First 20 Pages of The Struggle Within Avaiable on S&S.com

[Sci]

JWolf wrote:

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S&S needs to learn how to price eBooks. Look at the prices of the individual SCE eBooks.

http://books.simonandschuster.biz/Ag.../9780743475921

76 pages at most and it's $5.99. This is way out of line.

"Way out of line?"

It's not like there's an objective standard for what is or is not an appropriate price for a minor luxury item such as a Star Trek novella.

[JD]

^Exactly. And it's still $2 cheaper than the $7.99 we pay for novels. I really don't get why people get so pissed over the pricing of digital stuff. You get the same thing as you get when you buy a physical copy, so why shouldn't you pay the same price for the same thing. Sure it would be nice if they were cheaper, but I don't see where them not being is the horrendous crime against humanity so many make it out to be.

[ATimson]

JD wrote:

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^Exactly. And it's still $2 cheaper than the $7.99 we pay for novels.

25% discount in price (or 0% if you buy using Amazon's 4 for 3 discount), 75% discount in content...

[Sci]

ATimson wrote:

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25% discount in price (or 0% if you buy using Amazon's 4 for 3 discount), 75% discount in content...

Yeah, but you've got to factor in that S&S needs to be able to make money at this if they're going to continue doing it. They're a business producing luxury items, not a charity producing essential services. If it's not worth their while to publish something for less than $5.99, then I say they should keep pricing it at $5.99.

[Turtletrekker]

I agree that the price is a little steep, but after reading the preview, I will most likely be buying this, and I rarely buy e-books.

[Judith Sisko]

I haven't purchased any of the Typhon Pact books and I doubt I'll get this one because of that, but I hope we see more e-books.

[ATimson]

Sci wrote:

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Yeah, but you've got to factor in that S&S needs to be able to make money at this if they're going to continue doing it. They're a business producing luxury items, not a charity producing essential services.

True. My problem isn't that they're trying to make money, it's that they're making more money while providing less value.

[Allyn Gibson]

JWolf wrote:

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76 pages at most and it's $5.99. This is way out of line.

Agreed.

Peter David's The Camelot Papers eBook was 100,000 words and $4.99. Jennifer Pournelle's Outies (a sequel to The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) was 110,000 words and $2.65. Tony Lee's Dodge & Twist eBook was 85,000 words and $2.99. All eBook originals. (They're the last three that I bought.) All significantly longer than Struggle, all priced less.

I admit that the economic model is different for these eBooks than for a Star Trek eBook. All three of these are, essentially, self-published, and the writers worked without an advance, so the overhead costs are less. And they don't have the licensing fees and such built in that a Star Trek book would have.

I think $2.99 would be a more realistic price point for Struggle; a publisher can charge a little more for an established property. $5.99, however, isn't competitive on price or content, and if Pocket is attempting to put a toe back in the eBook pond, that price point may not get enough nibbles for them to continue.

[JD]

Hmm, now that does kinda change things. I didn't realize there were that many e-book exclusives that were so cheap. And don't forget the e-book exclusive Star Wars novellas, Lost Tribe of the Sith, that are available for free.
And I just found two e-book novellas in the Women of the Other World series, Angelic is 104 pages for the hardcover and $2.99 for the e-book, and Counterfit Magic is 141 pages in hardcover and $4.99 for the e-book.

[Allyn Gibson]

JD wrote:

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Hmm, now that does kinda change things. I didn't realize there were that many e-book exclusives that were so cheap.

Amazon's Kindle Singles, which are eBook originals, are similar in length to The Struggle Within -- the target length is 15,000, though they do range down to 5k and up to 30k -- and they're priced between $0.99 and $4.99. The first one I bought was Frank Delaney's Undead, an interesting and atmospheric essay on the writing of Dracula, and it was just under a dollar, and I think it ran 15k.

I can see reasons why 99 cents wouldn't be a viable price for a Star Trek eBook original. There are a lot of built-in costs, such a Pocket's licensing fees, editing, and formatting the eBook for multiple platforms. (With Kindle Singles, there's only the single format.) But I think $2.99 would be a feasible price, though I suspect that the Kindle Single 70% royalty rate wouldn't be doable.

There's still a lot of madness out there in eBook pricing and not a lot of reason. I've always thought, going back to the days of Microsoft Reader and the first S.C.E. novellas, that the pricing tiers should adhere to a simple logic -- from top to bottom, hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market, eBook. And since for the first three, the next level down is approximately half of the level above it, then the eBook should be about half of the mass-market price, which these days would make it about $3.99 for an eBook. Publishers, though, are reticent to price eBooks at that level, because they're afraid that doing so would gut their print sales. And that, of course, doesn't account for eBook originals; where should they go in the pricing? Publishers are still working that one out.

[Jedi_Master]

Perhaps publishers are trying to follow the restaurant model of pricing. At a restaurant, they generally break even on the food when you factor in food cost, labor cost, building cost. They make their profit at the Bar. Alcohol is VERY profitable.
Perhaps S and S are trying to make some profit on Ebooks. Just like alcoholic beverages at a restaurant, not everyone is going to buy an ebook, but those who do provide a nice built in profit to the owner/publisher.

[JWolf]

One other problem with S&S is that they do not allow any discounts/sales on eBooks. You can get discounts/sales on pBooks from S&S. Bit eBooks, no way. If S&S is going to charge pBook prices for eBooks, then they should at the least allow discounts/sales.

[BrotherBenny]

JWolf wrote:

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One other problem with S&S is that they do not allow any discounts/sales on eBooks. You can get discounts/sales on pBooks from S&S. Bit eBooks, no way. If S&S is going to charge pBook prices for eBooks, then they should at the least allow discounts/sales.

They can't do that because of the Agency pricing model...and before you launch into another one of your tiresome tirades on the subject about how evil it is, let me just point out that the Agency pricing system is actually giving authors a better deal than they've ever had before, with 70% of the eBook price (with the exception of tie-ins, I presume) going directly to them.

[ATimson]

BrotherBenny wrote:

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They can't do that because of the Agency pricing model...and before you launch into another one of your tiresome tirades on the subject about how evil it is, let me just point out that the Agency pricing system is actually giving authors a better deal than they've ever had before, with 70% of the eBook price (with the exception of tie-ins, I presume) going directly to them.

70% goes to the publisher, or 40% more than they get on a print book of the same price. If anything, authors are going to see less (the list prices used to calculate royalties stayed the same or decreased under agency prices, while retail prices increased).

[BrotherBenny]

Wrong.

Michael Stackpole gave me a long lecture on how good the Agency model is for authors when it comes to eBooks.

The publisher still wins in print books though.