In reply to Inuyasha Episodes.

Thanks! Hope you find more stuff you like.

Great info. Lucky me I recently found your blog by
accident (stumbleupon). I’ve saved it for later!

In reply to Heather Lovatt.

I didn’t, no. Now I do. It looks interesting, but I wonder how many readers know about it yet? I have opinions about how Google handles stuff like this…

I saw the thing about returns over at The Passive Voice, and thought William Ockham was on target when he did the math–that was a LOT of returns before Amazon reacted to ’em. And their reaction (cutting off future returns but leaving the account otherwise intact) seemed okay to me. Of course the person doing all the buying/returning wasn’t actually hurting anybody, and I’d probably have just left the situation alone if it’d been up to me, but I don’t think Amazon is being all that evil. A little maybe. 2 points out of ten. They’ll probably do better next week! {8’>

I liked that blog post you linked to. I don’t know how accurate it is–it’s more of the “all I ever did was write and it worked for me once upon a time so therefore you young whippersnappers don’t need to do anything else either” stuff that’s easy to find from people for whom it was true once upon a time. Doesn’t mean she’s wrong, but I didn’t see a compelling reason to believe she was right either. I think lots of things have worked at different times, and lots of people have taken advantage of them, but that doesn’t point the way to the next successful idea. Those who say “all you have to do is write” have probably NOT had the experience of publishing a novel and seeing only a dozen sales over six months–or a short story with none at all. But that seems to be the norm of late, so…if I knew what to do I’d be doing it. Meanwhile I figure it won’t hurt me to focus for a while on the writing just so I have more content available, with which I may or may not get either lucky or smart at some future point. {8’>

Also, sorry it took me so long to reply to these. I hid from the internet for over a week, and I’ve been killing my brain with writing new stuff lately so I haven’t wanted to even look at a computer. That said? I appreciate your comments and feedback, always.

-D

Hey, do you know about this?

https://helpouts.google.com/ and, say, type in writing novels

And I’m reading select bloggers and this woman is STILL it:

wife of the guy YOU follow and a good post here:

http://kriswrites.com/2013/11/27/the-business-rusch-the-helpful-reader-discoverability-part-two/

on Thursday/Friday, of this week.

Hi, David… Hope everything is going well.

Was flying around the internet a little the last few days and one interesting item came up:

Amazon has an un-mentioned limit on how many ebooks you can return.

More on this. A user commented on their account being approached in some way, due to this and it made me think on how doing JUST first coupla chapter previews is not always helping a reader know if he wants to buy a book. Everyone has a different approach to deciding how to buy a book.

So he buys the book, an ebook and is unsatisfied with the read and is able to return it, no questions, relatively, at Amazon. But unbeknowst to a particular user, there IS a limit on how far you can go with this. (Probably, mostly, cos they’re thinking you’re pirating stuff.)

Thing is: I believe the user; they’re not trying to pirate anything; it’s how they figure out books they want to read and that’s not completely possible for them, online, the way it was, offline, in a book store.

Which led me to thinking about how much one shows to a customer so they can or may buy a book; which led me to the Amanda Palmer (and duh, maybe the whole music industry idea) that you give the customer the product, let them enjoy it–all of it; and ask to be paid, (like Amanda is talking about).

It could be a possible approach to selling here; that places like Amazon won’t do cos it’s all about the money, upfront.

Books are nothing but a service. And good writers, hopefully, provide a good service. And most old style readers are USED to this.

More on this.

Have fun.

Heather

In reply to William Ockham.

I almost hate to reply to this at all. I know there’s good Will here (yeah, pun intended; sue me) because this isn’t the first time we’ve discussed interesting topics and disagreed, but it seems we’re largely talking past each other this time. I think it means we likely have some fundamentally different views, and will each tend to interpret data accordingly. I don’t particularly like the notion, but Thomas Kuhn had a lot to say on the topic–which, since it dealt with humans, had applications beyond the realm of scientists. Paradigms are a dime a dozen, y’know?

So I’ll just say a couple of things, and then stop. Okay, three.

First, I don’t particularly “trust” surveys to mean anything in particular. I think they’re very useful for generating hypotheses, but the next step–testing–is often hard or impractical to take. This has all sorts of implications in all sorts of areas, the one which gripes me particularly at the moment being what passes for nutritional “science.” So…I know my mind likes anecdotes (stories!) and is nearly blind to the sort of analysis of large datasets that I’d like it to be able to do. So is everyone else’s, though, which is even worse. So I’ll just note that I recently took a trip on an Alaskan ferry and saw at least twenty people reading books. Fiction, most of ’em. I was the only person I saw using an e-reader of any description. Does it “mean” anything? Well…not really, no. But neither does a survey. I know that may seem like quibbling over a minor point, but I really don’t see the point as minor. All that said? I agree that my previous statement that “most people don’t read ebooks” may not have been correct or meaningful.

Second, Amazon prefers (but does nothing of which I’m aware to enforce, other than sometimes price-matching) that publishers list things elsewhere at the same retail price. At any given retail price, the wholesale price (aka the publisher’s cut) currently varies considerably between the various e-booksellers. And there was a bit of a kerfluffle not too long ago when Amazon started discounting the retail price–thus, the rise of “agency” pricing, and court decisions, and all that mess. Thing is, as I keep trying to point out and it seems to me I’m being reasonable when I do it, if a publisher lists books elsewhere than Amazon with a “suggested retail” of…some number…and only insists on the same wholesale price they’d get from Amazon, it’d be trivial for lots of people to undercut Amazon’s current pricing scheme. This would, I think, cause readers to desert Amazon in droves–unless Amazon cut their own prices to match, and I don’t think public opinion would let them do so while also reducing their payments to publishers. IOW, Amazon’s current (large, IMO) markups would simply melt away. This would likely lead to more sales for publishers (due to the lower price) at no loss in income. It would be a good deal for readers too. And…it’s easy. It’d be really funny if Amazon suddenly started objecting to discounting! And did you see how I got through the whole paragraph without saying “disintermediation” until now? It wasn’t easy.

Third, I simply find it unlikely that a more open market (which could be achieved by publishers’ letting go of the reins and letting other people figure out how they want to sell books) would be less efficient than the current mess. I think lots of people would come up with (and implement) ideas, and some of them would work well. Books would be sold in so many more places than they are now…it’s hard for me to see how this would work out badly for publishers.

But although that seems very straightforward to me, I suspect it all means something else to you–possibly that I’m delusional, or missing something obvious (which I guarantee I am, ’cause that’s how brains work). So…there may not be much point discussing it further (which is not to say that I wouldn’t enjoy reading your reply or replies; so far I always have and I very much appreciate the time/effort you put into them).

It’ll be fun to see what happens. {8’>

In reply to David.

You might not think the success of your ideas depending on being able lure readers away from Amazon, but I do. My data on ebooks and reading come from comparing Pew’s surveys on the subject with sales data for adult fiction (in all formats). What would you expect to be larger, an estimate of the total number of books read by people 16 and older in the U.S. in a single year based on Pew’s data or the number of adult fiction books sold by traditional publishers in the U.S. in a single year? The books sold figure doesn’t include self-published books, YA, children’s books, non-fiction, books bought second-hand, etc. but it’s still larger than the number of books people claim to have read. Weird, huh?

There’s two things going on that explain that. First, tons of fiction is bought and never read (and it’s mostly best-sellers). Second, there’s a small group of people who read a vast number of books every year and they already have ereaders. There’s no undiscovered market for ebooks. At least not until the ereader costs less than the retail price of a bestseller, but that market isn’t really “available”.

My guess is that most of the people who tell you they only read print are being honest, but neglecting to mention that they haven’t actually read a novel in years. People who are on Twitter are using their computer and PDF is the best format for a lot of them. You would be surprised at how many people don’t know how to sideload an ebook to their device.

Let’s put some real numbers on your scenario about pricing. For hardcover novels, publishers charge retailers about 49% of the cover price. Amazon will sell most of those books at roughly 51-55% of the cover price. If you send someone to Amazon through an affiliate link to buy a hardcover, Amazon almost always loses money on that sale.

The ebook situation is a little different, but if you want to sell on Amazon, you have to agree to give them the lowest wholesale price. And they will match the retail price of almost any book. I stand by my statement that no one is going to beat Amazon on price in the books market.

I would argue that your ideas are quite sound and someone is executing them brilliantly. His name is Jeff Bezos. He got into the business, undercut everyone else in price, offered a lucrative affiliate program, and crowdsourced a recommendation engine. The only difference is that he recognized that he needed to drive the traffic to his site. That’s what I meant about a weak tea imitation. Bezos and Amazon are already doing the essential elements of your idea.

Let’s go point by point:

•Set up affiliate programs.
[Check, Amazon does that.]
•Allow not just referrals to your site, but also actual sales on affiliate sites.
[Check, Amazon does that. No, really. Take a look at Amazon Login and Amazon Payment.]
•Pay more to those who sell on their own sites rather than yours. Because you want them to build a successful business. You want lots of businesses out there selling your stuff. That way nobody’s an Amazon anymore.
[Check, if you change that to charge less for selling on their own sites. Also, Amazon’s pretty good at making sure that no one else is an Amazon…]
•Speaking of that: always pay the affiliates well. Pay them lots of money. Offer something like what you’re currently paying Amazon, and maybe even a little more in special cases. They’re doing the actual work of selling the products; honor that and see if you can make up the difference (or more) in volume.
[Check, this is exactly Amazon’s strategy. They often pay more to affiliates than they make themselves. And they make up the difference in volume.]
•In other words: crowdsource your sales team. Partly, at least.
[Check, Amazon does that.]
•Also crowdsource reviews and recommendations wherever possible. Don’t you already mostly do this?
[Check, Amazon does that.]
•That’s all automated, once the basics are built. What you actually do is spend your time building and maintaining relationships with influential sellers/distributors/recommenders. Do lunch. Talk to people. Get them excited.
[Ok, this is one that Amazon could do better at, but check out Amazon Publishing and how their authors felt about the last shindig.]
•Occasionally try a new idea, if it looks like it might work.
[Check, Amazon does that.]

In reply to William Ockham.

I don’t think you read this carefully enough… 🙂

The quote you give is referring to what I think might happen if Goodreads rose to the fore as a book discovery service, and only that. In that scenario, Goodreads would already have supplanted Amazon to some extent–and none of my other ideas depend on that concept. I simply said that trying to stay in front of that scenario might explain why Amazon bought Goodreads. I’m not sure how this invalidates anything. Are you saying no other service can ever supplant Amazon as a source of recommendations, even if they don’t also try to handle sales and content delivery, and thus the Goodreads purchase was only for some set of unrelated reasons? I doubt this is the case–in fact I argued it would be much easier to out-sell Amazon on a basis of hours spent for books sold for those who specialize in some genre or other division of the market…perhaps you disagree with this bit as well? IOW selling all books to everybody is more efficient than specialization, in your view? (Note: in fact you didn’t say that, just as I didn’t say what you implied I did.)

Also, suppose a publisher gets $3.00 from a given book, and Amazon gets $7.00, for a purchase price of $10. Now suppose the publisher makes the same book available to Joe Schmo, and only asks for something close to the same $3.00 cut. IOW, there is no attempt at “agency” pricing–there is only a wholesale price. In this scenario, I imagine a “book price search” app would make it difficult for Amazon to sell many copies at all until they changed something. Could Amazon survive the press coverage if they price-matched all the lower prices but kept a large share of the proceeds? I don’t think that’s a good long-term strategy for them.

I suppose I could say the publisher “recommends” a $10.00 retail price, but only insists on receiving $3. Same thing; different marketing slant. How does Amazon respond? By drastically changing the way they do business, I think. Though maybe I’m wrong.

Do you have evidence that suggests most people have read an ebook, or numbers to show what percentage read them regularly? I’m not sure your assertion is true–in fact I doubt it. It might be true in urban communities, but even if it is…most people don’t live in them. I’ve run into many people who find me via Twitter and my blog who (in spite of being active online) have told me they only read print, and most of my friends and relatives only read print, but that’s all anecdotal so I suppose I simply don’t know. I do know that when I did a “giveaway” last summer, mostly via Twitter, more than half of those requesting a free ebook ended up wanting it in PDF form. Which to me means they’re not drinking all that much Amazon Kool-Aid.

Finally, I don’t get the “weak tea” thing at all. I think it just means you don’t like my notion for reasons you haven’t explained in a way I can grasp. Which of course may well be my own fault. I fail to grasp the obvious several times a day, on average. But I remain unconvinced thus far.

There is one assumption that invalidates your argument:

“I don’t think many people would choose Amazon as their primary source of books if they could either find lower prices or be guaranteed that the author/publisher would receive more of the purchase price elsewhere…”

There is no way to undersell Amazon on a consistent basis. While many readers would like to see authors get more of the purchase price, I don’t see that being strong enough to pull most people out of the Amazon orbit.

In your answer to Andrew, you say that most people today don’t read ebooks, but in the English speaking world, that’s just not true. Of the people who read, almost all of them have read an ebook. I don’t think that is a barrier to dethroning Amazon. But you have to give them something better than they get at Amazon. Not a weak tea imitation. And honestly, I don’t see anything in your proposal that is better for readers than what Amazon offers.