Image courtesy of Catie Rhodes
Found a quote on Twitter that’s intriguing, to say the least.
A barista spends 3 minutes making you a $6 cup of coffee, you tip her. A writer spends a year writing a book, you complain $4.99 is too high.
My first thought about this was that it’s comparing apples to electrons. That barista is probably not being paid a living wage for their service sector job, and must make a cup for every single customer. They’re also not making any profit outside of her wage and those tips. A writer, on the other hand, gets the job done, then doesn’t need to repeat the effort for every sale (arguably, stops needing to put any effort into a work after a certain tipping point). Of course, writers struggle to make a living wage, too.
As I thought on it, though, there’s two other elements that struck me about this. Namely, entitlement from two directions.
Writers
We’re in an interesting world where any writer with the wherewithal can get their book in front of real people for almost any price they want. They can get paid for their work. That’s an awesome thing! Anyone has a shot to making it as a creative, and it’s the first time in history that’s been true.
That doesn’t mean everyone will succeed though. The market still exists, you still have external factors pressuring what you can sell for. Some of it is price anchoring. Some of it is reader expectations.
It comes down to you’re worth what you make people believe you’re worth. New self-published writers should probably follow the market on pricing, aiming for a center-of-the-road amount and build an audience. Established authors, though, have a brand presence that lets them ask what they like. Of course, that brings us to the other side of the coin.
Readers
E-readers changed the reading world. I read an article not long ago that listed the Generation-Y as the most widely read generation. Books are everywhere. More every day, in every genre, at every price point imaginable. I have a kindle loaded with free reads I’ve picked up from Amazon promotional days. It’s a wonderful time to be a reader.
It’s dangerous, though. Getting used to free and cheap reads. For one, you end up running into a lot of crap. But it also makes you think that’s what fiction is worth. $2.99. $3.99.
Let’s get real. You were buying mass market paperbacks for seven to ten dollars for a long time before the advent of the three dollar e-book. We like to pretend that electronic formats aren’t worth the same, but the truth is, most people only read a book once and either shelve it, lose it, or pass it on. The only element you lose with an e-book is the option to pass it on.
So why are we demanding all electronic fiction be cheaper than five dollars? Sometimes its worth the premium to get at a writer we really enjoy. Of course, sometimes those authors give us what we want at a price we love. That makes us love them all the more.
Is there a two-way entitlement issue in e-fiction? Let me know in the comments.
There definitely seems to be, but I find the main problem is – as it tends to be – the unnecessary middleman. I know John Green has talked quite a bit about why publishers are good and make books better, but I feel that while his points are valid they only cover a small part of the publishing industry.
It’s the same problem as in the music industry; unless you’re self-published, you’re only getting a relatively small portion of the total consumer cost of the product (and yeah I know it’s much, much worse in the music industry than in writing/publishing).
There are publishing companies out there now who are adapting to the modern world. Small publishers that limit their activity to the stuff John has talked about; making books better. If publishers want to survive into the future, this is how they must adapt. It will allow writers a much larger portion of the profits, and it will make the publishing industry flexible enough to work within multiple publishing models at the same time.
Not enough people / companies have understood the true impact of the internet economy. There is a concept in economics known as “long tail” (selling less of more) that applies much, much wider now than it ever did before. The natural consequence is that larger companies become less and less efficient over time, whereas small companies become more and more efficient. The reason for this is that the main advantage of larger companies in many fields has traditionally been their reach, but that advantage is now rapidly disappearing.
In the end, prices will drop AND profits will rise – everyone goes home happy. Except for the unnecessary middlemen who are now out of a job (and need to find something actually *useful* to do).
I’m afraid the discussion about what the publishing industry needs to do is a long and complex topic. I do agree with your sentiment, though. One of the ironic things I find about the move to e-books from the major publishers is they proved that they feel that the delivery method is worth more than the author.
I was discussing this with an author friend just the other day — coffee analogy and all! But we were looking at it from the point of view of what an experience is worth to someone. A $5 coffee lasts 10-20 mins, whereas a $5 novel will take readers anything from hours to weeks. On that level alone, it’s hard to comprehend why people are so reluctant to pay for books, when they might drop $5 for coffee three times a day. (We also compared books with movies — which in Australia can cost up to $20 for a 3D experience!) Definitely there’s a misplaced sense of entitlement on the part of readers at least.
I don’t know if the time of the final experience is a quality measure of the worth of something. For example, while the coffee lasts only 10-20 minutes, it has other effects that last longer. With a book, some will stick with you forever (And those are generally the ones you buy again when an old copy finally wears out) and some you’ll promptly forget as you move on to the next. Value of art is definitely a funny topic.
I will say theater pricing is getting absolutely ridiculous, though. Especially considering the local theater is charging 10-13 per film, and rarely fills the theater.
Very interesting topic, Patrick! I’ve wondered about this too, only my comparison was always a hot chocolate & chocolate pastry at Panera Bread. I think some of this has to also do with the packaging/presentation and the experience of a product as well.
For instance, back when I lived in Vermont, a friend and I would get together once a month at Panera Bread (hence the hot chocolate and the chocolate pastry
). We are both homeschooling moms with young children–we are with our kids almost all the time. It was such treat for us both to get out of the house by ourselves and spend two or three hours chatting with a good friend. I don’t begrudge Panera the $7.00 or more I spent on that experience, even though I would certainly grumble about paying that amount for an e-book.
Let’s face it–the packaging of an e-book, at this point, isn’t something that readers can really experience in the way they experience a cup of coffee. Yes, you can have a pretty cover, but it’s purely a visual experience and how many of us even *see* that cover on our e-reader once we download the book? My Kindle doesn’t show cover image thumbnails, just the title. It opens the book to the first page, not the cover image.
Packaging matters a great deal more than we think. So does selling the *experience* of a product. Now how we can apply that to making e-books more valuable in the eyes of readers? That I don’t know.