It kind of feels like Trek fans get gouged.

[Nerys Myk]

Anyone remember when Trek novelizations came out in hardcover? Aside from Star Trek Nemesis, the last episode novelization was Shockwave in 2002 (although The Expanse novelization mentioned on its copyright page that it had been prepared as a hardcover before being downgraded to a Trade Paperback). Its surprising that with Discovery, Pocket isn't doing a hardcover (even just a PC hardcover).

I actually thought it was weird when they began issuing novelizations in hardback. Mass market paperbacks were the usual format for years.

 

[ronny]

I tend wait on hardcovers and other more pricier books if I think there's going to be a MMPB version coming but this is one of those exceptions.

 

[tomswift2002]

And as ebooks expand to be become a bigger part of the market, they're going to be expected to carry their weight when it comes to paying for the advances, salaries, overhead, and so on, instead of getting a free ride off the print edition. The cover price pays for the content, not the paper and ink.

I'm reminded of an old story that I was told from the VHS era. When people bought a VHS tape they thought that they owned the whole tape, including the video that was on the tape. In actuality you only own the few pieces of plastic that make up the VHS tape and the tape itself. That's the cheap part. The most expensive part is the licensed content which you don't own. It guess its the same with books, with physical books all you the consumer own is the paper, which is the cheap part, or e-books the Kindle/iPod/whatever, but then you are purchasing the license for the actual words. And its the license where the producer recoups and makes his/her money.

 

[Greg Cox]

True story: I once had to explain to an author (who shall be nameless) that he did not own the cover art on his book, which he wanted to merchandise. "But it's my book!"

"Yes, but it's the artist's art. You want to sell calendars and mugs and such, you have to pay the artist."

He kept insisting that since the book was copyrighted in his name, that meant he owned the cover art, too. Took awhile to convince him that his copyright did not apply to the cover painting.

 

[Vnix]

True story: I once had to explain to an author (who shall be nameless) that he did not own the cover art on his book, which he wanted to merchandise. "But it's my book!"

"Yes, but it's the artist's art. You want to sell calendars and mugs and such, you have to pay the artist."

He kept insisting that since the book was copyrighted in his name, that meant he owned the cover art, too. Took awhile to convince him that his copyright did not apply to the cover painting.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to explain Intellectual Property rights even to full on legally educated people since they are so different from the standard.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I remember mass-market paperbacks being sixty cents when I was kid, but that was a long time ago. $11 for a trade paperback is actually kinda on the cheap side these days. $15 is pretty standard for a TPB in 2017.

I still HAVE vintage Bantam first editions with cover prices of sixty cents. Along with back issues (that weren't back issues when I got them!) of Popular Science and Model Railroader with that same cover price.

I also remember when ADF's Splinter of the Mind's Eye first came out. An $8 or $9 hardcover, as I recall. And I remember begging for it from my parents, and eventually getting the hardcover edition of the first SW movie novelization for Christmas or my birthday. And I remember, decades later, scouring used book stores for a first edition of Splinter (MMPBs and BCHCs of it were a dime a dozen, but the first edition was unobtainable locally). Then, while vacationing in Sacramento, I found and bought one at a memorabilia shop in Old Sac, only to mislay it and lose it. Finally nabbed that particular Holy Grail on eBay, of course. And now we have Alibris.

True story: I once had to explain to an author (who shall be nameless) that he did not own the cover art on his book, which he wanted to merchandise. "But it's my book!"

Or if the cover art was done as a work-for-hire, then it probably belongs to the publisher.

 

[Greg Cox]

You'd be surprised how hard it is to explain Intellectual Property rights even to full on legally educated people since they are so different from the standard.

Yep. And, just to stay OT, the confusion comes from what constitutes "the book"--the intellectual property or the actual physical object and packaging. The correct answer, as far as copyright is concerned, is the former, which is why an author can't just stroll into a bookstore and walk off with a paperback edition without paying for it, even though it's "their" book and they own the rights to the content.

 

[David Mack]

True story: I once had to explain to an author (who shall be nameless) that he did not own the cover art on his book, which he wanted to merchandise. "But it's my book!"

"Yes, but it's the artist's art. You want to sell calendars and mugs and such, you have to pay the artist."

He kept insisting that since the book was copyrighted in his name, that meant he owned the cover art, too. Took awhile to convince him that his copyright did not apply to the cover painting.

This is why, before I designed midnightfront.com, the website to support my new Tor Books series Dark Arts, I contacted cover artist Larry Rostant and got his permission to use his key art for the book one cover as the key art for the site.

Part of what made that possible was that I asked nicely, but also that I am not attempting to do ancillary merchandising. The site exists to promote the series and sales of the book, and nothing else. (I also checked with my publisher before building the site, just to be sure.)

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I'm reminded of an old story that I was told from the VHS era. When people bought a VHS tape they thought that they owned the whole tape, including the video that was on the tape. In actuality you only own the few pieces of plastic that make up the VHS tape and the tape itself. That's the cheap part. The most expensive part is the licensed content which you don't own. It guess its the same with books, with physical books all you the consumer own is the paper, which is the cheap part, or e-books the Kindle/iPod/whatever, but then you are purchasing the license for the actual words. And its the license where the producer recoups and makes his/her money.

With physical books, you as the owner of the physical book do have the right to resell the book. The doctrine of first sale doesn't exist with ebooks, which is why there's no such thing as a used ebookstore.

 

[Greg Cox]

Regarding cover art, my understanding is that reproducing the cover, complete with the type and such, to advertise your book is fair game, since it's assumed that the art will be used to promote the book in ads and catalogs and such. Which is why authors can generally get away with using the cover art on free bookmarks, flyers, and so on.

But if the author tries to sell calendars and tee-shirts and mugs featuring the art, that's another story. That's not advertising, that's merchandising.

 

[ATimson]

Right. With thousands or tens of thousands of units being printed, the cost of printing, shipping, etc. is mere pennies per copy. Most of what you're paying for is the work done by the writer, editor, copyeditors, proofreaders, cover designer, cover artist, typesetters, sales and marketing staff, etc., and that's exactly the same for an e-book as it is for a print book.

Okay, but why is it more for an ebook of a TPB than for the ebook of a MMPB? I could maybe understand tying the print price of an MMPB and the ebook price together. (Although since S&S is getting 70% of the cover price on ebooks vs. about 50% of the cover price on print ones, even that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.) But all those costs you listed are "per title", not related to the physical packaging, so there's no reason I see that the ebook should have a list price more than $7.99 based on those alone.

If the contract's royalties for ebook sales are based on the print cover price, increase it up to $8.99 or $9.99. (Assuming a $16 print price, each $1 in price increase above $7.99 ebook would net enough additional income to cover 8.75% in royalties.)

 

[JWolf]

What price do you think would be fair for a trade paperback novel? $11 is pretty standard. And if worse comes to worse, there's always the local library. It'll probably get Desperate Hours long before Discovery itself is available on DVD.

But there's no need for this to be a trade paperback. The only reason it's a trade paperback is so the price can be increased. It really should be a MMPB. Then the price for the pBook and eBook would be lower. Trade paperbacks came into prominence when publishers realized how much more profit they can make over the traditional MMPB. Trade paperbacks are an odd shape and they don't feel good holding them. MMPB is the proper size and does work when holding them. So really, we need to stop buying trade paperbacks and let them tank.

384 pages is a nicely sized novel. $11 seems just fine for that. I do agree that Amazon often prices their Kindle ebooks quite high, but that said, $12 is still within reason for a brand new novel.

When you are talking about a trade paperback, it's not really 384 pages when converted to MMPB. Trades have a larger font, larger spacing, and larger margins. So yes, you have more pages due to the format, not due to the length of the story.

 

[JWolf]

"It's a larger-format trade paperback, a prestige format," Does this phrase mean that it's a standard size trade paperback, or that it's in that "new" size that's taller than a regular paperback but no wider? I hate those.

It means it won't fit on the bookshelf.

I definitely like trade paperbacks having bigger print it makes the books easier to read than the regular sized Star trek books with the small print in alot of the books.

eBooks. You then don't need to worry about the text size.

I'm no expert on ebooks, but, yes, when I'm crunching the numbers on a prospective book project for Tor, I'm going to be concentrating on the licensing fees, author advances, royalty rates, subsidiary rights, territories, and so on, as opposed to the PP&B (paper, printing & binding) costs, which are only really an issue if you're talking about some two-thousand-page doorstop.

And as ebooks expand to be become a bigger part of the market, they're going to be expected to carry their weight when it comes to paying for the advances, salaries, overhead, and so on, instead of getting a free ride off the print edition. The cover price pays for the content, not the paper and ink.

So why is it then that a lot of eBooks cost the same or very similar to the pBook and yet we get a generic cover that costs the publisher nothing instead of getting the proper cover? The listing for the eBook shows the cover, but the eBook might not have that cover and instead some generic cover. Given many eBooks that don't have a proper cover, the price should be lower as no royalties have to be paid to the designer of the cover.

If you had tow editions of the complete Star Trek: TOS series on blu-ray and one came with very nice packaging with eye-catching artwork compared to the same blu-ray but packaged in generic DVD cases with bland generic artwork? That's what we get a lot of the time with eBooks. We get the bland generic packaging yet we pay for the nice artwork. Star Trek eBooks are not perfect in this regard. I've seen a number of Star Trek eBooks with a lousy cover and poorly formatted. The newer Star Trek eBooks do have a proper cover and are formatted much better.

 

[tomswift2002]

With physical books, you as the owner of the physical book do have the right to resell the book. The doctrine of first sale doesn't exist with ebooks, which is why there's no such thing as a used ebookstore.

Yeah, but at the same time you don't have the right to make a copy, either electronically or by photocopy.

Just like with VHS you could resell the tape, but you couldn't make a coyp of the video and keep that and sell the tape or make other copies for resell unless you had permission. But with ebooks you are just purchasing a license with no physical purchase involved.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Yeah, but at the same time you don't have the right to make a copy, either electronically or by photocopy.

I didn't say you did. I'm only saying that you and I have the legal right to monetize a physical book library by reselling it, a right that we don't have with ebooks.

I've seen people make the argument that ebooks are overpriced because there's no resell value to ebooks, which I think has merit. We're in a weird time right now where we're paying not for a product but only a contract to use a product, even when there's a physical good involved, like John Deere farm equipment, and hundreds and thousands of years of both law and culture haven't caught up with that paradigm shift.

 

[Trek Survivor]

Regarding the price of ebook vs physical book:

In the UK (and Europe), we do not pay VAT (Value Added Tax) on physical books (or, we pay a very low rate up to 5%), but historically it HAS been charged on ebooks (minimum level of 15%). VAT in the UK is currently 20.00%.

Note - in the last few months there has been reports that the tax applicable to ebooks is being brought down/removed, so we may well see a reduction in ebook prices.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/...ng-vat-on-e-books-to-match-printed-book-rates

 

[JWolf]

And when the UK leaves the EU, the tax will go back in place.

 

[Sci]

Okay, but why is it more for an ebook of a TPB than for the ebook of a MMPB?

Presumably, because the level of consumer demand will be higher for a TPB. If customers value this book more highly than others, why shouldn't the price be higher?

Think of it this way: A ticket to Hamilton: An American Musical costs way more than a ticket to The Book of Mormon. This is because the audience values seeing Hamilton more than seeing Book of Mormon.

If the audience values the debut DSC novel more than Yet Another TOS Novel, then why shouldn't the publisher earn more for having created something the audience values more?

(And before anyone asks how I square this with seemingly capitalistic rhetoric with my socialism, it's simple -- socialism is the communal ownership of the means of production; S&S, like all firms, ought to be a worker-owned co-operative whose employee-owners equitably share in the surplus value their labor produces. And there's no reason why, in a hypothetical World According to Sci, those worker-owners shouldn't get a higher surplus value on a TPB of DSC.)

 

[JD]

If you look at the other forms of entertainment that are offered in both physical and digital formats, movies, video games, comics, ect. pretty much all charge the same price for both formats. You're more or less getting the same thing, so I don't have a problem with them being the same price. If I'm willing to pay $7.99 for the paper book, $19.99 for the Blu-Ray, or $59.99 for the game, then I'm willing to pay that price for the digital version.

 

[David cgc]

But there's no need for this to be a trade paperback. The only reason it's a trade paperback is so the price can be increased. It really should be a MMPB.

Another substantial reason is that TPBs have faster turnaround times than MMPBs, which can come in handy when you only know when a book needs to be released a few months in advance (thanks to DSC's shifting premiere date). The MMPB schedule can be locked years in advance. Even the delays happen many months before the fact. The only short-notice MMPB I can recall being released is the reprint of Nightshade during the Kelvin-timeline novel gap, and I presume that all the time-consuming MMPB work was reused from the original printing, and they just ran off some more copies with a new cover.