At present, publishing is in an upheaval with the traditional "Big 5" publishers losing market share to self-publishing (often via Amazon self publishing wing). Old media is demanding that things go back to the way they were.
Oh, I DEFINITELY stopped right there.
...so this person wants to take Karl Marx’s Socialist theory, which says that Capitalism is evil and needs to be destroyed and “blend” it with a free market?
Maybe we can try some Nazism to help the Jewish community too...
restrict competition and raise prices are touted as a good thing?
ridiculous!
Everything is "me to kilo" (by the Kg).
The losers from "protectionism" are you and I, the consumer with higher prices, fewer choices, and less than maximum quality. We are also losers in the overall economy which always underperforms when government effectively implements price (and wage) controls.
<>”Big 5” publishers losing market share to self-publishing . . . <>
I didn’t know that. Please elaborate.
Just shows that socialists like this clown are luddites and stuck in the past.
I find this sort of “reasoning” so alien.
“ In Germany, books can’t be discounted. In fact, six of the 10 biggest book-selling countries have versions of fixed book prices—Japan, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Germany, and France.”
The author calls it a “touch of socialism”???
And this...”To preserve the value of books, we must take the finances out of the equation.” Would the word “finances” be replaced with “discounts”?
According to Publisher's Weekly, book sales in 2013 topped $15.05 billion. So, there's obviously a gigantic market for them. If books themselves are being sold at a loss, I'm sure some enterprising fellow or company will come up with a way to make them profitable, especially in such a huge sales market.
To sum up, this writer is a tool and should be shot.
Marginal costs of publication have been reduced to zero by the new business model based on electronic media.
Another union goon wanting government to protect his turf.
The price of books is just plain absurd!
After paying 36 dollars for a book on how to learn Photoshop back around 2001, I swore off buying retail. Not worth it.
Thank goodness for garage sales, or else I wound never buy any.
However, in other countries, books are a much healthier product.
Many products and services can and should compete, in part, on price, but I believe staunchly that books cannot be commoditized. To preserve the value of books, we must take the finances out of the equation.
He makes these three completely unsupported assertions upon which he bases his entire argument.
Unlike most other products, books are a commodity. The copy of a certain book I buy from Amazon, Booksamillion, Barnes & Noble, from any other bookstore or direct from the publisher is exactly the same (with the possible exception of shelf wear). This can't be said for most other items including the clothes, desk or vacation hotel he specified.
In fact, the author's exact same arguments could be made by sellers of clothes, desks or hotel rooms that they shouldn't be subject to competition or discounting. I'm sure that clothes sellers would say that clothes are even more important than books and therefore clothes stores should be protected.
After reading this it seemed familiar. Then I realized it sounded awfully like Ayn Rand's character Balph Eubanks from Atlas Shrugged.
"It would work very simply," said Balph Eubank. "There should be a law limiting the sale of any book to ten thousand copies. This would throw the literary market open to new talent, fresh ideas and non-commercial writing. If people were forbidden to buy a million copies of the same piece of trash, they would be forced to buy better books."Limit sales and restrict customer choice in order to allow unsuccessful competitors to stay in the market at the expense of both the consumers and their more successful competition (along with the tax payers because such restrictions are usually one small step from subsidies).
People who can’t compete desire socialism to keep their failed business practices afloat. I am a self-publisher, so I do have a dog in this fight, and let me explain what the fight is about:
How much of a customer’s money goes to who.
Before Amazon and their opening of Kindle Direct Publishing, if a customer bought a book, the profits from that purchase were split between the retail store, the publisher, and the author.
The publisher had to pay their editorial staff, their cover designers, their formatters, the cost of printing, and the author. Often authors received contracts where they would be given a stipend (called an advance in the industry) that would be payed off their royalties. Once an author had “earned out” their advance, they would be given royalty checks based upon further sales.
Most of the time an author did not earn out their advance because their royalties were often 5 to 15% of the net profit of the publishing house. When you realize that agents were required and they took 15% off the top of any advance or royalty from an author, you can see why many authors wrote as much as they could around their full time job.
Enter self-publishing. Now I pay my editor, my cover designers, and my formatters. Some of the work I do for myself (like formatting), other work I can trade out or hire for a competitive price.
I get 70% of books sold at $2.99 or more, and Amazon gets 30%.
What does this mean for consumers? Cheaper books.
What does this mean for authors? More profit.
What does this mean for editors and cover designers? More customers (as more people can self-publish than publishing houses would, or could, take on.)
Who are the only losers in this system? Publishers who have not changed their business models and agents who are not needed to arrange for contracts between authors and publishers.
So who is screaming for socialism over capitalism? Publishing houses, agents, and authors who cling to the old system because it kept them at the top of the heap.
My latest book is killing most of the just released big 5 books in the Amazon rankings.
Why? Because for just a few dollars I am getting people a great read. And you know how many people look for a publishers mark before they buy a new book? None.
I can one up this dolt. Everyone should get free books, whatever they want. Profit is evil. You should work for free. Quit being selfish. You didn’t build that book. Other people helped. Other people printed it. /sarc
“Book Publishing Needs Socialism to Save It”
This is a super idea and is particularly relevant because newspaper publishing, CD makers and DVD makers are all also facing extinction today because of digital publishing and streaming. And just think, if socialism for buggy whips had been around at the turn of the 19th century, we’d still have plenty of buggy whip makers around even today. And don’t forget that power looms devastated the hand weaving industry even earlier. Linotype operators were thrown out of work, as were switchboard operators. Why the list is almost endless. And if we had JUST had socialism, we could have saved all of those industries and all of those jobs.
The brilliant book publishing industry gave Hillrat $14 million for her bird cage liner/books by the pound project. What else needs to be said?
If Steven King, John Grisham, JK Rowling and a few others said “We don’t need publishers.” and decided to digitally distribute books for tablets only? The industry would implode within 5 years.
I feel absolutely no empathy for book publishers, none. For years and years they were an abysmal gatekeeper preventing new talent from coming to market. Worse than even the record companies, if you can imagine that.
When book retailers made a habit of hiding books the staff didn’t like, you know anything written by conservative author, I spit in their faces when it comes to cries about “Whoa is us! AMAZON IS TEH EVIL!”
The publishing industry and book retailers dug their own graves. LIE IN THEM!