New York, New York!
The highlights of my week in New York didn’t begin and end with seeing four musicals on Broadway. That was a major, to be sure, but not the reason I flew across the continent for the second time in a month (the first being the trip to Newfoundland with my husband in early June). I hadn’t been to an RWA National Conference in three years, so I was really looking forward to this one, and it did not disappoint.
On Tuesday, June 27th, I atttended The Golden Network Retreat, which was an all-day affair this year. Any RWA member who has finaled in the Golden Heart (unpublished manuscripts) contest, in the current year or any previous year, and who is a member of The Golden Network Chapter (ie. you must pay your dues) can attend the Retreat. I’ve attended three times, and each time has been more beneficial than the last. Honestly, I can’t remember what happened at the Retreat in 2007… Wait, just typing that brought back the memories. It was a Q&A session with agents and editors, but that was back before publishing took a nosedive. In 2008, it was another Q&A, and we were given the opportunity to do some speed-pitching. This year, it was another Q&A, featuring a morning and also an afternoon session. The same questions each session, but different agents and editors answering them.
The twist this year was that TGN members were to send in our questions a couple of months ago. Around April, if I remember correctly. They kept saying they needed questions, so I sent a few along (I won’t say which ones…ahem). At the time, the digital imprint from one of the “Big Six,” Avon Impulse, had just opened up and announced they would pay 25% on net royalties for the first 10,000 copies and 50% thereafter. So one of the questions sent in and asked of the panel was whether they thought 25% of net was “fair” to the writer. Well. The morning panel nearly didn’t want to answer the question. The afternoon panel did answer it, and the conversation became quite heated. The upshot was that agents didn’t think the 25% on net was fair, but editors (speaking for their houses, anyway) did. I also heard an editor say that ebooks should be priced the same as mass market paperbacks, which really surprised me. People who read ebooks are getting quite accustomed to paying below-mmpb prices, both because of on-line retailers like Amazon heavily discounting ebooks in effort to sell e-readers and because self-publishing (now usually termed “indie” publishing, because it’s easier to type, not being so many letters, plus it sounds cooler) has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year, and indie authors have learned that pricing books at $2.99 is the “sweet point” and that super-low pricing like .99 cents for a full-length novel might boost their sales (there’s also the argument that the super low pricing diminishes the value of the reading experience, but that’s a debate for another post). Authors who self-publish via Kindle at the $2.99 price point or higher earn 70% royalties, whereas authors who self-publish below $2.99 earn 35% royalties. So you can see why the question of 25% on net royalties being “fair” was asked by…someone.
At any rate, readers of ebooks have become accustomed to NOT paying the same as they would pay for a mass market paperback. I know I’m certainly not accustomed to paying the same for an ebook as I would a paperback, whether it’s mass market or trade pb. However, now publisher “agency pricing” has entered the picture, which means the publisher sets the price for their ebooks sold on places like Amazon. Amazon doesn’t set the pricing. And if the publisher decides their ebooks should be priced the same as their mass markets, then they will be. They are in control, not Amazon.
I understand the arguments about the publishers being in control of their own pricing, I just don’t understand the logic behind pricing ebooks the same as mass markets. Okay, if a publisher were to issue an ebook at the same time as the hardcover (hardcovers are usually released several months to a year before the mass market paperback), then I guess they could charge the same for the ebook as they would the mmpb. Because, well, if the mmpb isn’t available at the same time as the ebook, if only the ebook and a hardcover are available, then go for it. Price the ebook like you would the mmpb, then sit back and see what happens. But once the mmpb becomes available, or if a hardcover isn’t published at all (the vast majority of romance novels, which are either mmpb, trade pb or digital-first), then pricing the mmpb the same as the ebook…it just doesn’t make sense to me.
Isn’t the idea to sell more books, not less? Will the faithful reader pay the same for an ebook as a mmpb, even though she doesn’t have a paper copy to put on her bookshelf, lend to a friend, or sell to a used bookstore? I wouldn’t. I’d buy the mass market paperback because it’s more “tangible.” And I can take it into the bathtub.
Now, I love ebooks, and I love my Kindle. It’s very easy to order books, and for some reason I read them faster on my Kindle. But I don’t want to pay the same price as I would for a mass market or a trade paperback (and so far, I haven’t), because I don’t like jamming up my Kindle with books I’ve already read. I delete them (yes, even from the archive). It takes a lot for me to keep an ebook. But then it takes a lot for me to keep a paperback. I feel better about buying ebooks, because I’m not contributing to the landfill when I want to get rid of them, and I don’t have to stress about HOW I’m going to get rid of them without contributing to the landfill, either (I always feel a bit guilty recycling books, but I confess that I very often do). To my way of thinking, agency pricing is a way for publishers to protect their sales…but at what cost? How many readers will turn to self-published authors for the inexpensive reads they used to fulfill through waiting for the mass market to come out? How many readers will boycott authors published by traditional publishers because of agency pricing? Even though the trad-pubbed author has no control over the pricing? How many authors will be told by their houses that they aren’t selling, while ebook sales are going through the roof, but, weird, it’s the ebooks that are priced below mass market pbs that are selling like hotcakes. If the Big Six lowered their prices on ebooks, maybe those authors who “aren’t selling,” who are forced to take new names or who are simply just dropped from the house, might start selling—to the audience that has become accustomed to not paying the same for digital as they do for print.
Thoughts?