Munsey’s Technosnarl

Jesus Christ, now we have to refute stupid articles from three weeks ago.

Here’s the problem with Maher and Blodget’s “analysis”:  They don’t know a damn thing about how ebooks get into the Kindle store.

Let’s go back to tiering, with an estimate of Amazon’s profits per title.

1. The DTP Store.  Anything published through this interface is available on Amazon without any discounts whatsoever.  I know Bill McCoy once called DTP Books “Edocs and Filler,” but McCoy is not currently employed in publishing, while Stephen Windwalker had a number 1 hit, which Amazon got 2/3rds of the list price of. DTP prints money for Amazon.
2. The Mobi orphans–who were with Amazon at Kindle launch.  First group, guys like Barney Rosset,* wandering the web gathering material for resale at $5-6 per digital copy.  Even with 20% discounting, Amazon’s making $2-3 on ebooks sold this way, giving the publisher 35% of the cover price.
3. The Mobi orphans with print tie-ins and original content.  Here the split occurs.  Some, like Samhain, have (hopefully) negotiated better %s.  Others haven’t yet, but we can always stage a protest given the Smashwords nonsense.  For a $7 Samhain, publisher maybe gets $3.50, and Amazon gets the rest after a 20% discount, so, $2 or so per book… $3 average for Mobi orphans who haven’t yet negotiated a better deal.
4. Name small presses–Akashic, Seven Stories, etc.  These guys tend to sell their ebooks at the same price as their trade paperbacks.  Amazon may be losing money for some titles, but you’re generally talking $16 ebook sold for $9.99 where the publisher gets $8, so, again, $1-2 gross profit for Amazon.
5. The really big guys–Random, Hachette, S&S.  Here, Amazon is supposedly losing money.  And they probably are in some cases, I can’t see that either Amazon, or Walmart, or Target, or whoever, made much off the latest Dan Brown.  But, some hard covers go for more than $9.99 as ebooks, mass market paperbacks ($6-8) are sold at traditional 20%+ discounts, with Amazon making $1-2 a copy, and trade papers, Amazon’s likely making money, as with the smaller presses above, per a Sony Rep’s statement to me that nobody gets more than 50% in the Kindle store.

It’s only a very small portion of the Kindle store books that are discounted massively.  Just as it’s only a very small portion of the bestselling hardcovers that are discounted massively. Kindle is already quite lucrative for Amazon.

Let’s find a new meme, shall we?

*Yes, that really is Barney Rosset in the Kindle store.  Sure, his minions have ripped off Munsey’s for stuff to sell, violating our CC license, but, hell, Barney’s been ripping off the Olympia Press for going on six decades now.  He’s not likely to change, let it go, and if you happen to meet him at a Small Press Center event in the summer, make sure to take care of him and get him water, ‘cuz he’s looking kind of frail, and the AC in the Small Press Center sucks.

Tags: .Epub, Adobe, Amazon, Barney Rosset, BN, Ebooks, Kindle, Mark Coker, Overdrive, Silly NDAs, Small Presses, Smashwords, Sony

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Ebooks, Odd. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.