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Comment by pgrote | Hacker News Reader

"* Price is an important signalling mechanism, and so---given the costs of book production---it's important to the publishers not to drive the perceived fair cost of books down below, no matter whether Amazon is currently subsidizing that or not."

I think this is the number one reason. The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value.

I buy a fair number of non-fiction books and loved when ebooks emerged as a viable way to buy a book at what I perceived to be a reasonable price. Now that the agency model has been in force I've just shifted how I buy ... I buy used books from Amazon.

All the books I used to buy as ebooks the publisher was receiving revenue. Now, they don't receive any money from my purchases.

The book publishing industry still has a window of opportunity to transition to ebooks under their own direction, but it's almost closed. See the recording industry.

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> The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value.

How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance?

This is a serious question: just a few days ago I was suggesting that a friend, twenty published books over the last thirty years, books you may have read or heard of, start a Patreon so that he might, for the first time in his life, afford health insurance.

People working full-time in publishing might have health insurance but are working for well below market (by outside of tech standards, which are pretty embarrassing) in some of the most expensive cities on earth. And they can't just move, because then they'd get converted to contract and lose their health insurance.

This is not to shame you for buying used books---that's fine, there's no way I'd have the library I do without them, and I grew up groveling the library and used bookstores because that was all we could afford. Readers are readers. But---and I encounter this again and again---readers' perception of value in books is fundamentally misaligned with the actual economics of the book trade, to the detriment of both.

Serious answer: I think there is a huge oversupply of authors at the moment. The world would probably be better off if half of all authors (selected at random) were to quit and go find something more productive/lucrative to do.

(I think everyone, even people who simply don't want to work, should be able to eat and receive reasonable medical care. Authors not having healthcare is terrible, but no more terrible than unemployed people not having healthcare; the problem there is the crazy American healthcare system)

>Serious answer: I think there is a huge oversupply of authors at the moment. The world would probably be better off if half of all authors (selected at random) were to quit and go find something more productive/lucrative to do.

Or you know, let them do whatever they want, and price THEIR work however they want, and then either buy it or don't buy it.

Sure. But if they're choosing to be an author in full knowledge of the economics of it, "working well below market" as the grandparent said, then they shouldn't complain about not earning much money.

I don't think that's something we can settle with "they knew about working below market so they shouldn't complaint".

Knowing about something and considering it fair and acceptable are two different things.

A logical argument would be: "they knew about working well below market so they shouldn't act surprised" (because knowing in advance and acting surprised are contradictory).

But being hurt and complaining? There's no logical contradiction between doing that and having prior knowledge that a choice would end bad for you.

(Besides they also know that for some authors that's not the case, and they could -- even legitimately for some -- think that they are better than them, and deserve the same money).

I don't think a claim like "the pay for job X is unfairly/unacceptably low" makes sense on its own (or at least, it's not a claim that people would be sympathetic to in general). It tends to contain an implicit argument that either a) job X is representative of the most lucrative (reasonable) jobs available to people in particular circumstances or b) job X is somehow socially valuable. No-one complains that e.g. surfers are underpaid, and few would be sympathetic to "How much do you value your favorite surfers eating or having health insurance?" I took kevinr to be implicitly claiming that authors are socially valuable, that I would prefer for people like his friend to write instead of working at their market rates.

As with many things, there's a widespread and not entirely erroneous perception that working below market for a while is a necessary precondition to later doing well.

Also what's considered "market rate" and what's in 2016 a living wage have relatively little in common. Seven cents a word is the minimum 'professional' rate for short fiction, which very few people in 2016 can actually live solely on.

You can choose something bad but still not have better choices available. If it's their best option are they allowed to complain then?

Yes. My understanding of "working well below market" is that it by definition means there are much better-paying jobs available to them, no?

Ah my understanding was along the lines of "market [rate]" for a person being the "rate they could get in their first choice occupation assuming a job was available to them".

Or market rate of a field being the mean rate for workers of that occupation.

If it's work below market or gut chickens for a living people will tend to accept less than they feel they're worth.

kevinr used that phrase poorly. Working well below market means that there is enough demand for your services so where you could charge more, but you choose not to, typically due to inexperience.

But that's not the case, the market for the output of authors cannot sustain living wages, there is no 'market wage' to make. If you look closely at this and other creative professions, that has always been the case; there is always more people that want to make a living with creative work than there are people that want to pay well enough for that work so that the creators can live.

This is structural and unlikely to change barring something like basic income. The usual answer given to aspiring creator is both to generate the income you need to live in the service industry, say as a waiter, and also to be your own agent and pimp out your professional services yourself.

The number of books in the world is monotonically increasing.

The number of hours a person has available in their life to enjoy reading books is constant, or at least capped pretty close to where it's at now.

There are already too many books for anyone to read everything that might interest them in their lifetime.

So what's the use of new fiction books? Haven't enough already been written to serve everyone's needs? I agree that we need fewer fiction authors and the market is showing that with their low compensation.

Also true for music, film, games and massively amplified by digital storage and distribution. I really don't care about the price of a book as the increasingly astronomical cost to me as I age is the time to read it.

I don't understand why you're being down-voted. I mean I want to scream "NO!" to what you said, but against my will (I love books) I have to concur. Same as in all other branches of the entertainment industry too much crap is being produced which decreases the SNR making it harder to find the good stuff.

Writing isn't alone for this one. Musicians, actors, and artists fall in the same group. These are things a huge number of humans are capable of doing at a very high level. Many perform irregardless of earning potential.

My guess is that the long term earnings for writing will move closer to zero. The best writers working for the best organizations will still be able to make a lot of money.

We have just barely started moving in to a period where online education turns billions of uneducated third world/developing country citizens in to highly educated English speakers.

> How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance?

I'm not the OP, but seeing as most of my favourite authors are already dead (some have been so for more than a century) I would so: "not so much". The "would someone think of the content creators" mantra kind of works (up to a point) in the music and movie industries, where Taylor Swift doesn't compete against long-time dead J.S. Bach, nor does Star Wars compete against Melies's films, while any new fiction author has to compete against long-time dead authors like Proust, Kafka, Joyce or Ray Bradbury.

I'm glad you're finding works you enjoy among the classics!

I have a long fondness for Bradbury, Shelley, Conan Doyle, etc., but they didn't write, oh, Hal Duncan's VELLUM, or Christopher Barzak's THE LOVE WE SHARE WITHOUT KNOWING, or Silvia Moreno-Garcia's SIGNAL TO NOISE---I don't think they could have been written before the last decade or so, and I don't see that they compete any more with Proust than Taylor Swift does. There will always be a market for new fiction.

But what about, for instance, the translators of the modern editions of Kafka's work? Or the musicians who play Bach's music today?

Just out of interest, would any of them still be alive if they'd had health insurance?

The reality of the matter is that the ungodly amount of offer reduces book value to a very low level. Between books published in the last 200 years and the humongous amounts published every week, there is just too much choice to justify spending significant sums on individual books.

I suspect the answer will be a switch to "open publishing", with authors and editors collaborating via websites like on OSS programs and then monetizing on "stores", hence keeping costs so low that they can work on economies of scale.

>How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance? //

Thing is with ebooks the author should make more money, there's a wider accessible market, lower production cost. But publishers moved to close the market and to increase the selling price whilst at the same time accruing the added profit from the reduction in production cost.

The blame here shouldn't be on those buying the books who refuse to be screwed by the publishers.

Readers don't care about the booktrade, they want to read books and have authors rewarded for writing them, the booktrade somehow doesn't seem to help much to this end.

Instead of starting a Patreon, perhaps your writer friend could sell books to readers rather than to a publishing house?

> Thing is with ebooks the author should make more money, there's a wider accessible market, lower production cost.

The market is... different. Wider in some ways, narrower in others. Young adult fiction is largely nonexistent in ebook, still, because young adults' access to e-reading devices is still more limited than adults', and they are less likely to discover fiction online than through more traditional channels.

The production costs are, again, not significantly lower in ebook than print.

> Thing is with ebooks the author should make more money

While that's been the going theory in some parts for a while, in practice it hasn't turned out that way.

>The production costs are, again, not significantly lower in ebook than print. //

But the prices have been / are often higher.

I see that good ebooks have some extra typesetting and such, but that should be largely automated with the production of print ready copy.

How can they not save on paper, presses, covers, delivery, distribution?

Yes editing, proofing, marketing, cover design, etc., still costs.

Devices don't seem that discounted that there should be an extra load per book to post for them.

Do you have a source for eBook production costs, would be interested to look at financials vs. traditional publishing.

This was noted in another comment. A print book is about $3 more in cost (printing, distribution, returns, etc.) than an ebook. i.e. not nearly as much as most people assume.

(I note that I can order quantity one of the book I have on Amazon Createspace for $3.75 plus shipping.)

"The production costs are, again, not significantly lower in ebook than print."

...depending on how many copies are sold, at the minimum. (Physical production and transportation will come to dominate at some point.)

...and, of course, this means that mass market paperbacks should be priced at the same level as first-run hardcovers.

People don't buy books because they value their favorite authors eating or having health insurance. They buy the books because they want to read them.

> readers' perception of value in books is fundamentally misaligned with the actual economics of the book trade, to the detriment of both.

The actual cost of a book has no bearing on it's value. You could spend a billion on editing, publicity, materials, etc. and if no one wants to read it good luck.

If readers value books, but not enough to make writing pay, isn't the economic thing to stop being a professional writer?

Or to try to convince readers to value books more.

If I have $30 to spend on books each month, is it better to spend on one book so one author can eat well, or spend it on two books so two authors can simply eat?

Or why not 4 books so I can maximize my personal enjoyment and cultural enrichment?

Why spend $12 at a bar for a cheeseburger when a Big Mac is $4 or ramen is $0.25 ?

Because you're an idiot? Alternatively, because you want to socialise with rich people. In all cases, the better alternative is to buy fish and vegetables for 6$ and cook them yourself for a healthy and nutritious meal.

Spending $12 for a burger is considered "rich"? You pay close to that in most dinners... And the $4 McDonalds/Dennys/JITB/whatever burger is nowhere close to the $8 or $12 burger you get in actual restaurants.

Besides, the point of dining out is not getting stuffed with food on the cheap to avoid hunger.

>Because you're an idiot?

You know this adds nothing to the discussion, and only encourages people to disregard everything you're saying, right?

I'm a good cook, but my favorite burger place charges around 12eur for a burger and I'm happy to pay it because I can't easily recreate the same at home, and it's freaking delicious.

"Because I want to socialize with rich people" is beyond absurd.

Sure, if you can pull it off.

Good luck with that.

Right, so as the parent suggested, the comparison to the music industry is pretty apt. A handful of popular superstars live very well. In the middle you make enough to live, but not to live well or from forever, but you do get to do what you love. At the bottom you have people who do it because they love it - either terribly, or in a very specialist niche that takes a lot of skill/creativity and will be extremely valued but by only a few.

I try to buy records/merch from (some of) my favourite bands. I value them greatly. They'll never make a decent living from it.

> > The issue is that the prices are too high for perceived value.

> How much do you value your favorite authors eating or having health insurance?

I give to charities to take care of those who can't take care of themselves; I buy entertainment to be entertained.

> readers' perception of value in books is fundamentally misaligned with the actual economics of the book trade, to the detriment of both.

Then maybe the profession of writer will gradually go away, much as the profession of fencing master (the real sort, who taught how to win in a fight, not at sport) has.

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