"Digital Sales Outstrip A Hardcover’s Debut"

Unfortunately, this content is behind a pay wall.  But it states that Harper, for the first time sold more copies of a title in e-book form than hardcover.  Over the initial twelve days of sales, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s "The Dressmaker of Khair Khana" sold 6,500 digital copies as opposed to 5,700 hardcovers.

They lowered the price of the iPod, but they didn’t lower the price of the music.

Amazon dramatically dropped the price of the Kindle, to less than two hundred dollars, and digital sales took off.  Why?  BECAUSE OF THE PRICE OF CONTENT!

It makes sense.  There’s no printing, no shipping, why shouldn’t the price go down?

But not in the music business.  No, no.  Musicians are special, they work harder than any other kind of artist.  And the executives have to make more money than any other kind of exec.  And the result is they’re killing their business.

Credit Amazon, they sold Kindle books at a loss, to keep the price cheap, to make a market.  They tried this with music, but iTunes already had traction and not every title was discounted and they just weren’t cheap enough and it was too far into the digital era to get people to switch to buying digital files.

I’m not saying a wave of piracy will not hit e-books, but I am saying they’re doing their damnedest to satiate the customer.

Why are tracks $1.29?  Multiply by ten and that’s more than the price of an album at a big box store, and who wants the album anyway?

What if the track were a dime.  What if tracks were sold in bundles.  What if we told the customer that with no inventory and shipping costs, we’re passing the savings on to them!

But not in the music business.

Meanwhile, the publishers are trying to mess up digital sales by going to the agency model.  Where they get a percentage as opposed to a flat fee wholesale price.  Bottom line, retail price went up.  And I could explain all the details, but as a result of this agency model, initiated by Apple, at its App Store and iBooks Store, the publishers are letting the lunatics take over the asylum.  Publishers don’t promote any but the most popular books.  Sign a deal and you must do the hype yourself.  And if that’s the case, why not take 70% of the action, which is what Amazon now offers self-publishing authors, as opposed to the low royalty rate of the big boy publishers.

This debate is raging online.  Anybody with an audience is contemplating going indie, just like the Eagles and Journey and KISS did with Wal-Mart.  Why not take all the money?

And with no radio in publishing, newbies are going indie too.

And newbies price their books at ninety nine cents or just under three bucks, so people will take a risk, they’re all about spreading the word, reaching the most people, whereas in music we want to rip off those who really care and we don’t really pay attention to those outside the loop.  Hell, one could argue dedicated fans should get a discount, but the music business is so busy ripping people off it cannot understand the concept of a loyalty program.

If we don’t go to subscription, we’re gonna have to lower the price.  Digital sales have stalled, something new needs to be tried.

And if we are going to subscription, why not blow out tracks today?

Read this to get up to speed on self-publishing:
Ebooks and Self-Publishing – A Dialog Between Authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath 
It’s long, but informative.