Publishers need to accept the concept of price points in Kindle.

Yes, I’m shouting into the wind. But this is my blog, so I’m exerting my privilege to do so.

The basic issue here is that, yes, most publishers want people buying physical books, presumably because they’ve spent a lot of money on the physical infrastructure necessary to make physical books. Unfortunately for them, we live in a time where adequate books can be published cheaply on-demand, and digital copies can be published more cheaply still. The publishing industry has been at war with Amazon for decades over this, and the best it’s been able to do is manage a slow, grinding retreat. And if Amazon goes away, I guarantee that smaller, more specialized e-publishing companies will rush in to fill the void*. The technology is here, and it will be used.

In the meantime: if you are a midlist author**, or you are the executor of the estate of a deceased author, you are leaving money on the table if you let the established publishers define your e-book prices. Here’s an example: WASP, by Eric Frank Russell. I’ve never read it. I hear it’s extremely good. I’m not paying nine bucks for it. If you’re in charge of Russell’s estate and you’re wondering why you never see the royalties for e-sales that you were expecting, that’s why. That book should be five bucks. Possibly four. It’d definitely sell better… which would be the problem, wouldn’t it?

I mention all of this against personal interest, mind you. I’m a self-published author who benefits from the artificially-high prices of my competitors (and hopefully future competitors). But we’re all bozos on this bus.

Moe Lane

#commissionearned

*Or the global economy will collapse. But if that happens, the publishing industry will have other problems to deal with, like the effective end of civilization above the regional level.

**There are several authors who I will tolerate paying extra for their e-books. But that’s an all-that-the-traffic-will-bear kind of situation.