Rich, lazy, author. Which of these doesn't apply?

[seanan_mcguire]

Okay. So this article appeared in the New York Times, explaining, in brief, how authors are greedy bastards trying to screw the e-book reader. (I'm sorry, are my prejudices showing there? Oh, wait. Yes, they are. Because I like being able to feed my cats.) To quote one of the more charming bits:

"This book has been on the shelves for three weeks and is already in the remainder bins," wrote Wayne Fogel of The Villages, Fla., when he left a one-star review of Catherine Coulter's book KnockOut on Amazon. "$14.82 for the Kindle version is unbelievable. Some listings Amazon should refuse when the authors are trying to rip off Amazon's customers."

So let me see if I've got this straight, shall I?

1) The author sets the price, not the publisher.
2) The author is, apparently, getting a huge percentage of the cover price.
3) The right way to object to this is to make people think the book sucks.
4) It doesn't matter if this means the author can't sell another book; they shouldn't have been greedy.

Um, what?

There is this incredible, eye-burning, heart-shattering impression that all authors are rich; that we sign that first contract, receive that first check, and spend the rest of our days lounging on the beach in Bura-Bura while dictating our works of creative genius to a scantily-clad cabana boy named Chad. If this is true, something's wrong with my authorial contract. I've sold six books—by the standards of any beginning author, I'm doing pretty well—but Chad has yet to put in an appearance, and I'm still not sure where Bura-Bura is. Instead, I get up every morning at 5AM to travel an hour and a half to get to work, spend my evenings hammering away at my keyboard and praying for another sale, and all my grocery purchases are heavily influenced by what's currently on sale. I make a weekly trip to Target to stock up on frozen dinners and kitty litter, because I can't actually afford to let my cats crap on silken beds of cedar shavings hand-milled for them on a little organic farm in Minnesota. I buy sweaters at Goodwill, and consider myself blessed by the Great Pumpkin when I find an Ann Taylor top for five dollars, because it saves me a trip to the mall that I really shouldn't be making. And I'm doing well.

The fantastic rolanni has posted a very realistic view at a working author's finances. This is someone who's been publishing for years, and has actually reached the stage of getting royalty payments (not every book will reach the royalty stage; many books never actually earn back their advances). If anybody deserves their ticket to Bura-Bura, it's her. And she ain't on a plane right now.

Look: the $15 price point that some publishers are proposing is for the hardcover edition. The Kindle edition of Rosemary and Rue costs $6.39, which is 20% less than the price of the physical item. Because the physical books are published, at least currently, in bulk, 20% is a fairly valid reflection of the cost of paper and distribution. 80% of the cost of the book goes to the author, the editor, the copyeditor, the layout artist, the cover artist, the marketing department, and the magical mystery adventure we like to call "keeping the lights on at the publisher's office." Saying that an electronic copy of the book costs the publisher "nothing" is like saying that an MP3 of one of my songs costs me "nothing." So wait, I don't have to pay my recording engineer anything if I'm only selling virtual music? It's all free money? Score! Sure, Kristoph won't be able to make his mortgage payments or upgrade his equipment, but what do I care? Free money!

If publishers aren't allowed to charge more for the electronic editions of expensive books, they'll refuse to offer the electronic editions until the mass-market paperbacks come out. Hardcovers cost more for a variety of reasons—including the fact that often, hardcover authors are getting slightly larger advances. So that is, I suppose, a bit of authorial greed, because we're putting our desire to feed the cats (and ourselves) ahead of the consumer's desire to pay six dollars for something we spent two years writing. Sorry.

Also, these reactions are, well, hurtful. By saying that authors are "greedy" for wanting to make a living, people are saying that our time has no value. These are often the same people who will willingly pay ten dollars for a movie ticket (and ten more for popcorn and a soda), knowing that the actors were paid thousands, if not millions, of dollars to speak lines that somebody wrote. Every cool quip you've ever heard in a movie or on TV? Yeah, somebody wrote that. If somebody had been flipping burgers to keep the lights on, maybe somebody wouldn't have had the time to come up with that awesome line. Authors need to eat, and if we can't do that through our art, we'll find another way to do it...and things won't get written. I mean, look:

Time to write a book, six months to three years.
Time to sell a book, six days to eternity.
Time to edit a book, six months.
Time between publication and print, one to three years.

How much money do you make during that time? (Don't actually answer that, I don't want to know. I'm just making a point.) Unless you're Stephen King, writing is never going to make you rich, and saying you'd like to eat doesn't make you greedy, it makes you sane.

I am not saying that publishers should be charging whatever they want for everything—just that e-books cost money, too, and that not all the costs of creating a book are in the physical artifact you can point to and shout "book" about. My publisher wants to make money. My publisher wants me to make money, because when I'm making money, so are they, and more, when I'm making enough money, I can actually get that cabana boy and spend a lot more time writing. Right now, I'm literally working myself sick, spending three days in bed, and then doing it again, because that's the only way to stay on top of all the things I need to do.

Authors, as a class, aren't greedy. We're just tired.

Now where's my damn cabana boy?

Comments

[kyrielle]

Except that if the publisher prints 8k hardcovers, and only 2k are bought, they still paid for the other 6k. That's additional cost to them that comes right out of their sales - decreasing the margin on hc to the point where it's probably negative. Because once the paperback comes out, the hardcover's unlikely to sell except remaindered and at a loss.

Of course, they can simply print fewer hc or none. However, fewer hc is a smaller print run is a more expensive (to the publisher) book, either increasing the price of the hc or reducing the margins again. And going straight to paperback kicks the publisher back to the lower margins of pb for people who want a physical book.

That may be where the industry ends up going, but I can see why they'd be reluctant to do it. Not everyone wants eBooks or has an eReader, and the publisher is better off selling hardcovers to those people who do want physical books - those who will buy it. If the eBook format eats into the sales, thus forcing them to smaller print runs and higher costs, I can see where that would be a major issue for them.

Which is why I want to see them implement the discussed model (not a single price-point for a product, but a sliding scale over time) that they've proposed. Because yes, I won't buy the eBook until it drops, but I'd like it then. But I also see why they don't want to undercut hardcovers. (I think the delay might be more like 6 months for those, if they wanted to get as many off the shelves as possible...because most of what was left when a cheap eBook option came out would probably be a loss, at a guess.

NetFlix vs. DVD is a slightly different scenario. NetFlix will cut into DVD sales, but it won't kill them - assuming it's not in the on-demand section - because someone who sees and loves a movie may want the convenience of owning it. With an eBook, you have the convenience of owning it, and a physical copy is useful only if you want to be able to loan it. Which is probably a bigger barrier to interest to overcome.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

It depends on the margins and the total sales.

OK, back to my example figures of $6.50 and $6.75.
Lets say the printing costs are half the base margin (a roughly accurate estimation), so $3.25 per.
Our print run is 10k copies.
We will assume that 10k copies are sold in total between HC and ebook. Thus every ebook sold is one less HC sold.

10k units @ $3.25 each is $32,500. This is our fixed expense.

So we sell all 10k copies and no ebooks. That's $65,000 in revenue, minus $32,500 in expenses, for a profit of $32,500.

Now lets say we sell 5k of each. That's 5k times $6.50 is $32,500, plus 5k times $6.75 equals $33,750 for a total revenue of $66,250, making a profit of $33,750.

Wait, did we just make more money, even though half the print run was remaindered? Yes, yes we did.

Now lets assume we sell 10k ebooks and ZERO hardcovers. That's $67,500 in revenue, minus $32,500 in expenses, for a profit of $35,000.

Even though they spent the money printing all those books, and every single one ended up pulped, the publisher still made MORE money on the "cannibalized sales", because the margin on the ebooks was higher.

That's why I don't buy the "cannibalized sales" argument. Plus this scenario is unrealistic, because the lower price point of ebooks will result in higher sales.

For every 1 hardcover not sold, there will be 1.x ebooks sold.

And for the record... smaller print runs would be a high cost per unit, but still a lower total cost overall. If you only print half as many copies of a book, at a 50% higher cost, because you know the other half of the sales will be made through ebooks, then you're actually saving money.

10k units at "1" cost is 10k
5k units at "1.5" cost is 7.5k, a 25% savings.