7 Reasons eBooks Should Be Almost Free

If you want to understand why I think eBooks should be almost free, let me start by telling you a little story (first related by Peter Drucker in his classic Innovation and Entrepreneurship on pp. 33 ff.):

Some decades ago, the chairman of Macy’s became disturbed by a trend he saw in his industry. Most customers had come into his store to buy clothes, but more and more, people were buying appliances instead. He didn’t know how to stop the rampant sale of appliances.

“Why do you want to stop them?” Peter Drucker asked. “Are you losing money on them?”

No. In fact, appliances had a bigger profit margin than clothing did. Furthermore, shoplifters rarely stole appliances, like they stole clothes. And appliance buyers rarely returned their purchases, like clothes shoppers did. Appliances were a money maker.

Yet he still wanted to stop selling them.

“Then, do the appliance customers keep the fashion customers away?”

Absolutely not. In fact, quite the reverse. People who came into the store to buy appliances often bought clothing as well, since they were there shopping anyway.

“But,” explained the chairman, “in this kind of store, it is normal and healthy for fashion to produce 70% of sales. Appliance sales have grown so fast that they now account for 60%, leaving only 40% for fashion. We’ve tried everything we know to make fashion sales grow as fast as appliances, but nothing works. So the only thing left is to push down appliance sales in order to restore the proper balance.”

Meanwhile, Bloomingdale’s, who was then a relatively small player in the industry, capitalized on the shift in the market. Building a new strategy around their housewares department, they used the opportunity to brand themselves as the “smart New York store,” and they grew to unseat other stores, such as Best, that were leaders in the 1950’s and have now disappeared.

Peter Drucker sums up his telling of the story thusly:

The Macy’s story will be called extreme. But the only uncommon aspect about it is that the chairman was aware of what he was doing. Though not conscious of their folly, far too many managements act the way Macy’s did.

Appliances and eBooks

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Amazon’s share of the eBook industry will likely decrease, because of competition from Apple’s iPad and others, citing a group of industry analysts.

“At the same time,” the article continues, “Amazon.com, seller of the Kindle e-book reading device, may boost digital book sales by 83 percent this year to $248 million from $135 million last year, the analysts said in a note today. By 2015, those sales should reach $775 million for a market share of 35 percent, they said.”

So, let me get this straight: Amazon’s eBook market share is shrinking, but their total eBook sales could grow by 83% this year?! All because the eBook market is exploding.

This is bound to disturb traditional publishers, who are used to selling paper books… And it does.

Last month, Amazon and Macmillian fought over eBook pricing. Macmillan wanted to raise the price to $15, instead of selling them for $9.99.

This is not about Macmillan. Rather, it’s about book publishers being faced with a market shift and not being able to cope.

Says News Corp Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch of Amazon’s practice of discounting eBooks to get them down to $9.99, “it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books.” (News Corp owns HarperCollins.)

He goes on to say, “There will be prices very much less than the printed copies of books but still will not be fixed in a way that Amazon has been doing it.”

It’s frequently not so blatant when a businessman is talking out of his ass, but $15 is not “very much less” than a printed book. $9.99 is not even “very much less” than a printed book. So unless I’ve completely misunderstood him, he’s full of B.S.

Or check out Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella—very much worth reading, from what I can tell. But not on the Kindle, as we’ll soon see. This book is published by The Dial Press, which is part of Random House. Right now, the hardcover is $17.16 at Amazon ($26 list price). The soon-to-be-available paperback Amazon sells for $10.12 ($15 list). The Kindle version is $14.30 ($26 list).

There’s only one conclusion I can draw, that the big publishers want to push back runaway sales of eBooks.

7 Reasons for Cheap eBooks

I should not need to point out how incredibly stupid this is, but I will, just for kicks:

1. eBooks have zero production cost, that is, printing cost, manufacturing cost, per-unit cost. Bits are just bits. All of the cost of the eBook is in development (e.g., paying the author) and sales and marketing (e.g., advertising and distribution). Because there’s no paper involved, no cardboard, no ink, no glue. Nothing even to hold in your hand. Customers know this, and they discount their perceived value of the eBook appropriately, especially for novels and memoirs.

2. Even with their discounted value, eBooks can make more money than paper books. That’s because—I’ll say it again—eBooks cost nothing to produce. Also eBook returns are less costly to process, if you accept returns on eBooks at all. (I do, but some companies don’t, interestingly enough.) Therefore, smart publishers are going to compete with each other for eBook sales, and those who don’t will be left in the dust.

3. Customers swap, share, give away, and resell paper books. Not so with eBooks. Partially, this is because eBooks have no established first sale doctrine. Once the publisher sells a paper book, it doesn’t belong to him anymore. Yes, he can claim copyright in the content of the book, but he has no rights in the physical book itself. This key legal principle has allowed libraries, book-swaps, and used-book sellers to flourish over the past 100 years. But with an eBook, the picture is less clear. When you buy an eBook, you’re not really buying the book; rather, you’re downloading its contents to your Kindle, and Amazon does not allow you to share or trade Kindle eBooks. This makes the eBooks more valuable to publishers and less valuable to readers.

4. 

   The more you tell, the more you sell. Evidence indicates that wide distribution of eBooks increases sale of paper books, because of the social-proof principle. (I know that various industries have denied this is true, but for the most part, they’re making it up.) If more people are reading Twilight, for example, all telling their friends about it and even buying copies for their friends, it doesn’t matter so much how good (or not) it actually is. The same thing happened, for example, when Seth Godin gave away 500,000 electronic copies of Unleashing the Ideavirus, propelling the paper version onto the Amazon best-seller list. That makes low-cost eBooks a form of advertising for publishers.

5. Because of the economy, more people are buying for the short-term, rather than for the long-term. In a recession or depression, people tend to buy things they will use (like food), not things they plan to keep (like books). Or if they buy books, they’ll buy them to read—Remember that? Actually reading books that you buy?—rather than to shelf them. And then they’ll be more likely, after they finish reading them, to resell or trade them for new books. This can decrease the value of eBooks even further, compared to paper books.

6. You can’t autograph an eBook. The fact is that cheap eBooks increase the value of paper books, especially limited editions or autographed copies, because it makes them more exclusive. This is called the contrast principle, that your mind naturally tends to exaggerate the differences it perceives between two different things. If you immerse your hand in ice water and then turn around and stick it in cool water, the cool water will feel hot. Next to a real book, an eBook seems even less substantial than it is, and next to an eBook, an autographed copy seems more. And that says nothing about what it does to the value of gifts, special editions, merchandise, and product bundles. (Star Trek fans may have noticed this in the way characters in that show look at books.)

7. And then there’s my favorite: You can’t soak in a hot bath with a Kindle. But you can with a mass-market paperback. For me personally, that means a lot.

Low eBook Prices

That’s why I’ve been releasing inexpensive electronic editions of my books, even giving them away for free in certain circumstances. You can get From the Ashes of Courage on the Kindle for 99¢. Ditto Love through the Eyes of an Idiot. You can get <$1 versions for MobiPocket Reader, Adobe Digital Editions, and in PDF. All DRM-free. Now, 99¢ could be too cheap, but it’s a common price. How much would you pay to read a book? Not to have a book, just to read it, with the option of rereading it as many times as you want. That’s essentially what you’re getting with an eBook.

You can also preview all my books in their entirety on Google Books. Reading my books online: Isn’t that stealing? This is something a friend asked me once. And I was actually shocked at the question. No! I’ve made these books available to be read. It’s my own, personal, digital library. Feel free to borrow that copy; just return it when you’re done. Why do I believe this is fair? Aside from all the reasons I listed above:

• If you actually sit in front of your computer and read through one of my stories, you’ve already paid for the privilege by giving me your time and support.
• If you want to pay me back, submit an honest review to Amazon, BarnesAndNoble.com, Goodreads.com, or some other site. A good many reviews are not honest or are not fan reviews, and honest fan reviews are one of the biggest thrills an author will ever experience.
• Or tell your friends about my books, refer them to my website, or do something else to help spread the Ideavirus (if I might rip off Seth Godin just for a moment).
• If you really want to pay me back, support this site by donating a gift or some cash, whatever you think the eBook was really worth. (99¢ seems about right.) Or use my Amazon Associates Program link the next time you order something from Amazon.

I believe cheap eBooks are the wave of the future, and big publishing conglomerates are shooting themselves in the foot by resisting it. Better to surf the wave than to stand against it. I am attempting the former. Wish me luck!

-TimK

P.S. If you’re disgusted with what Random House is doing to Sophie Kinsella, I sympathize. On the other hand, if you want a fun, romantic e-read, try From the Ashes of Courage. I won’t lie and tell you it’s just like Twenties Girl, because it isn’t. (And BTW, I managed to borrow a copy of Twenties Girl, and I’m loving it! Definitely worth reading.) From the Ashes of Courage is different, but I think it’s just as good, in its own way, because I write the kind of fiction I enjoy reading. Or in the words of one young woman who picked it up and began reading it, “This is really good!”