Three weeks ago I wrote about Amazon announcing a 70% royalty for authors

It seems Amazon overreached in seeking to establish itself as the online publisher resulting in the heated argument being who controls price, overlooking what the price needs to be to sustain a publishing industry. Now the bits and bytes have settled – Amazon yielded to BigPub and the cost of eBooks, at least new titles, will be going up. Has BigPub discounted the significance of reader boycott when Amazon has tried pricing a few Kindle books above ten dollars? Possibly.

Is boosting the price of eBooks BigPub’s final frontier in the face of the combined effects of more appealing book readers like Apple’s iPad,  rampant file sharing, do-it-yourself pBook scanning, and new habits of consumer thrift borne of this economy? I heard San Francisco agent Ted Weinstein say last November, “The publishing industry is in trouble because publishers have outsourced everything except warehousing and even that will become obsolete.” 

Even readers, like the wife of a middle-aged friend of mine who have resisted eBooks because of the preference for the feel of a print book, can now see themselves reading a book an iPad. Kindle use has spread when friends show their Kindles to their friends. This multiplier effect will increase as iPads get into consumers’ backpacks and bedrooms, attracting more eBook readers. 

The number of digitized books available on file sharing sites is rapidly increasing, too. One of the largest sites posts how many files were added the day before On February 5, the database increased by 29,590. On February 13, 34,166 additional files were added, making nearly twelve million books available for free at this writing. Who’s providing these books and where do they come from?  The majority of pirated files are not hacked eBooks: they are scanned pBooks, manuscripts and galleys, according to Peter Balis of John Wiley.

A large number of pBooks are scanned with do-it-yourself (D-I-Y) book scanners that rival the capability of the $5,000-$50,000 scanners. D-I-Y scanners were the subject of an article in Wired Magazine.  Do-it-yourself scanning has a trade association and a how-to guide for making a book scanner that makes the uploading of pirated books all but unstoppable.

 A 2010 survey by VersoAdvertising found 37% of e-reader owners have downloaded one or more pirated books. At what point does price drive book buyers to move from being purchasers to being downloaders of pirated books? We can safely reason that it’s below $10.00 because file sharing is growing despite Amazon’s $10.00 price point. The history of music sales presents a concerning precedent with songs selling at 99 cents.  Cigarette smokers respond to higher taxes by ceasing smoking, crossing state lines to buy cigarettes in states with lower taxes, or buying smuggled-in cigarettes. We’re looking at a near term in which competition won’t be between Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Barnes & Noble, and Borders for pricing books, the real competition will be free eBooks available by download from file sharing sites.

 How you can you as an author or small publisher win in this emerging environment?

• As an author or small publisher, you can take advantage of the price umbrella being created by BigPub and price your eBook at or below the $9.99 price millions of readers have become accustomed to spending on Kindle books. Large publishers are opening the door to being supplanted.
• As Tim Bajarin of PC Magazine points out, authors of how-to books can do what individual programmers did when iPhones were introduced. They produced the first games using the distribution reach of Apple’s App Store. Authors producing how-to book applications for the iPad will likely beat larger publishers as the game developers did.
• Keep a step ahead of the file sharing sites by adding and updating multi-media audio and video capabilities to your print and eBooks. For print books, even fragrance can be integrated into pBooks as is being done by a Jerry Van Diver, pioneering the mating of fragrance  with pBooks.  See an example of this at http://www.sniffpublishing.com/Use your eBook or pBook to discretely sell your or others products or services as discussed in last weeks’s blog “Can There Be a Silver Lining in Wholesale Book Piracy?

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Next Week: The Eight Ways to Make Money Writing Books Today

Don’t know how to proceed with a book you have already written or one you plan to write? I can help. You can contact me directly for a free consultation at paul@9lives4yourbook.com.