Bookstores get 40% off, distributors such as Ingram or Baker and Taylor get 60%. So distributors have to run all aspects of billing and order fulfillment and shipment in return for 20% .
Anything over that you have to buy non-returnable or do via special sales (book clubs for instance get more of a discount but buy non-returnable and minimum order size 5000 or 10K books at a time) usually direct from the publisher.
10% of the cover price does NOT go to the author, unless he is a bigshot (famous/celebrity) or has a surefire franchise (Stephen King level).
Usually, assuming the publisher is fair, the author gets a percentage of the NET amount the publisher gets. Royalties are easy to calculate these days thanks to software for publishers that keeps track of that. Example: $19.95 retail, publisher gets $12.00, author at 10% gets $1.20 (not $2.00 ). Sometimes foreign language rights are handled differently, sometimes they are the same.
Amazon is making the argument that ebook pricing is highly elastic - that if ebooks on LISP programming were 1/10th the price, I would buy 10 times as many of them.
Yet books and ebooks have to compete for time and attention against TV, Internet surfing, movies, and my need to sleep; which no doubt explains publishers' wariness.
You might want to check who you're replying to. cstross isn't as famous as Stephen King, but in science fiction he's one of the best-known contemporary authors.
Personally, I'm in a very different sector of the book market than cstross, but what I know is entirely consistent with what he said.
My parents were in the book business as both retail and book distributors; my sister is a published author, my brother owns a 30-employee publishing company. I left the book industry for my first love, computers, a while back; but the numbers I threw out are still the norm for the industry.
Real books do not necessarily have to compete against TV, Internet surfing etc. Nobody cares whether you read the books you buy. And most people seem to have a backlog of unread books in their shelves.
Comments
Your percentages are WAY off.
Bookstores get 40% off, distributors such as Ingram or Baker and Taylor get 60%. So distributors have to run all aspects of billing and order fulfillment and shipment in return for 20% .
Anything over that you have to buy non-returnable or do via special sales (book clubs for instance get more of a discount but buy non-returnable and minimum order size 5000 or 10K books at a time) usually direct from the publisher.
10% of the cover price does NOT go to the author, unless he is a bigshot (famous/celebrity) or has a surefire franchise (Stephen King level).
Usually, assuming the publisher is fair, the author gets a percentage of the NET amount the publisher gets. Royalties are easy to calculate these days thanks to software for publishers that keeps track of that. Example: $19.95 retail, publisher gets $12.00, author at 10% gets $1.20 (not $2.00 ). Sometimes foreign language rights are handled differently, sometimes they are the same.
Amazon is making the argument that ebook pricing is highly elastic - that if ebooks on LISP programming were 1/10th the price, I would buy 10 times as many of them.
Yet books and ebooks have to compete for time and attention against TV, Internet surfing, movies, and my need to sleep; which no doubt explains publishers' wariness.
You might want to check who you're replying to. cstross isn't as famous as Stephen King, but in science fiction he's one of the best-known contemporary authors.
Personally, I'm in a very different sector of the book market than cstross, but what I know is entirely consistent with what he said.
My parents were in the book business as both retail and book distributors; my sister is a published author, my brother owns a 30-employee publishing company. I left the book industry for my first love, computers, a while back; but the numbers I threw out are still the norm for the industry.
Real books do not necessarily have to compete against TV, Internet surfing etc. Nobody cares whether you read the books you buy. And most people seem to have a backlog of unread books in their shelves.
You put your finger on it. Price elasticity. That is the claim Amazon is making.
Personally I think they are right. There is some elasticity. If I could buy books at 3-5, I would buy a lot more. @ $20+, I think abut it.