Tag Archives: publishing

Articles I Like: The world of ebooks

PolyWogg.ca
January 27 2012

Leslie Gaines-Ross has an interesting article on the HBR blog network today, dealing with business models in general (In a New Era for Marketing, Parental Discretion Advised — note link may expire). An excerpt from her post appears below:

Every well-trained manager knows about the “four P’s” of marketing. To make a sale, a company must offer the right product to meet customers’ needs, and at the right price. It has to be offered in a place they find convenient and, in order for them to know about it and how it can help them, it has to be promoted well. New research by my colleagues and me, however, suggests that another “P” is growing in importance. Customers also care who the parent of the product is.

For those who are interested, the article goes on to discuss basically how people are looking for who the parent company is, their corporate brand so to speak, and whether its someone with whom they want to do business. In fact, I would go one step further — not only do people want to know who your “parent” is (if your company has one) but also who your partners are, what they’re like, and if they reflect positively on your brand.… Read the rest

Articles I Like: The 99 cent price point for ebooks

PolyWogg.ca
January 24 2012

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg has an interesting article in today’s WSJ that deals with ebook pricing models, and the 99-cent “impulse” price point (E-Book Prices Get Slashed — note link may expire). An excerpt from his post appears below:

The book world is discovering the 99-cent special. Nearly two years after book publishers forced a sharp increase in the price of newly released e-books, a new low-price trend is emerging. A growing number of publishers are experimenting with 99-cent temporary prices on e-books, in hopes of persuading readers to sample a wider range of authors.

The latest example is George Pelecanos’s new crime novel “What It Was,” which goes on sale Monday. The digital edition costs 99 cents for the first month, and then $4.99 afterward. While Mr. Pelecanos is known for his work on HBO’s gritty Baltimore series “The Wire,” he has also authored 18 books. But he has never been a big seller.

I’ll eventually get around to posting my own take on e-book pricing from an “economics” perspective i.e. what is an “optimal” price if the economists were tackling the question, but I like the idea that the “big” names are suddenly realizing they’re getting their butts kicked by the mid-listers or the newbies.… Read the rest

The future of gatekeeping…

PolyWogg.ca
April 18 2011

As an aspiring mystery writer, I hang out on a listserve called “Murder Must Advertise” (named after the Dorothy L. Sayers book). And I glean a lot from their approaches, techniques etc. But the discussion of late has noticeably shifted from “what do you do at a signing” type conversations to “how is our world different in the world of e-books and e-book publishing”. Recently, a professor from England asked if the new “business model” was affecting reviews, and more specifically, if the independent world we were living in was creating a “killer online review site” that everyone trusted. I think this is a fantastic topic as it pulls a lot of business pieces together in the e-book world and gets to the heart of the question for readers — how do they find out about new books and what is worth reading?

Getting the book out there

The opening gambit of this chess game is that the new e-book world is rife with opportunity. Just as the vanity presses (both scammers and souvenir producers) and POD presses (a legitimate business model for some people) promised, you no longer need the Big Publisher with the Big Advance to help you. If you can write a book, you can see it published — no more angling for an agent, submitting query letters, getting picked out of a slush pile, hobnobbing with industry people, begging, pleading, praying, hoping for discovery.… Read the rest

DRM and contraband ebooks…

PolyWogg.ca
April 5 2011

This is a recurring question in ebook circles, particularly for authors — are people going to pirate my book, and how can I stop it?

One technical “solution” is DRM — digital rights management. And to know if DRM is right for you, the context is probably best understood in comparison with the music industry’s success and failures.

You may recall a small ruckus re: iTunes about 18 months ago when they removed DRM from their MP3s, at the industry’s request actually, not just customers. Customers who buy MP3s want portability across devices, and some aspects of DRM prevent that — it is designed to prevent rampant pirating but generally speaking, it can be bypassed by those likely to pirate rampantly, and those who would abide have no idea what to do when their legitimately purchased MP3 that they had been listening to on an Zune can’t be easily copied on to their new iPod (DRM tries to lock a file to a single user, or, in the past, often to a single device as well).

For ebooks, you have three barriers to rampant pirating — first, the price point. As with MP3s being dropped to 99 cents by iTunes, and the ease of finding almost anything at once, a lot of the pirate shops lost their edge (don’t get me wrong, they’re still there, just not with the same number of customers).… Read the rest