Interesting Links for 9-10-2011

[andrewducker]

• The 99c novel. I already know people buying these. I wonder where the market is heading
  (tags: books business amazon ebooks)
• Blackboards in Porn - just how accurate are they?
  (tags: porn sfw blackboard maths science)
• You can't have closure. I want to know if it makes you happier if you stop trying to get it.
  (tags: closure emotions life psychology)
• Fascinating piece on how we think can read each other's emotions, even when we can't
  (tags: emotions perception AmandaKnox)
• The Judge Dredd movie is having problems...
  (tags: JudgeDredd comics movies)

Comments

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, it's the next step of the process of amateur writers getting the same access that professional ones have.

The question is whether the market will change (with people refusing to pay a tenner for a novel because they can but them for a pound) or if we'll get filters on Amazon that say "Only show titles that come through a reputable publisher"

[steer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure "through a reputable publisher" cuts it as a recommendation system (though it could be a temporary workaroudn for now). I mean that guarantees one person read and liked it and at least some people edited it. I can more see review aggregation and charts being the solution to the "how can I find the good stuff in a sea of dross".

I think the market will change slightly although at the end of the day a book is cheap entertainment by hourly value (say a cheap paperback costs £5, it still takes you maybe 10 hours to read -- compared to £5 for 2 hours in the cinema).

I suspect the economics will work out similarly to bands -- as barriers to market lower, a job that lots of people are willing to do for free is a job which will have a lot of people struggling to make ends meet, making a loss or not making minimum wage. Previously books which would sell incredibly little were less likely to get publisher support. Hence, I would predict a rise of articles along the lines of "I can't make a living as an author because of piracy/cheap other books/lots of crap books preventing people noticing mine" type whinges as people who were previously self-published and unpublished are now published (but still not making any money at it).

[andrewducker]

Oh, I agree that "someone liked it, and it was edited" isn't a perfect system. But it's something :->

And charts will help - but you said yourself that the Kindle charts are a mess at the moment.

And yes, I suspect that there will be a slippage of people from the "Just about making it as a full-time author" category down into "part time author with a job to support them". And no, they won't be happy about it.

[steer.livejournal.com]

"someone liked it, and it was edited" isn't a perfect system. But it's something

Indeed...

you said yourself that the Kindle charts are a mess at the moment.

I was thinking more of something like metacritic combining user ratings and critic reviews rather than sales charts.

there will be a slippage of people from the "Just about making it as a full-time author" category down into "part time author with a job to support them".

There may well be such a slippage but the more pronounced phenomenon will be the much much larger class of people who consider themselves an author (IMHO).

[andrewducker]

As in, more people will think of themselves as authors?

You're probably right. I think that we're nearing the point where a lot of people don't see a difference between bloggers and journalists, maybe authors will be next.

[steer.livejournal.com]

As in, more people will think of themselves as authors?

Exactly... A few years ago it was pretty clear. If you had a book deal you were a "published author", if not... well, a lot of people like to write. (I mean I know there were people who considered themselves "authors" despite never getting a publishing deal and in some cases never completing a book.)

Assuming that the distinction does break down even more I can see an expanding class of people who write and "get published" who earn only a few grand a year from it. Because so many people simply like writing (and no bad thing) there's bound to be a lot of such books on the market. I imagine this will lead to a lot of people who believe "authors make a living at writing, I am an author, what is wrong with the system that I do not make a living."

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Vetting of quality is a bit of an issue in a market when anyone can self-publish, people will write for free and all ebooks cost $0.99.

I can see people making money as reviewers with popular review sites being able to sell advertising. Perhaps not a living but pocket money or free books for reviewers with a good reputation and a strong following. Also people making money selling new software that helps me find high quality books as defined by me easily. I like the idea of the meta-critic.

I do pay attention to the star ratings on Amazon but they do need to approached with caution. There are often marks given for the quality of the delivery service for example and I find people are reviewers struggle to differentiate between “This book was not to my taste but was well written.” And “This book was not really badly written.”

I think this is the part of the value chain that was previously done by sub-editors and publishers and for which they were paid a salary. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to cost money now.

When I was growing up in Australian I had quite low pocket money and books were relatively expensive. I was very, very conservative in my purchasing but I read voraciously from the library. I quite like the idea of having books recommended to me by a variety of people and being able to take a punt on them because they are $0.99.

[steer.livejournal.com]

I can certainly see the value of the sub-editor part of things -- but then, with luck, people who are serious about their work would pay someone to do that role anyway... I'm not sure what value the publisher adds to the chain though (marketing and a nice cover?).

I quite like the idea of having books recommended to me by a variety of people and being able to take a punt on them because they are $0.99.

I must admit that these days, while I'm not well off, I'm sufficiently well off that I don't try to save money on book purchases... it's a good few hours of my life to read a book so I don't mind a few extra quid if I think it is a better book than the $0.99 or the free book. That said, if the $0.99 book is just as good and can be reliably recommended...

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure what value the publisher adds to the chain though (marketing and a nice cover?).

Um, publishing? Talking to the printer, getting your book to reviewers, getting it to distributors, arranging for it to appear in good places in shops, and taking the hit on the cost of all of that, so that the author doesn't have to pay to get their book onto the shelves?

Of course, some of that goes away with ebooks. And all of it goes away if you only want to appear on Kindle. But if you don't want to end up with a monoculture then you're going to want your book to appear on more than just Amazon, and that means dealing with distributors at the very least.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Sorry, yes... I mean in an e-book scenario where everyone can "publish" essentially for free (kindle merely simplifies the search problem, it's not at all difficult to set up an e-shop to sell your book and if you want to give away your book for free or just run a tip-box it's trivial).

Yes, there is a necessity for a publisher (or a lot of running around) in the dead tree format scenario.

[andrewducker]

it's not at all difficult to set up an e-shop

I'm going to assume you've largely dealt with authors of the technical variety. And not ones who find writing Word documents tricky enough, thank-you-very-much :->

[steer.livejournal.com]

*laugh* I assume these authors have friends though -- I wasn't assuming they would do it themselves. I know a lot of writers already found typewriters a little much technology for their taste.

[steer.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I should be clear that I am not suggesting "everyone gets their friend to set up an e-shop" as a viable solution for the longer term but just pointing out that it's very easy to get around right now if you do have objections to "monoculture" (or "standardisation" as it's called when people want it to sound like a good thing).

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Yes - I think people who are serious about their work should hire a sub-editor. I would hope they did. I think for a new author they might have to cut them in on future royalties if they don't have the ready cash to pay a fee up front.

In the old days, in addition to their contribution to the final manuscript, I think publishers did some physical distribution co-ordination and provided a quality guarantee. I think the role of the quality guarantee is the one that is going to be hardest to replace.

Like you the price difference between $0.99 and $2.99 or $4.99 isn't likely to influence whether I spend the time on the book nearly as much as the quality is but in a world where price isn't necessarily an indicator of quality because sunk costs are low for the distributor I'm left wondering if I should take a punt on a book based on a particular recommendation. I would trust a recommendation from my dad more than I would some guy on a bus all things being equal. If the guy on the bus recommended a book that cost $0.99 I might be persuaded to try it out more readily than if it cost $4.99.

In fact, that's an interesting experiement right there. What is the premium I would pay for a book recommended by trusted source and a less trusted source?

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

It's funny that there are attempts to drive prices down to the bottom with ebooks and mp3s, but when it comes to shopping for, for example, clothes and food, people are known to not trust low-priced items. Look at the way Sainsbury put embarassingly defensive comments about their basics items on the packaging.

The Steam top sellers is, aside from on a big release week, often packed with things on sale.

[andrewducker]

I love the Sainsbury basic comments!

And there's always a niche for more expensive items, but it's Primark that's packed to capacity.

The question is whether price is a guide to quality in books. If it is then the divisions will stay. If you can get cheap books that are as good...

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I like to think of Primark as using their pricing to be upfront that their clothes are of low quality materials and made in dubious conditions in countries with sometimes lax labour laws, as opposed to more expensive clothing shops that try to hide this with higher prices to give the illusion of quality and care.

[andrewducker]

To be fair, M&S clothes do tend to last longer.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Go pricier than that, and I bet some of them won't :-D

There's also the difference in the way people treat their clothes. Clothes from Primark can be treated as cheap and disposable but those £150 jeans that look exactly like the ones from Primark but with a big badge on them? Only dry cleaning for my beautiful jeans!

It must be really frustrating for Primark executives, not being able to just shout "HOW DO YOU THINK WE SELL THEM SO CHEAP?!"

[andrewducker]

I was terribly amused by this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2025689/These-Choos-NOT-walking-The-425-designer-shoes-look-old-tatty-day-s-wear.html

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

That's part of the point of expensive shoes going back a century or two - it's to show you're so rich that you don't need to walk anywhere because your shoes are so fragile.

[fearmeforiampink]

Steam occurred to me as a comparison too.

With a movie, a TV series, or a computer game, they sell it at full price for a while, it is bought at that price for a while. Then when pretty much everyone who is likely to buy it at that price has done so, they drop the price, and more people buy it. It also comes from the fact that once they've paid off the cost of making it, every additional sale is more profit (assuming they don't go under the cost to actually make and distribute the thing).

It's a fairly basic bit of economics; that there are X people that will buy a product at Y price. You want to make the best profits, so looking at supply versus demand, you set your price to do so. But if you can charge different people different prices, then as long as you stay above the cost to make the thing, you're making more profit. This is why Young Persons Railcards exist, why it costs less to get tickets to things when a child, a student, or an OAP. Separating by time is just another division — the book industry already does that with hardback versus softback releases.

Now, the argument back against that is that books often have more staying power; that there isn't the march of technology, of special effects, thus they're still as good as when they were first released, whereas a year or two year old game can look a bit crap compared to a new one.

Still I do think that, whilst they'd lose out getting more money from those who discover it and would be willing to pay the full price, overall they'd benefit from far more people being willing to buy books when they're cheaper. I know with Steam, there are lots of games that I have that I absolutely would not have bought at full price, but have gotten a lot of fun out of them for my fiver (or whatever).

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

This comment is far too late, but: the embarrassingly defensive comments on the Sainsbury's Basics range is the point. They are trying to make you not trust them. They want people who can afford to spend more money on their groceries to avoid the Basic range - and embarrassment is a good way to do that.

[andrewducker]

Oddly, I find them actually reassuring. They cornish pastie one, for instance, tells you that the difference between it and a normal pastie is merely slightly less meat and slightly more veg. As that difference is a-ok by me, I'm happy with Sainsbury Basic Cornish Pasties.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

It’s a truism that the price of a thing tends to fall towards to the long term marginal cost of production.

For books the costs are strange. They divide into two. Manuscript costs and distribution costs. The fixed cost to develop a new book is substantial i.e the struggling author sweating over her keyboard to produce a manuscript. Compared to traditional publishing it is a significant but not the largest part of getting a paperback into my hand. I think the other costs of editing, printing, distributing and marketing have been well understood and pretty fixed for a while for print books.

I think for ebooks author effort might be the largest single element of the costs of getting a new ebook onto a Kindle. Which makes the transition all very unclear when coupled with the fact that many people will write to a high standard for free. Also there are many rights free books out there with more being added every year.

So we have a situation here where the fixed cost of developing the book remain the same and the marginal costs of producing one extra copy become almost nil. For new authors you probably don’t find out if you have a million seller until after you have made the sunk cost investment in the manuscript.

I think an analogous industry is pharmaceuticals. Lots of sunk costs in R&D, very low marginal unit costs and many products already in existence that are better than nothing.

There are interesting interactions with other markets and interesting elasticities at work here. I do think something potentially fundamental might be happening to the book industry.

As well as publishing houses competing against other publishing houses and authors competing against other authors and (the real fight) authors competing against publishing houses the whole book industry is competing against the music industry, the television industry and the going to the pub with your mates industry for limited money and limited time. Selling ebooks at $0.99 might encourage me to buy so many books that I don’t end up buying a cable subscription.

Cheap ebooks might significantly shift the market for domestic entertainment away from TV toward reading meaning that authors enjoy a much larger overall market for their work and that more can live or make significant pocket money from their craft.

If we allow a shift in the allocation of the $0.99 price per book so that the author takes $0.50 (for the sake of my mental maths) and suggest that $50k per annum is a comfortable material standard of living then an author needs to sell 100,000 copies per year every year or about 2 million over 18 months in order to retire.