Comments on: Don’t hold your breath waiting for Amazon to give you Kindle copies of your books

By: Paul Lukehart

Paul Lukehart — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:24:39 +0000

Amazon has a patent on a system for doing AutoRip for books (based on purchase records), but for many of the reasons mentioned above, it hasn’t happened yet. It will, though, as the industry turns–bundling is already a feature of media (see what’s going on with Ultraviolet, etc), so the natural progression is to books.

Alex alluded to it, but the margin structure is completely different for print vs digital books. For print, the publisher gets about 50% of retail price, and only a portion of that is really licensing fees–maybe 15%. For digital, the publisher gets about 70% of whatever it sets the price at, and there are no printing or freight costs. Think about that– a $20 book in print nets the publisher $3 in licensing, but a $10 e-book might then net $4 after costs.This makes ebook cannibalization a major concern…

as I’ve discovered since working on this. Last fall (actually before Autorip!) I started a company with a friend to try and address this, and we’re working on a mobile-based service. Looking to make it e-reader platform agnostic, and we’ll be launching a beta soon. If you’re interested, check out http://lightlibrary.net/ . Thanks!

By: Taylor Trask

Taylor Trask — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:37:56 +0000

ergeqrgregr – FANTASTIC point. I became a true ebook convert (at least for non-fiction) when I discovered the amazing value and convenience of highlighting key pieces, chapters, etc. This should be a tribe building gold mine for publishers, if they could access and properly understand this data.

By: Taylor Trask

Taylor Trask — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:34:26 +0000

But by that same logic, couldn’t offering companion ebooks to physical be a great strategy to increase market awareness and adoption of ebooks? It could even be a limited time thing, say 6-12 months.

By: ergeqrgregr

ergeqrgregr — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 10:27:20 +0000

I wonder whether a true incentive to lure p-book buyers into having digital editions of their past purchases is to be able to monetize data produced by users as they read, search, highlight, and annotate. You can´t do any metrics on p-books while being read, thus print becomes a hurdle for modern marketing technique.

By: Jenny Jones

Jenny Jones — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 03:07:13 +0000

I have a Kindle Fire HD and I love this thing. It was easy to understand and I love the interface. Here’s the one I have on Amazon http://amzn.to/UBAU84. If you’re looking for a tablet you should check it out, I think it’s very underrated.

By: Robbie

Robbie — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 22:09:00 +0000

I said it yesterday and I’ll say it again today, in this situation I have zero moral dilemma with using bittorrent or other sources to acquire digital copies of books I already own.

I refuse to buy the book a second time just to get it digitally, particularly when the books sell for pennies at half price book stores.

By: Will Hogan

Will Hogan — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:02:19 +0000

This article strikes me as odd. All the hardcover books (mostly King) I purchased in 2010 – 2011 are also available on my Kindle….

By: Alex Berman

Alex Berman — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:20:24 +0000

As someone who works for a publishing house, there are a couple reasons as to why you probably won’t (Baen being the exception) see e-books paired with physical books. 1) They are normally relegated to different workflows (it makes no sense) and are considered separate products. 2) Publishers are increasingly trying to move into the e-book realm and therefore don’t really want customers to get print books. Granted a publisher will NEVER complain if you choose to buy a print book, but it makes little financial sense to support a physical book (which has a high delivery cost) with a competing product, the e-book (which has a high production cost, but almost nil delivery). Obviously there are outliers, but what I’ve described above is the general policies followed by most major publishing houses.

By: sanborntonfarm

sanborntonfarm — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:43:13 +0000

The only publisher I know of that includes digital copies with paper is Baen, but of course, they were the front runner in ebooks in many ways. If you look, you’ll be able to find copies of certain Baen books with a CD in them, containing not only ebooks but lots of other goodies.

By: Mindbendingpuzzles

Mindbendingpuzzles — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 07:28:05 +0000

Amazon won’t do this but what about the book publishers themselves? I would be a lot more tempted to start buying paper copies of books again if I knew they came with a pack in code for the eBook. It could even be a way for publishers to undermine the dominance of Amazon in the eBook market if they used a non proprietary format for three pack in eBook.