatchette/Amazon sitch on CNN.
In case you didn’t know, Patterson comes down on the side of his publisher. Quelle surprise. In April 2013, he took out the above ad in the NYT. The best thing I can say about it is that at least he was intellectually honest. He took that ad out in PRINT, not on digital media. Apparently, he needed to reach more readers with his most recent opinion, so he used digital media. Hypocrite.
Konrath and Eisler snark back.
Meanwhile, 900 authors sign open letter to Amazon. Full text below.
Amazon is involved in a commercial dispute with the book publisher Hachette , which owns Little, Brown, Grand Central Publishing, and other familiar imprints. These sorts of disputes happen all the time between companies and they are usually resolved in a corporate back room.
But in this case, Amazon has done something unusual. It has directly targeted Hachette’s authors in an effort to force their publisher to agree to its terms.
For the past several months, Amazon has been:
–Boycotting Hachette authors, by refusing to accept pre-orders on Hachette authors’ books and eBooks, claiming they are “unavailable.”
–Refusing to discount the prices of many of Hachette authors’ books.
–Slowing the delivery of thousands of Hachette authors’ books to Amazon customers, indicating that delivery will take as long as several weeks on most titles.
–Suggesting on some Hachette authors’ pages that readers might prefer a book from a non-Hachette author instead.
As writers–most of us not published by Hachette–we feel strongly that no bookseller should block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from ordering or receiving the books they want. It is not right for Amazon to single out a group of authors, who are not involved in the dispute, for selective retaliation. Moreover, by inconveniencing and misleading its own customers with unfair pricing and delayed delivery, Amazon is contradicting its own written promise to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company.“
Many of us have supported Amazon since it was a struggling start-up. Our books launched Amazon on the road to selling everything and becoming one of the world’s largest corporations. We have made Amazon many millions of dollars and over the years have contributed so much, free of charge, to the company by way of cooperation, joint promotions, reviews and blogs. This is no way to treat a business partner. Nor is it the right way to treat your friends. Without taking sides on the contractual dispute between Hachette and Amazon, we encourage Amazon in the strongest possible terms to stop harming the livelihood of the authors on whom it has built its business. None of us, neither readers nor authors, benefit when books are taken hostage. (We’re not alone in our plea: the opinion pages of both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which rarely agree on anything, have roundly condemned Amazon’s corporate behavior.)
We call on Amazon to resolve its dispute with Hachette without further hurting authors and without blocking or otherwise delaying the sale of books to its customers.
We respectfully ask you, our loyal readers, to email Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, at jeff@amazon.com, and tell him what you think. He says he genuinely welcomes hearing from his customers and claims to read all emails at that account. We hope that, writers and readers together, we will be able to change his mind. (See the signatories here.)
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