For a long time, publishers and readers have argued that each book is unique and thus one cannot substitute, say, a book by Dean Koontz for one by Stephen King. For years I accepted that — until ebooks and agency pricing and Amazon exclusivity. Now, in the case of fiction at least, I think the tides have turned and ebooks demonstrate books and authors are substitutable, that is, (fiction) books are commodities.
Until inflated agency pricing of bestsellers and Amazon’s concerted effort to dominate the ebook market, I would not have considered substituting one author for another author — at least not consciously. Yet the more I think about book buying and reading habits, the more convinced I am that between the criteria genre and author, it is genre that dominates.
Before the advent of ebooks on a wide scale, most readers bought (or borrowed) physical books to read. Physical books, except in the secondary market, were (and are) highly priced. A popular hardcover today, averages $25 and climbing. As a consequence, a reader carefully chose the book to buy and placed the emphasis on author and genre. For $25, the reader wants Tom Clancy, not Jack Unknown.
Amazon began to whittle away at that reader preference with its heavy discounts. Selling bestsellers at $9.99 rather than $25 meant that a reader who had already read Clancy’s latest novel could look for something else within the genre and take a chance on Jack Unknown. The investment was not overwhelming.
Today, Amazon has gone further with ebooks. Tom Clancy’s newest release may cost $14.99 in ebook form (and less in hardcover), but readers are increasingly finding ebooks at $2.99 and less in the same genre by unknown authors worth a try as they wait for the Tom Clancy novel to come down in price — or simply move beyond Clancy altogether.
Amazon, by aggressively courting the indie author and by aggressively pricing indie titles, has expanded what readers will search to find a good book to read. And Amazon has gone the further step with its Prime Lending program and Kindle Direct Publishing programs. Amazon has given its stamp of approval to indie books and authors. Although I think Amazon is not a bookseller to patronize because of its desire to monopolize the integrated book market, it deserves a great deal of credit for changing books into commodities.
I know that many of you will clamor to say that I am wrong, but I ask you to consider this: Once you have bought and read the latest release from your favorite author, do you stop buying and reading books until that author’s next release in 2 or 3 years or do you continue to buy and read books within that genre? And if you do continue to buy and read books, do you continue to be entertained by them or are you only entertained by books written by your favorite author? Finally, do you rush out to buy your favorite author’s newest release or do you wait for a less expensive edition to appear?
If you answer yes to the latter parts of each question (at least the first two questions), then books are commodities and substitutable. And this is the revolution that Amazon has wrought aided by the Agency 6 — the change in how readers view books, especially ebooks. What the Agency 6 claimed they wanted to prevent by instituting agency pricing, they have instead brought about by encouraging, through their actions, Amazon to legitimize the indie marketplace.
Prior to this legitimization, indie books and vanity books were synonymous. That is no longer true. Amazon has made it possible for known and respected authors to go indie and not be negatively viewed by readers. What vanity presses sought for decades, the Agency 6 gave them in months.
The commoditization of books is both good and bad. It is good because a wider range of authors are discovered. The Shayne Parkinsons, Vicki Tyleys, L.J. Sellers, and Richard Tuttles of the indie world — authors who write very well and excellent stories but who were unable (or unwilling) to break into the traditional publishing world — now have a chance to be discovered and claim the large and broad readership their writings deserve. I admit that prior to the commoditization of books, I would not have tried any of these authors. But once indie books were legitimized and books commoditized, I began to explore the indie world and found numerous gems, with some authors and books being better than what I could find in the traditional book world.
Commoditization is, however, also bad — bad for publishing, for authors, and readers — because in coming years the writers who currently make grand incomes from writing — the Stephen Kings and Tom Clancys of publishing — may well find themselves unable to attract an audience for their higher priced efforts. Granted that this is just the marketplace at work, but the pendulum can swing too far in either direction. As the market settles on a low price ceiling, that ceiling will become crowded and with the ease of entry into ebook publishing, it will become increasingly difficult to find the King and Clancy of the 2020s.
A balance is needed, but I have no idea how to bring it about or what that balance should be. Amazon deserves praise and scorn for commoditizing books, but more praise than scorn. In this, Amazon has done well.
“Commodity” is probably not the best word to use for what you mean. A commodity is something that is sold in quantities because every individual item is regarded as the same. Hard red winter wheat is a commodity sold to the public by the pound. A half-gallon of milk is a commodity, assuming you’re not concerned about organic.
A book as a commodity would be sold by the length or reading time. Some romance fiction is that way, totally predictable in its basic plots and in some cases written to a standard length. But most novels aren’t commodities. Some are great, and some are awful. They can never be commodities.
What I suspect you mean is that Amazon (and others) have so lowered the cost of ebooks that readers are willing to take a chance on an unknown author. Something they wouldn’t do at $24.95 is something they will do at $2.95 or even free. And having taken a chance, they may find they like the new author. Readers no longer have to play it safe to have a good read.
I’m an example. I grew tired of Tom Clancy about a decade ago when his books seemed to fill up with expletives. He may have regarded that as being real. I saw it as a former insurance salesman who couldn’t really describe nasty situations without nasty words.
More recently, I discovered a WWI-era equivalent of Tom Clancy, someone named John Bachan. When the Classic Tales podcast began his 39 Steps I thought, “Ugh.” I never liked the Hitchcock movie made from the novel. But listening to the actual book read, I found he’s an excellent author and, not wanting to ruin my listening to 39 Steps, I picked up the second and third books in that series: Greenmantle and Mr. Steadfast, for free on Amazon. The first is quite good and I suspect the second will be too. I’d have never taken the chance if I’d had to pay full retail.
Even better, of course, is the classic of all spy thrillers, The Riddle of the Sands, set before WWI. I suspect one reason why WWI and WWII-era spy fiction may be becoming more appealing is that the one advantage of Cold War thrillers had was that we were in the Cold War. Once it ended, all war-era spy thrillers could compete on an equal basis.
Besides, Greenmantle has a contemporary ring to it. It’s set during WWI and has Germany working secretly to create an Islam-based uprising against Britain and France to help Germany win the war.
Also, in my case, having recently written a non-fiction book about WWI, I’ve become interested in a war that’s been too long forgotten. Good novels are one way to explore what it was like.
–Michael W. Perry, Chesterton on War and Peace
My freshman year at the university, I quickly discovered that the campus library had a deep SF collection, courtesy of a donation of 50’s and 60’s hardcovers from the nearby USAF base. I was in heaven. I lterally worked my way through the library cardfile index, looking for authors whose names I was barely familiar with but whose works weren’t currently in print or readily available. (Yes, I’m talking pre-Amazon.)
In one semester I pretty much filled out my ongoing education on the genre.
My point?
Those books were all back-catalog titles from back-list authors. Some rank among the unsung masters of the genre who even today are sorely unappreciated (Chad Oliver, anybody?).
The traditional publishing houses made zero effort to keep their works in print and except for used-book stores and old-book collections at libraries, the odds of finding such works would be near-zero.
eBooks change that.
eBooks *have* changed that.
In the ebook era, consumers aren’t limited to only those works that the traditional publishers see fit to maintain in print, often with half-hearted listings fed by a handful of boxes in a dank warehouse. For that matter, consumers aren’t limited to what traditional and non-traditional publishers can get through their pipelines, they now have access to author-direct content (the bulk of the above-listed “indies”) *and* an even bigger source of extremely high-quality content: the back-list. Especially the *deep* backlist. Those are just now starting to filter in. Expect a flood that will make even the current surge in “indie” publishing look like a trickle.
Consumers have to take a bit of a risk to take on an unknown author with a promising “indie” listing and many are and will continue to do so. Wisely so. But buying a deep backlist title from an established author brings titles with equivalent “pedigree” (to those that still care about that) as an traditional release because they *are* traditional releases. And these backlist titles arent coming to market just from the traditional publishers, saddled wiith the traditional publishers’ overhead, but also from the smaller, more agile publishers and from the authors and their estates via other more direct channels.
Yes, ebooks are a commodity.
And yes, Amazon is a prime mover in the content-availability surge that the end of gatekeeping is bringing about. All consumers owe Amazon a nod of gratitude for helping break the control of the “gatekeepers”.
But let’s not give them more credit that they’re due. They helped, they didn’t do it alone.
The surge was coming, with or without their efforts (one can argue they did what “good” politicians do: find a rolling bangwagon and step in front to appears as leaders) and trying to tie the surge to Amazon as a way to deprecate it is futile. Amazon could end all their ebook efforts and the surge would roll merrily along without them.
If anything, the surge is just starting.
Most older authors or their estates are only now starting to take advantage of the new market reality; that their out-of-print or even contract-less backlist is worth significant money regardless of what the traditional publishers might believe. Small and medium publishers, and smart agents, are now reaching out to those older authors and their estates looking for content because that content is good and worth keeping in the public eye and because many readers are already familiar with their “brand”.
In the ocean of content to come, new and old, don’t discount the old.
“I read other authors in the same genre” isn’t the same thing as “books are a commodity”. If I want a book by Tom Clancy, then it doesn’t matter that his book is $15 and Joe Unkown’s book is $2, because Tom Clancy is what I want. You don’t say “I’ll buy seven-and-a-half Joe Unknown books and get exactly as much enjoyment as I got from one Tom Clancy book”. Turds in quantity do not outpace steak.
What’s happening is that in the interval between Tom Clancy books, I’m more likely to try Joe Unknown’s book if it’s $2 rather than $15–and these days, Joe Unknown doesn’t have to go through a publisher that prices everything at $15 because That’s How Much Books Cost.
The word “commodity” implies a substitution, and that’s not what’s happening. Rather, it’s a supplement.
Felix Torres, as usual, hits the nail on the head. Some of those backlists have started to appear, but there are so many more to hope for. On ereaderiq.com, I keep adding to the list of books to be notified about if they are Kindleized. There are so many fine ones unavailable as e-books. Two on my list are The Quincunx by Charles Palliser and The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
I agree with Felix. When agency pricing drove the prices of the latest offerings of my favorite authors up to $12 and higher, I started diving into backlists instead. Instead of paying $14.99 for the latest Sharon Kay Penman, I paid $1.99 in one of Amazon’s monthly sales for a collection of 4 of Edith Pargeter’s historical novels. (Edith Pargeter is better known as Ellis Peters, the name under which she wrote the Brother Cadfael mysteries.) Had the latest Penman been priced at $9.99, I probably would have bought it immediately, but I’m simply less willing to spend $15 on a new book when there’s so much else to read.
The agency publishers are still pricing as if good books are scarce.
A rather silly proposition.
The day eRetailers start selling to readers most of their eBooks in blind batches of 10, 50 or 100, then that will be the day they become ‘Commodities” according the new definition of Mr Adin.
I see no sign of that happening. I see no evidence of that being imminent or likely. I see no merit to the proposition.
In many ways I think authors are turning themselves into “commodities” especially those who write series. If there are more than three or four books in the series then there is going to be a lot of sameness among each book. You can read them in any order and everything will end up as it began so you can pick up the next book and repeat the process. Judging by the popularity of series, it’s not a far stretch for a reader to jump from this vampire series to that vampire series. It’s all becoming the same, churned out quickly to be consumed quickly. It that not a “commodity?”
This is what happens when people abuse the language and it ceases to have any real meaning.
Different people are reacting to the high prices on books by favorite authors differently. I still read my faves – from the library. For the few with publishers smart enough to price reasonably, I still buy their books, and I buy both indie and traditionally published books that are priced reasonably in greater quantity than I used to buy paperbacks. What I find myself doing less of is re-reading favorites, I think because the Kindle gives such instant access to so many new-to-me books.
Books became “commodities” the day in the 1930s that Allen Lane launched paperbacks. This is not the Evil Amazon at work given paperbacks were doing a fine “commodity” business before Jeff Bezos was born. Lots of readers have read a book because it was a Penguin Modern Classic or an Ace SciFi Double because the imprint was enough to promise a good experience.
Today, with backlist titles becoming more readily available (out of print in second hand stores or Abebooks — ooops! another Amazon company — or through ebook re-releases — when was the last time every Michael Innes mystery was in print and actually available for purchase?).
One of the biggest competitors Tom Clancy’s $25 latest release has is his backlist books the reader probably hasn’t yet read available at half the price or less.
@DensityDuck: In this context, commodity is not exactly inappropriate.
The behavior Mr Adin describes, substituting a cheaper alternative for the same purpose is called fungibility, which is a trait of commodity products. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility
He is observing that for many customers, books in the same genre are fungible, since all they are looking for is a good, pleasing read, more than a specific story. This is a fact; real world people do behave like this and the number of people doing it is growing.
Faced with, say five new releases in the same genre, many people will pass on the $17 (discounted) hardcover to pick up instead three full price paperbacks or 6 or more ebooks.
As Sherri pointed out, many publishers are pricing their releases as if they are released into a vacuum of eagerly drooling fans grateful for *anything*. This was true for Rowling’s Harry Potter releases and it may still be true here and there for a handful of franchise writers but it is *not* universally true. Most new releases, from established authors and new, have to compete for attention, for mindshare, and for sales.
Between the two extremes; of irreplaceability and total fugibility, the real-world reality lies somewhere in the middle and rapidly moving towards fungibility. This *ongoing* process is in fact a form of commoditization.
Nonetheless, call it what you will, the trend is clear and irreversible: the ebook marketplace is getting swamped by readily available content and new releases are entering an ocean of content from publishers, traditional and new, independent efforts, PD classics and Creative Commons releases, *and* backlist releases from both active and inactive authors. Whether the consumer is looking for romance, mystery, SF, Fantasy, or any other genre entertainment; they aren’t passive drones looking to pick up the latest NYT-annointed bestseller regardless of price.
Instead, the majority will compare the price of the new release to other available content *and* to its expected future price.
So, as Mr Adin suggests, a *lot* of consumers will choose to pass on the hot hardcover and wait for a cheaper release and in the meantime, reallocate the the savings to *other* content.
Think of it as extending competition into the timesteam: new releases have to compete with the bestsellers of the past and present, and its own future incarnation.
Straight out of TV SciFi. 🙂
The book business is coming up the rear in terms of sophisticated distribution in that ever other publishing type has been in the digital space for many yeaqrs. It’s only because book publishers had antiquated publishing sysstems , were backward thinking, and viewed their books as one dimensional units that they have fallen behind. But now, publishers can reach many more people with many more titles and not be limited to those few disatributioon channels they’ve had in the past. To think book publishers didn’t even know who their customers were and the only place prior to Amazon to buy them was a bookstore is a joke. Thus when books are made more discoverable and even repurposed in other formats the volume goes up. The encyclopedia market experience that many years ago when electronic versions replaced print versions at a fraction of the cost but the volume went up exponentially so that the electronic revenues drarfed the print revenue. If that means books become a commodity then great because the gross revenue will go up like it happened with every other publishing “package” like newspapers, magazines, journals, newsletters, and on and on. In the technical book arena this has already happened plus the books are viewed as collections of “content” where there are many information points within. This article fails to indicate that the major costs (half or higher) of a print book are the printing, handling, storage, and throw away costs of print. These costs go away so even if a $25. book is now selling for $15 or less in a digital format the net profit to authors, publishers and books stores can be higher than the print versions. The lost revenue is from paper and printing copmpanies but they have experienced this many time over in other publishing spaces.
@Paul; you’re generally right. Like 99%. 😉
But one big cost of *some* Pbooks is the corporate overhead of the Big Publishing Companies. If nothing else, they have to finance the salaries and golden parachuutes of the top-level execs and their entourages. 😉 (There’s also other expenses relating to keep the glass towers and printing facilities open.)
With pbook volumes declining, they have no choice but to spread their overhead over their entire product line, which puts them at a disadvantage to other publishers (and content producers/distributors) not so encumberred. Which in turn reduces their market share, raises the overhead on a per-item basis, and requires high prices just to stay in business.
Thus, the BPHs *need* consumers to behave as if their product is irreplaceable.
And they think that acting as if it isn’t and proclaiming it to all comers (remember the infamous Hachette memo of weeks past?) will magically make it happen.
Unfortunately, magical realism only exists in fiction, not in the world we live in.
But that’s where the golden parachutes they’ve invested in will be useful. 😀
Greg M. wrote:
In many ways I think authors are turning themselves into “commodities” especially those who write series. If there are more than three or four books in the series then there is going to be a lot of sameness among each book. You can read them in any order and everything will end up as it began so you can pick up the next book and repeat the process.
—————–
Quite a generalization about series. Some authors with series to which your description does not apply: Ellis Peters, Deborah Crombie, Elizabeth George, Michael Connelly, John Sandford, Louise Penny, Peter Robinson, Alexander McCall Smith, Laura Lippman, John Harvey, Kate Atkinson, Diana Gabaldon, and more.
These are authors I like, but that does not mean I will BUY their books if the digital edition is overpriced. As Ellen says, I can check these out of the library if I do not want to wait for a price drop and in the meantime spend my money on other authors which are priced reasonably.
“Commoditization is, however, also bad — bad for publishing, for authors, and readers — because in coming years the writers who currently make grand incomes from writing — the Stephen Kings and Tom Clancys of publishing — may well find themselves unable to attract an audience for their higher priced efforts.”
There are many authors published by the Agency 6 that I like but no longer buy or read, not even bothering to borrow the books from the library. Whilst price gouging (particularly by UK publishers for books and eBooks in New Zealand) has pushed me away from buying some of those authors, geographical restrictions have been the main cause for turning me away from the remaining Agency 6 authors I like. As my Agency 6 list of authors continues to decrease my list of indie authors continues to grow. I don’t even purchase backlist books by Agency 6 authors if they do eventually become available for me to buy. Once they are off my autobuy list that’s it, they don’t go back on it.
This type of “commodotization” was started by B&N with their $5.98 / $6.98 remainder hardbacks lurking near the front of their store so that you could, free of word of mouth influence, take a punt on Joe Unknown. Once you find one you like that becomes your next name brand go-to author. So, yes, cheap books = experimentation but this is no different to the physical book market except that there will be even more choice as indie authors are included. Oh! and also more chance of disappointment as we remove the filtering element of good acquisitions and editing staff.
“The behavior Mr Adin describes, substituting a cheaper alternative for the same purpose is called fungibility, which is a trait of commodity products. ”
…eeeexcept that’s not what’s happening. There is no “fungibility” for books by Michael Connelly. If I want a book by Michael Connelly, then either I buy a Michael Connelly book or I don’t buy a book.
As I said, where the price matters is when you’re buying something from an author you don’t know. This is not a substitution, though; it’s a supplement.