I was thinking of strictly a digital distribution. But then I should look at myself as I’m not at all comfortable with the current e-book business model and would much rather have paper in hand.
Which also brings to mind that not all content should be treated as being identical in their distribution.
I’d rather have all my movies and music on a hard drive, with the hard copies in storage, although that may just be personal taste. But all my books are displayed on bookshelfs in diffirent rooms about the house.

Jeff, distribution is one of the smaller costs involved in publishing. Agreed, e-books should be slightly cheaper than hardcopy, but not more than 10 to 15 percent cheaper. The price of a book, e or paper, must (1) pay the editor to read submissions, to negotiate with the author or agent, to work with the author to improve the book and more; (2) pay the designers for the cover art and cover copy; (3) pay the marketing department to sell the book to bookstores, digital or bricks-and-mortar; (4) pay the legal department that draws up the contract and deals with any legal issues involved, which are sometimes extensive; (5) pay the production department that turns the book into a Kindle, etc. file; (6) pay the Web site designer; (7) pay the folks who supervise all these folks, and (8) oh yeah, pay the author, hopefully enough to reimburse her for what she could have earned at a “real” job.”

Jeff says: “writers … need a large web based store front.” Jeff, there is one. It’s called Amazon.

“If writers can be members of large association’s [sic] why not leverage that into a business… such a place may even be way to bring editors and writers together. It could be for profit or it could be a writer owned co-op…”
Jeff, you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into this and in fact, something like this may be the way of the future. However, most writers don’t want to do all that. We want to write and like having other people in charge of producing and distributing our work.

Annie perhaps I’ve overestimated the brick and mortor/shipping/printing/store employee costs. I’m certainly not against paying a fair price as I’m already spending substantial sums on hardcovers and paperbacks. I know about Amazon , my only concern there was that after all the costs you’ve stated how much soes Amazon take?

I was thinking of strictly a digital distribution. But then I should look at myself as I’m not at all comfortable with the current e-book business model and would much rather have paper in hand.
Which also brings to mind that not all content should be treated as being identical in their distribution.
I’d rather have all my movies and music on a hard drive, with the hard copies in storage, although that may just be personal taste. But all my books are displayed on bookshelfs in diffirent rooms about the house.

Jeff, distribution is one of the smaller costs involved in publishing. Agreed, e-books should be slightly cheaper than hardcopy, but not more than 10 to 15 percent cheaper. The price of a book, e or paper, must (1) pay the editor to read submissions, to negotiate with the author or agent, to work with the author to improve the book and more; (2) pay the designers for the cover art and cover copy; (3) pay the marketing department to sell the book to bookstores, digital or bricks-and-mortar; (4) pay the legal department that draws up the contract and deals with any legal issues involved, which are sometimes extensive; (5) pay the production department that turns the book into a Kindle, etc. file; (6) pay the Web site designer; (7) pay the folks who supervise all these folks, and (8) oh yeah, pay the author, hopefully enough to reimburse her for what she could have earned at a “real” job.”

Jeff says: “writers … need a large web based store front.” Jeff, there is one. It’s called Amazon.

“If writers can be members of large association’s [sic] why not leverage that into a business… such a place may even be way to bring editors and writers together. It could be for profit or it could be a writer owned co-op…”
Jeff, you’ve clearly put a lot of thought into this and in fact, something like this may be the way of the future. However, most writers don’t want to do all that. We want to write and like having other people in charge of producing and distributing our work.

The fact is that most people become pirates for the fun and challenge of it. They want to see if they can break the copy protection, or upload successfully, or whatever. Most of them don’t have any thought that what they are doing is illegal and is stealing.

Sure there are a few ‘professional’ pirates who really do big harm by flooding the market with low cost counterfeit copies, and those are the ones you need to focus on.

The vast majority of the people who download a book or music for free would never buy the music or book if it were not available for free.

I think the music industry way overblows the piracy problem, because only a small fraction of the people who download for free would have ever bought the music, and yet the music industry counts every pirated download as lost revenue. It’s just not true.

I think the same is true for books. I think that a very large percentage of people who actually want to read a book are more than happy to buy it. Personally, I like the extra stuff that comes with a legitimate purchase.

As a photographer, I run into similar problems, but I know for a fact that I am not going to change it no matter what I do. Instead, I have switched my business model to charge for my time to take the images, and then I provide a disk with all the images with a license to copy and print for a small fee. I make the same amount of money, and I don’t have to worry about piracy. I know that many of my fellow photographers think my business model is part of the problem. I think they just haven’t realized that technology has obsoleted the old ways and there is no way to reverse it. In fact, I feel that if they don’t switch their models like I have, they will slowly go out of business.

Russ

Jeff makes a very good point about Kindle editions selling for more than hard copy edition. It’s ridiculous, makes no sense, but is entirely out of control of the writer. Grrr.

When I think of the value I derive from a book, I think $5 is, frankly, pretty cheap. I’m happy to pay more.

As for the 99-cent song, think about a song you love, that you have purchased, and how many times you’ve listened to it, then amortize that cost. I’ve listened to Kashmir by Led Zeppelin so many times, we’re probably talking about a 1,000th of a cent per listen.

For some, anything above zero is highway robbery. It’s highly unfortunate, and demonstrates a lack of understanding of time and creative effort. If only they knew how much time a writer invests in a book.