Biting The Hand That Feeds You

Do you really understand what you’re asking for when you force a market value of $0.99 or even $2.99 for ebooks?

I read something the other week that again brought up the whole ebook v. paperbook argument. As a reader, low-cost is great, but as a creator of product (a writer), I can’t stand they way ebooks are priced. It cheapens the artist’s and packager’s (publisher’s) efforts—which, in the Indie world, is usually the same entity.

At a writer’s conference several years ago, this was brought up. In fact, it used to get brought up a fair amount when I was still attending conferences.

“Well, you’re not really creating a book, you know…it’s all electronic—it should be cheaper!”

Do you know what goes into creating a book? I don’t mean writing it, I mean creating the “package” we call “a book”?

I’m an Indie author, have never been traditional, and just take a look at what I have to go through to release a book! Click here.

Now…translate that to a huge corporation with salaried employees. With other books to release…with hugely talented editors and cover artists and all the other bells and whistles that go with running huge corporations and operations, not to mention all the administrative support—these people have lives to support (well, I do too…), so they damned well wanna get paid and have health care and other “minor” considerations, like a safe and comfortable environment in which to work (which involves other overhead costs, like building/office space rental, HVAC maintenance, insurances, et cetera)!

One editor with whom I last heard this argument discussed had said (words to the effect that) the actual book creation (the physical pages and cover) is almost the least of the “their problems” when it comes to making a book. You still have to commission an artist to do the cover, review the cover, edit the content, edit the cover, create and organize the content and cover, copyedit the content, proofread the content, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, there’s still a shitload of effort that needs to be completed even before a book is “typeset”/digitized and put to actual paper and bound.

So, okay, there’s no massive distribution or warehousing of physical books with ebooks. I get that. So if not $15 a book. $12, fine. But not $3, not 99 cents.

Again, please review what it takes to put out a book. And note that whether I put out an ebook or a physical trade paperback it still costs me the same to format it. The cover is only slightly cheaper because I don’t need the wrap-around (spine and back) cover. Everything else (like my editor friend said) remains the same. I still have to commission a cover artist.

Oh, and let’s not forget a very important part—the years it took some of us to write the thing! Yes, years!

So, really, charging only $0.99 for a book (or anything less than the retail price for the physical version) that took maybe 2-4 or more years from first word to shelf (digital or otherwise) is in my humble opinion a frigging crime. I’m all for $15 an ebook. Marketplace, however, dictates otherwise.

It’s like people with “plastic.”

If money is just “plastic” we tend to not really think of it as “money.” We really only tend to think of money as “money” when we hold the actual dollar bills in our hands…and this is how I think many view the Internet and things that one gets over the Internet: that everything over it is somehow not “real”…that things we get from it should be free.

For some odd reason we feel an indignant sense of entitlement with All-things Internet.

Why is that?

Someone has to manage and oversee The Internet. Someone has to get paid for keeping that electronic highway up and running. Why do some/many feel that anything we get over it should be cheap or free? Why do some/many feel that ebooks should be so cheap…or altogether free (and not to mention: “Hey, I bought the full-price paperback—I should get the ebook free!”)?

Is that maybe because you think that ebooks aren’t real books?

That they’re just weightless little electrons (even electrons [protons and neutrons] have weight)? Like “plastic money”…ebooks aren’t…real.

Aren’t…tangible.

You’re iPhone and iPad are real. They’re tangible. You can certainly hold those toys in your hands. Nobody seems to have a problem shelling out all the cash that goes with owning a cell phone.

But an ebook?

Nawwww…it’s electronic. It ain’t real.

With a physical book or your iPhone you have to put it somewhere. You can’t just ignore it. It’s something.

You can’t drop an ebook.

If an ebook falls…does it make a sound?

No.

Therefore it’s not real.

If you drop your iPad or Nokia people have to peel you off the ceiling and call in a crash cart.

You’re not worried about the Internet breaking when you drop your toy. It’s ubiquitous. So much Internet content is free. But your handheld toy wasn’t.

So, next time you get indignant over the price of an ebook, keep this in mind: we sweat and toil over our “products” for years…then sweat and toil and spend all kinds of money and effort to create a really cool package—called “a book,” whether it’s an ebook or a “real” book—so you can enjoy something fun to read. Be moved. Informed. Whatever. Taken away from your real life. Writers write so we can realize this crazy, driving force within us into reality…only to have our efforts cheapened and dismissed by “The Internet.” And we writers know that not even the reader’s time is “free.” There are always trade-offs.

One way or the other…somebody always pays.