Response to Ebook vendors blame consumers for ‘unrealistic expectations’

Ebook Publishers defended their raised prices for ebooks today. Please read this article.

On my first read I accepted that they MIGHT have a legitimate complaint. Then I did the math. The publisher is getting the largest single share for the sale of the book. Higher than the author! If you accept that the books grosses $9.09 they still make AT LEAST $4.53 per book. That is a whopping 35% margin!

If the publisher sells the book direct, and some do, they make more than that. My wife has a book that she authored. I am fully aware of what the costs are associated with producing a book and the commissions involved. Her book does not have the $.78 of marketing overhead because the publisher is not offering any marketing. Yet, done correctly, the marketing money spent results in higher sales. Thus, more income. By the way, her cost to buy the book is much higher than the $.50 quoted. and we did all of the layout and artwork.

There is NO WAY that is costs less than $.50 to edit, print, and ship a paperback book. We already know that the cost to edit and layout the book is about $.50. So the bookseller automatically has lowered their costs on selling a book. Now, unless they are making money on Shipping and Handling (Which I am sure they are) they have no reason to compain. The price for an ebook should be much less because the cost is much less. If the seller does not want to pay Apple 30% then don’t sell it through them. Very simple. Set up your own sales portal.

My expectations for lower priced ebooks is not unrealistic. You will never convince me that a paperback book that sells for $5.95 costs less to produce than an ebook.

I will simply refuse to pay more than $9.99 for an ebook and I will NOT pay the same price as either a hardbound or paperback book.

One dirty little secret these publishers will not tell you is that they love to sell these books as ebooks because the profit IS higher (unless you deal with Apple) It is usually up to the author as to whether or not the books are made available as ebooks.

Cell Phone Adventures

I have been searching for the perfect cell phone for many years. Several have come close but none of them are perfect. It seems that all phones, PDA or smartphones, come close 70-90% perfect but none of them are the EXACT thing I want in a cell phone.

I have tried several Microsoft phones, separate devices (phone and separate PDA) etc.

The Microsoft devices were nice in their own way. HTC seems to make the best devices. Their phones work well and have good support. But Microsoft has never made a good, stable operating system. The devices tend to get very slow.

My requirements for a cell phone are really requirements for a Smartphone. They are:

cell phone

wi-fi support

internet browser

LOTS of applications available (itunes.com, handango.com)

MP3 player

Video player

Ebook reader and support

Play Audible.com books

easy to type on

email

messaging

GPS

My favorite device so far is the iPhone. It’s not perfect but it is the closest I have found. Allow me to share with you how it meets my requirements.

The first place to begin is the itunes store. The iTunes store is easy to navigate and carries music, TV shows, movies, music and a few other things. I enjoy old time radio shows and they have LOTS of free podcasts that I can enjoy. The music/video player on the iPhone has some features that are subtle but very nice to have. By using the iTunes application my subscribed podcasts are updated automatically updated to my iPhone when they become available. In addition the podcasts that I have listened to are automatically removed from my iPhone so that the content stays fresh. The audio books also maintain their bookmarks between my PC and the iPhone so I can listen to the books at home, sync to the iPhone, and then continue listening in the same location that I left off from.

The downside is that the iPhone does not support direct purchase and download from the Audible.com website. Microsoft OS phones do.

One of the largest advantages of the iPhone is the variety of ebooks that can be purchased and read on it by virtue of the large number of readers available. ereader.com, fictionwise.com, Barnes and Noble and, of course, amazon.com all offer content for sale. ereader and fictionwise recently joined forces under one umbrella of ownership. Their pricing is much more similar and they both use the same rebate model to induce buyers. Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and to a lesser degree the other two players offer discounts on top selling books. It is convenient to be able to carry books on a cell phone for the times when I find 5-10 minutes of down time. There are other options available such as dedicate ebook readers (I own a Kindle) but they are not as portable. I have not even touched on the 100,000+ free ebooks available on the internet.

Finally the area that makes these devices truly useful are the applications that are supported. The iPhone has a LOT of applications available. However, Apple has allowed a lot of applications to be released on their store that are nothing more than fodder or garbage. They do have far more good apps than trash. One major strength of the iTunes store is that they have really forced prices down on the apps.

Allow me to expound on the Apple iTunes store and the applications they offer. Apple is not in the business of helping iPhone developers. They do not care if they succeed or not. Apple’s ONLY goal is to use the developers to drive demand to interest people in buying an iPhone. Apple wants to say, and they do in their ads, “we have an app for everything.” After all, as I point out here, it is the applications that make the phone useful and ubiquitous.

OK. I have detailed most of my likes. The biggest dislikes that I have with the iphone are: no tethering from AT&T (without jailbreaking.) The AT&T costs are exorbitent and the coverage is not as good as Verizon. Apple does not like people to play with the internal working of the OS.

iPhone does not offer a native phone to phone chat client like the Blackberry Messenger. They do offer applications that work a bit differently (AIM, Twitter, etc) but nothing is better than BBM that I have found.

The Enterprise integration with email is not as good.

Battery life is not good. (the power to use the multimedia options comes at a power cost)

very poor integration with other phones.

They do not support bluetooth voice dialing commands.

No development options unless you own an Apple computer.

I am very interested in the Google droid phones. I prefer Verizon to AT&T and I like the idea of an open system that many people can program for. But until they have an interface with audible.com and an amazon.com ebook reader application it will remain nothing more than a good idea to me. You can see how some phones get 90% of it right but no one has done it yet.

Apple is as close as I have found. If they added voice dialing through bluetooth and a client that integrated with BBM (not sure they can without violating copyrights or patents) then they would be close enough to 100% for me to keep me from watching every new phone with curiosity.