Why Ebook Pricing and Ebooks are Screwed

Today upon the recommendation of Dethroner I decided to purchase The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

The Road is “a tale about survivors in a post apocalyptic America. Cannibalilism, looting, extinct wildlife, starvation abound thematically. And yet, it’s said, hope prevails, that ultimately it’s a story about the love between a father and his son.”

I want to read this book! I would love to purchase it to read on my Windows Mobile Device. I read books on my Windows Mobile Device, thats how I roll.

Surprisingly The Road is available from Fictionwise.com, unfortunately it is $17.95.

Amazon.com also sells The Road as a paperback for $8.95.

Yep folks, the hardcopy, dead tree, high overhead, have to hold an inventory version of The Road costs $9 less than the digital easy delivery, convenient, instant gratification ebook version.

Asinine, I know.

See Also: What’s Wrong With Retailers: Ebook Edition

What’s Wrong With Retailers: E-book edition

As part of my ongoing process of telling the world what retailers do wrong and in an attempt to set the market and retailers on my train of thought I am now tackling e-books. There are several issues I want to cover relating to the current state of ebooks.

Currently in order to read all of the ebooks I want to I need to keep a veritable arsenal of programs on my Pocket PC. At any given time I will have 4-5 different programs installed each accessing its own proprietary ebook format. God forbid the ebook is in a pdf format, which works horribly for ebooks on a PPC. One of two things needs to happen; publishers and authors need to all get together and use an open standard format, or they need to release their ebook in a multitude of formats. If authors who are providing content follow the example of Cory Doctorow, who distributes ebooks in 4 formats and allows fans to convert the novel into any format so long as,

“If you are converting to a format that has some kind of use-restriction options (i.e., no-print, no-copy, etc), these must be switched off”

This gets around the problem of needing 5 different readers on my pocket PC but it is not widely practiced.

The next problem I have with the current state of the ebooks is that many titles are often not released as an ebook, and a good number of titles which are released are often delayed significantly before their digital debut.

When the books are finally released as an ebook the price is often the same as a hardcover new release. This is problematic because the costs and overhead associated with an ebook should be much lower than the hardcover. This is similar to the ability of online music services to offer downloads cheaper than a physical verison on a CD. The lower overhead is relative to how many online stores can sell a product at a lower price than a brick and mortor store.

My Issues with Ebooks:

• Delayed Releases
• Pricing
  • Ebook distribution and overhead should be MINIMAL
• The notion that pirates will steal your book and leave you penniless,
  • DRM will protect your ebook to an extent but an ebook pirate isn’t the same person who would buy your book anyway!
• Many people only read ebooks, so offer them already!

If the marketplace demands a product or a format then give it to them, especially if the overhead is negligible. The few people who may pirate your material is so negligible in the overall scheme that it should not keep publishers and authors from releasing their works in a digital form. I have read exactly 4 hard cover books for pleasure in the past 2 years. I have read at least 20 full length ebooks in the same amount of time. Some of these I actually paid the full hardcover price to gain in a digital form (though I only paid full hardcover price in conjunction with a Fictionwise.com rebate program).

What’s Wrong With Retailers: Toys R Us Come On Down

Remember last week when I covered stores stockpiling supplies of hot items in hopes that an ad will bring the consumers a runnin?  Well Toys R Us corporate apparently doesn’t bother to read the site otherwise they would know how dumb it is to hold  onto stock of an item that would sell out before it even hits the shelf.  Accordign to several sources at Kotaku, Toys R Us is stockpiling both the Nintendo Wii and the DS Lite for a sale next sunday February 11th.

Attention retailers stop stockpiling items, it only hurts your brand’s reputation when consumers find out they are being lied to.   Just another segment of What’s Wrong With Retailers brought to you by Josh Smith, Consumer Consulting Expert.

What’s Wrong With Retailers: The Real Estate Edition

In my latest segment of What’s Wrong With Retailers (WWWR) I decided to tackle a different kind of retailer, the real estate retailer. Specifically I want to provide a tip to the real estate agents and companies of the world.  One of the worst things you can do for your business and your commission is to restrict potential customers from viewing your listings. Many real estate agents keep the listings behind a email required form. This practice does nothing to assist your sales.

If you have a form one of several things happens.

1. The individual simply leaves the site rather than be pestered with your spam.
2. The individual enters someone else’s email address to get to your listings.
3. Defying logic, an individual enters their email address and is subsequently spammed by you and not doing business with you.

Putting your items for sale behind any kind of form does nothing to aid your business. If you have quality homes, in prime locations people interested in your “product” will get in touch with you, provided you have a page of contact info.

One final not about what’s wrong with real estate agents and companies is a trend in not identifying where houses are located. This appears to be less of an issue with many realtors however when you do run into this problem it is enough to make you leave the site.

As I have a rather common email address at gmail I receive loads of “spam” from retail agents who keep their listing behind spam thus requiring frustrated users to enter my email address to avoid divulging their own. I plan on posting the emails I receive from these realtors in the comments as well as sending them an email with this post. I encourage you to do the same.

Stay tuned for more WWWR segments coming soon. Next up I will cover a problem with online retailers which is a personal pet peeve.

What’s Wrong With Retailers Part 1

The Issue

This week I plan on covering a common practice in the retail environment. This problem is sometimes called stockpiling or “pulling”. “Pulling” is when a retailer will pull certain items from the store shelves and hold them in the back of the store until the beginning of an ad. This is common with many of the “next” gen video game consoles due to their scarcity but can extend to video game and mp3 player accessories, even an entire store’s selection of computers. When I refer to pulling or stockpiling I am not referring to a retailer holding an item based on a release date, simply holding an item for an advertisement. There are several problems with this practice.

The Logic

The reasoning of retailers behind pulling these items is so that they will have the items in stock come Sunday when the ad begins. The stores also plan on running out of these hot items come Sunday, sometimes even planning on passing out tickets before the store opens for hot ticket game consoles. The stores rationalize the early sell out by believing that customers will still be drawn in by the advertisement. These retailers falsely assume that the consumer will in disappointment purchase another big ticket electronic item.

Examples

As I have previously mentioned the practice of holding stock is common for high demand video games. The Nintendo Wii is commonly held by retailers until they have enough quantity in stock to run an advertisement. One example of Best Buy holding stock is backed up by an insider publication for Best Buy stores, relating to a December 17^th Wii sale. Personally I have been told be retail associates at several stores that an item I wanted was not available until tomorrow because there was a sale on the item. Just this past week some Best Buy stores pulled their entire selection of PCs for several days so they could switch over to selling Windows Vista computers, leaving the store unable to sell PCs to any customer for that period of time.

Why it Fails

 

When it comes to pulling stock solely for the purpose of having the item “in stock” for a later ad, you are losing sales to your current customers. There is no reason to hold an item in the back of the store when a customer is in your place of business who wants to part with their money for something you have for sale. This is doubly horrible for a retailer because the ad price may be lower, which means the money the retailer receives later that month will actually be less. From the consumer standpoint there is nothing more disappointing than having a retail employee tell you that the hot electronic item you want is “in the back” and that you cannot make the purchase for 2-3 days. This is the point at which retailers lose customers. I know this seems very rudimentary but many stores continue this practice and in the process alienate customers and lose money.

The first rule of retail, Never turn away a customer willing to part with their money.

The second rule of retail, Never turn away a customer willing to part with their money.

Wrap Up

This is the first in a running series of articles which will detail common retailing practices garnered from my past experience in retail, contacts inside the retail industry. and various online sources. The articles will focus on things that retailers do wrong, from industry practices to marketing. If you have any input or suggestions for other articles please leave them in the comments. You can track this series by clicking on the What’s Wrong With Retailers (WWWR) tag below.