Xin Xii, a well known European platform for self publishing and distributing ebooks has just announced their launch into the Russian language market.  They now have a website in Cyrillic (link below) via which Russian authors can publish and distribute their ebooks in the Cyrillic alphabet rather than as was the case up till now in the English alphabet.

Obviously for all Russian writers this is an important step forward in bringing self publishing to Russia as Xin Xii is a serious player in the ebook world, with a list in the tens of thousands of ebooks published and distributed by them.

Xin Xii  describe the advantages of this development in the following terms:

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 The how and what of ebook pricing, as opposed to paper book pricing.  In this post, Rich Adin of An American Editor ponders on this topic.

This is an issue that many of us are contemplating these days as we come to terms with the idea of ebooks costing not much more than a couple of dollars, as opposed to paper books, which are always much more expensive.

There is a general feeling that ebooks, particularly those by unknown authors should be sold for no more than about $3, and an almost total confusion about what gives books (paper or ebooks) their monetary value.

So Rich takes on this subject with his normal clear view of what is happening. So an interesting post for anyone involved in book selling or reading.

Read on, the word is with Rich:-

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On Books: Value in an eBook World

eBooks have changed the way we think of value in regards to books. For myriad reasons, ebookers think that the price of ebooks should be no more than the price of a mass market paperback, and often less. Price is a reflection of value.

Much of the thinking revolves around a central point: unlike pbooks, ebooks are intangible — just a collection of bits and bytes. Yes, there are other reasons, too, such as the lack of secondary market value, lower production costs, restrictions on usage, and the like, but the reality is that most of the conscious and unconscious reasoning revolves around the matter of intangibility.

When I buy a pbook for $15, I have something solid to hold in my hand. I can put it on a shelf and admire its cover beauty; I can open the book and feel the pages as I turn them. An ebook lacks all of the sensory qualities of a pbook – it is intangible. The sensory experience lies with the reading device itself, not with the ebook.

I am aware that many ebookers pooh-pooh the sensory argument, but it really is not so easily dismissed. Many of the things that ebookers complain are restrictive about ebooks are not restrictive about pbooks because of the sensory experience. More importantly, it is difficult to become enamored with bits and bytes, yet the beauty that a pbook can project addresses the needs of multiple senses.

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Anthony Haynes founder of Creative Writing Studies, (among other imprints) an academic ebook publishing house, shares some of his experiences and thoughts on publishing ebooks for universities and students, and in passing contemplates the future of ebooks in general.

An interesting view from the front line of ebook publishing to give us a different perspective on the subject.

Now read on, the word is with Anthony:-

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Anthony Haynes writes: I am grateful for an invitation to provide a guest post for eBookAnoid and am happy to take up the suggestion that accompanied the invitation, namely that I should discuss e-books from a publisher’s perspective. The best way to do this is, I think, to tell the story of the development of our own publishing house, which I do here in three chapters.

Chapter I: Then

It is 2008. Having founded The Professional and Higher Partnership a couple of years as a provider of literary and editorial services, Karen Haynes and I decide to progress our plans to establish our own imprint. To do so, we develop a model focused wholly on e-books.

Our reasoning is as follows. First, although there has been much discussion about whether there would be a market for e-books, we are well aware that in fact there already is such a thing – amongst academic libraries. Second, the focus on e-books promises to make distribution as straightforward as possible. Many distributors of print books impose thresholds on publishers – for example, by specifying a minimum monthly commission payment from publisher to distributor. E-book distributors tend to have lower thresholds (if any). Third, the technology under development, particularly regarding e-paper, is attractive and looks likely to create a wider market amongst individuals. And, fourth, many publishers have been slow to respond to the development of e-books. We hope to acquire e-book rights for books already in print.

Chapter II: Now

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We have all met with this message, or something similar in our attempts to buy ebooks we want to read and it is about the most infuriating thing to have happen to one. We spend ages hunting on the websites of good online ebook sellers looking for an ebook to read, finally find one that looks interesting, go through several pages of the buying process, only to be told at the last minute that we can’t buy this particular ebook owing to where we live.

I have written on this horrible business in the past, in an attempt to explain to you all the whys and wherefores of this idiotic situation, but just now I came across a comment on another blog ( John Scalzi – Whatever)  submitted by Nielsen Hayden, which whilst being rather long, explains very clearly why we have to deal with this stupid arrangement so often.

Obviously it doesn’t help us in any way to know why we get that message, but I suppose at least it is good to know it isn’t actually the fault of the ebook retailer at least.

But since this is something that annoys almost all people who buy ebooks, I felt that this excellent explanation should be spread far and wide in the world of ebook readers, so here it is…..

He uses the publication of an ebook by John Scalzi to illustrate his points, by the way.

The word is with Nielson Hayden:

Geographical Limitations on ebook selling:

“Why is the ebook version not made available worldwide considering there are no physical constraints that may apply for the hardcopy version?”

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As you may know, the American Department of Justice (DOJ) has been considering taking legal action against the big 6 of the publishing world for some time for what they consider to be illegal collusion to fix the retail price of ebooks, the so called Agency Model.

The way that paper books are sold to book sellers is based on a system in which publishers set a wholesale price, normally about half the cover price, and then the retailer can decide how much they actually sell the book for.  In the early days of ebooks, this system was also used for ebooks.   But this changed about the time the iPad came along, at which point at the urging of Steve Jobs of Apple, the main publishers and Apple adopted what has become known as the Agency Model

What is the Agency Model?

The Agency Model is one in which the publishers sell the ebook to a retailer and set the retail price of the ebook, and base this on about a 30% mark up for the retailer.  The point at contention is that the publishers insist that the retailer sells the ebook at the price they (the publishers) set.  This is the heart of the legal case against them, as this is price fixing between producers of a commodity, and as such is illegal as it is seen as removing any sort of competition between publishers.

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Rich Adin, in his always intriguing and diverse blog – An American editor – has posted an interesting article about the infamous Agency Pricing Agreement for selling ebooks.

This structure, which is currently the subject of legal inspection in the USA, Europe and the UK has caused a real stir over the last year, as it is seen as a form of price fixing, aimed chiefly at preventing Amazon from taking over the entire world of ebooks, and in passing, to give Apple a fighting chance to break into the market as a result of the launch of the iPad.

From the point of view of the consumer, it has had the effect of frequently pushing the price of ebooks up to levels higher than many paper books, which, not surprisingly has caused a lot of anger and resentment.

In this post, Rich gives a rather more nuanced view of this system, and it is because of this broader view of it all that I felt it might be of interest to you to read – assuming you have not already seen it on his blog, of course.

So, the word is with Rich now….  Read on.

eBooks: Is Agency Pricing Good or Bad?

Recently, there has been a lot of focus on the “conspiracy” between 5 major publishers and Apple regarding agency pricing and whether these 6 entities have violated antitrust law. The focus is not on whether agency pricing is good or bad, but whether the parties colluded. That question I’ll leave for the US Department of Justice.

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