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 Send to email | How to Save the Book Publishing Industry in General |  By Silicon
el 30-May-2008 |
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 How badly is the book industry doing? It's flat.
FLAT!
Despite Harry Potter selling 8.3 million copies in 24 hours, book publishers only sold 0.9% more books in 2007 than 2006--less than the country's rate of population growth.
How can publishers fix their business? Not by killing more trees. By radically retooling the business model.
Hardcover books should cost $25. And publishers should keep printing them--for people who want to buy them. Meanwhile, for everyone else, publishers should publish cheap electronic copies for 20% (or less) of the hardcover price.
$4.99 for a first run bestseller, downloadable to your Kindle, PC, or iPod--or simply readable on the Internet. The retailer keeps $1 or so, the author gets $1 or so, and the publisher takes home about $3. Some of that goes to marketing and some to overhead. And then you're left with the typical publisher profit of less than $1 (no returns, manufacturing, or distribution costs).
But here's what happens: book sales suddenly go through the roof.
Why?
Because you've made buying a book almost a no-never-mind. At $4.99, buying a book is like buying a couple of magazines: you can buy them on a whim and feel free to skim them. At $25, meanwhile, buying a book is like buying a two-pound guilt trip: Until you slog your way through it, you don't deserve to buy another one.
With a similar margin per book sold, cannibalization wouldn't matter. If publishers really wanted to get aggressive, however, they could cut book prices to, say, $1.99, compress all the revenue splits, and watch sales truly explode. Especially when they made available the out-of-print catalogs.
All that matters is the bottom line, and going digital could quickly resurrect the profit growth of the publishing industry. Unfortunately, right now, the publishing industry is obsessed with maintaining the status quo--which means print units and revenue.
Get over it folks. Time to get your butts out to Cupertino (Apple / AAPL) and Seattle (Amazon / AMZN), cut some real deals, and save your dying industry (and some trees, while you're at it).
Below: Mark Mahaney's estimates for per-unit print and Kindle economics. Note that Mark is assuming a higher sale price, retailer profit, author royalty, and distribution costs than we think would ultimately make sense. And if publishers could accelerate units enough, their overhead on a per-unit basis would drop.
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 | Nerdblog |  Blogger | Provides news about hardware, software, notebooks, laptops, PCs, Mac, PDAs
Nerdblog.Net |
| Immune to Critics, Secret-Spilling Wikileaks Plans to Save Journalism From Itself | | When online troublemaker Julian Assange co-founded Wikileaks, the net’s premiere document-leaking site last year, some were skeptical that the service would produce anything of interest.
Now, after 18 months of publishing government, industry and military secrets that have sparked international scandals, led to takedown threats and briefly gotten the site banned in the United States, Assan [..] Read complete article | | Published 03-Jul-2008 by Nerdblog in General
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| Kotaku`s The Gamers Guide | Blogger | XBOX 360 Gamers Weblog
Gossip, news and leaks for obsessive gamers Kotaku As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, pred |
| Problogger | Blogger | Blog tips to help you blogging
ProBlogger Blog Tips Make Money Online |
| You?ve Read ProBlogger the Blog - Now Buy the Book |  I’m excited to announce today one of the worst kept secrets in my life - over the last year (longer actually) I’ve been writing a book with Chris Garrett. Today we’re Pre-Launching it as we’re just weeks from the book becoming available for purchase. The book is published by Wiley and is titled:
ProBlogger Book ? [...] [..] Read complete article | | Published 08-Apr-2008 by Darren Rowse in Featured PostsProBlogger Site News
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| Kotaku`s The Gamers Guide | Blogger | XBOX 360 Gamers Weblog
Gossip, news and leaks for obsessive gamers Kotaku As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, pred |
| After 11 Months, My Okami Art Book Arrives [Okami] | | In July 2007, fresh from beating the game, I ordered the Japanese-language edition of the Okami art book. Weeks went by. Then months. No art book. I totally forgot about the thing. Then today, June 24, 2008...success! The book finally turns up ( [..] Read complete article | | Published 24-Jun-2008 by Luke Plunkett in Okami Capcom Clover Culture Merch udon
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| Problogger | Blogger | Blog tips to help you blogging
ProBlogger Blog Tips Make Money Online |
| Share A Picture of You with the ProBlogger Book [WIN A PRIZE] | | Have you got a copy of the ProBlogger book yet?
I’ve been overwhelmed by the numbers of people who have emailed, Tweeted and IM’d to say that they got one. A few people have even sent me pictures of them with the book. Thank you to everyone for buying the book and for your excitement about [...] [..] Read complete article | | Published 11-May-2008 by Darren Rowse in ProBlogger Site News
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| Problogger | Blogger | Blog tips to help you blogging
ProBlogger Blog Tips Make Money Online |
| ProBlogger The Book - Readers Pictures Round 1 |  Last week I asked those readers who have bought a copy of the ProBlogger book to send in a picture of them with the book. I put up 3 prizes for my favorite pictures (a book at Amazon to the value of $20). Below you’ll see all of the submitted pictures. The first three are [...] [..] Read complete article | | Published 20-May-2008 by Darren Rowse in ProBlogger Site News
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| Kotaku`s The Gamers Guide | Blogger | XBOX 360 Gamers Weblog
Gossip, news and leaks for obsessive gamers Kotaku As if you don't waste enough of your time in a gamer's haze, here's Kotaku: a gamer's guide that goes beyond the press release. Gossip, cheats, criticism, design, nostalgia, pred |
| Goodbye Next-Gen, Hello Edge (The Website) [Journalism] | | You may be familiar with top-shelf industry news site Next-Gen. They're the online reincarnation of a long-dead US magazine, which was basically the American version of respected British mag Edge. Being so close and all (both are run by Future publishing), for the past few mo [..] Read complete article | | Published 10-Jul-2008 by Luke Plunkett in Journalism Edge News Next-gen
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