Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tokenadult | Hacker News Reader

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I see the previous submission[1] to Hacker News of Matthew Yglesias's Vox essay, "Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers,"[2] didn't get much discussion here, but I think the essay supplements the arguments in the Economist blog post kindly submitted here very nicely from the author's side. (The Economist post mostly argues from the reader's side.) I still have plenty to read, and I don't find that Hachette or the other people whining about Amazon are doing as much as Amazon is to provide you and me with more to read at a better price than ever before. As Yglesias writes, "When all is said and done, the argument between Amazon and book publishers is over the rather banal question of price. Amazon's view is that since 'printing' an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should be really cheap. Publishers' view is that since 'printing' an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should offer enormous profit margins to book publishers. If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493736

[2] http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-monopo...

It's an interesting narrative, but technology renders the cost of reproduction irrelevant. Which is different from saying it's relevant that it's extremely cheap.

Look at an area that "cheap" has destroyed: the Internet. The Internet is full of crap. I had to censor the ads on a HuffPo article before printing and sending it to someone the other day. That's journalism circa 2014 where there is no money to pay for class.

Is that what we want to have happen to books too? Drive down the prices so the only way to make any money off books is to plaster the end of every chapter with full color ads of Kim Kardashian? Because that's the road Amazon is taking us down, along with all the other companies who make money from distributing rather than creating content.

> Look at an area that "cheap" has destroyed: the Internet. The Internet is full of crap.

Ironically, people used the exact same argument against the printing press and pretty much every single development in publishing. Remember when the gramophone destroyed the live performance? When TV killed theatre?

All of those developments lowered the price of production and/or distribution radically, and allowed the production of new cheap crap, but did not kill the incumbent as predicted.

The same is true today. Before the Internet, you would probably be subscribing to a newspaper, probably at quite high expense. If you limited yourself to free reading, you would only get crap - as true then as now.

If the traditional newspaper is largely irrelevant, there's a large and healthy selection of paid-for journalism out there, just get out your wallet. I'm a fan of The Economist, but that's far from the only selection.

    Remember when the gramophone destroyed the live
    performance?

The gramophone, and recorded music in general, did destroy the live performance. People listen to much less music live, even as they listen to more music overall. It's also much harder to make a living as a mid-level professional musician even as the few at the top make millions. That said, I do think these are positive changes: excellent music in huge varieties is much more widely available than in pre-recording days.

(The aspect of the change that makes me most ambivalent is its effect on people making their own music. When you can't just turn on music--music far better than you're able to create--people sing for themselves and each other. People still sing some, but most are now embarrassed to sing in front of others. You're basically supposed to be ashamed of your singing ability.)

That makes it seem like quality is a given in the face of market changes. I don't think that's true. I remember back 10 years ago, the Internet was actually useful. You could search for a product review and not get a bunch of computer-generated crap SEO optimized to turn up at the top. That's not true any longer.

Increased competition has had a negative effect on the media. Go watch CNN clips from the 1980's and compare to today. Its a totally different product than CNN today, and it was possible because they were insulated from the degrading effects of market competition. They didn't have to plaster Kim Kardashians rack over every piece in order to make money, like they do today. And what's driving that competition? Lowest common denominator Internet media like Huff Po that can churn out dreck at zero marginal cost.

You're idealising CNN in the 80s. One important milestone in their early history was broadcasting live the explosion of space shuttle Challenger. During the first gulf war, we got live footage of missiles hitting their targets. That's technologically fantastic, but in terms of journalistic value, it's just one, small step above Kim Kardashian.

CNN is widely credited with inventing and pushing the 24 hour news cycle, driving the subdivision of news into every smaller and ever less important chunks, incessantly valuing speed over depth. "You heard it here first!" - well, who the h... cares?

Anyway, my point, which I don't feel you meaningfully addressed was that once you get out your wallet, every newsstand out there are piled high with magazines and weeklies dedicated to every conceivable topic, many of them high quality (and many of them, admittedly, not!), plenty of them completely devoid of Kardashian-themed content. Just go buy them instead of lamenting that your free entertainment is worth exactly what you paid for it.

I think coverage of the Challenger explosion is way above the Kardashians. And I'm not idealizing it based on recollection. Try actually watching some old broadcasts. It's the difference between the Internet circa 2001 and the Internet circa 2014 (it's a lot easier to hide crap content beneath flash and dynamic JS widgets than it is to do the same in plain text).

My point which you're ignoring is that the existence of competition from the crap forces legitimate media down market. For the cost of a cable subscription, CNN is a lot crappier than it was 20 years ago.

> I remember back 10 years ago, the Internet was actually useful. You could search for a product review and not get a bunch of computer-generated crap SEO optimized to turn up at the top.

It's still pretty useful. I just use Amazon for reviews instead of Google now. ;)

User generated reviews are among the most useless things on the Internet. The SNR is unspeakably awful. I don't pay any attention to ratings on Amazon, etc. I wait for a detailed review by Ars, Anand, Tom, etc, or the equivalent for products in another field.

How is it useless? Yes there are a lot of crappy one or two sentence reviews, but there are plenty of useful ones as well.

Consumer Reports doesn't have the resources to review everything and neither do outlets like CNET.

User reviews are highly skewed towards those with extreme experiences and often based on undisclosed idiosyncrasies. Users post a bad review after one negative experience, and there are many Amazon reviews where it doesn't even appear to be the case that the person has actually used the product.

Creating a valuable review actually requires a systematic approach. Take, for example, a review of a cell phone's battery life. Such reviews are useless without disclosure of your usage patterns, whether you're in a good signal or bad signal area, whether you like to jack up the brightness to 100%, etc. And aggregating a bunch of shoddy reviews can't compare to one good one.

> User reviews are highly skewed towards those with extreme experiences and often based on undisclosed idiosyncrasies. Users post a bad review after one negative experience, and there are many Amazon reviews where it doesn't even appear to be the case that the person has actually used the product.

Typically the greater the number of consumer reviews will offset this problem. Again, some information is better than no information.

> And aggregating a bunch of shoddy reviews can't compare to one good one.

As you've already mentioned, many people can discern bad reviews from good ones. It's not perfect but it's better than nothing.

E.g. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G1FB36....

3 of the 5 reviews of this Dell 4K monitor are clearly using it on computers that can't drive 4k@60 HZ. The fourth is from someone who owns a completely different, non-4K Dell monitor. That leaves one reliable review, which provides very little information.

I wish I could say I were cherry-picking.

The best consumer reviews are typically found on Amazon. Moreover, you're still ignoring the problem of established organizations being unable to review the massive amounts of incoming products that are produced and shipped every year.

>User generated reviews are among the most useless things on the Internet.

Ranking up there with your hyperbolic comment.

Those prior arguments are hardly "the exact same" and at any rate the fact that people have previously made similar arguments about other forms of technology says absolutely nothing about the merits of the present argument about a new technology.

But I do agree with you that it's not legitimate to expect content to be both free (advertising supported) and high quality. It's wonderful when it happens, but people can't really complain when it doesn't, much less complain not only about the quality of the content but also the quality of the advertising. If people want high-quality content carefully selected by human editors and presented in attractive ways then they should pay for it.

> Because that's the road Amazon is taking us down, along with all the other companies who make money from distributing rather than creating content.

Disagree. Amazon Publishing is notorious for putting more money in the author's hands/pocket than a traditional publishing house. I'll take cheaper books and having to spend a bit more time finding what I'd like versus to the alternative future publishing houses would prefer (continuing to squeeze profits out of fewer readers while keeping more of the profit for themselves instead of the author).

>Drive down the prices so the only way to make any money off books is to plaster the end of every chapter with full color ads of Kim Kardashian?

I feel that is a silly premise. I was unable to find any cost breakdowns of how much it costs to produce a dead-tree $8 US paperback, but I wouldn't be surprised if manufacturing & shipping is at least $4 of that cost. Lets just assume that after everyone else takes their cut, the publisher gets $2.

Now, with ebooks, you don't have that $4 manufacturing cost. No grinding up tree pulp, etc. No shipping boxes of heavy hard-cover books to stores. If publishers wanted to, they could sell ebooks directly from their own online storefront for $2 and, for the purposes of this argument, make the exact same amount of money.

Your grim future only happens if people stop seeing a $2 book as worth the money. Like mobile games- developers found out that even a $2 purchase price is too high a barrier of entry for many people, and free, ad supported games could make more money. If anything, cheaper purchase prices of books would help prevent this. Deciding between a free, ad-supported ebook or paying $8 for the same thing is a hell of a lot easier decision than deciding between free-with-ads or spending $2.

I can't find the source right now (Google queries return a bunch of Amazon links and SEO spam) but I seem to recall Amazon seeing e-book sales being significantly higher than expected, just because they're so easy to impulse buy. Personally, I find books so valuable I don't bother to look at the price--enriching hours of my time is worth more than $5, or $25, even if there's a significant chance the book will be a dud.

It's really just a convenience thing. E-books are easy to pay for. News websites are not. This also has to do with how we consume news: nobody wants to pay to click on grandma's Buzzfeed links on Facebook.

Also remember book authors traditionally make about 10-15% of hardcover sales and about a dollar a paperback. Ebook royalties are reportedly 25-30%, and I bet they will go higher.

They're doing it through tax/speculator subsidy; it's not even a pricing model that is working for Amazon.

The Success of Amazon: Welfare As We Should Know It

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-colu...

Amazon's Tax Breaks Are Essential to Its Survival

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/amazons-t...

Franklin Foer Confuses Amazon's Subsidies from the Government With Profits

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/franklin-...

There doesn't have to be some limitations of choice by default, plenty of services provide paying extra to ignore ads, books would be no different. The model you're describing opens up options and I suspect the majority of people would rather pay less and have ads on their books.

What is amazon doing? Books appear to be more expensive than ever. Ebook prices are generally the same if not more the the cheapest physical form. And the cheapest physical form used to be around 7 now it is closer to 10.

> If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one.

Is it really an easy choice though?

As a reader, I want access to interesting content and it seems that pushing the price down to the cost of production makes it harder to produce good content.

Another way of looking at it is the following. We as a community say that we ought to charge based on value produced and not cost of production. Shouldn't book sellers and author's be able to do the same?

This "sweat of the brow" argument doesn't cut it. Books have long been unprofitable for the majority of writers. At the same time, it's now easier to publish than ever -- look, I'm doing it right now! The question here is should publishers be allowed to control and make large profits (the authors weren't in any case), and I think the answer is clearly no.

This. In addition, if we charged to the "value" of a book, then only shitty magazines will be available to the masses. Doesn't seem like a great formula for spreading said "great content".

Shouldn't book sellers and author's be able to do the same?

Sure. What's stopping them? Authors are free to charge whatever they want. Hell, they even have a state-granted, life + 80 years monopoly on their works.

What they can't is force Amazon to sell their books for whatever price they want.

Well, they can. They can say "Amazon, you must pay us $8/ebook you sell from us." - this forces Amazon to charge at least that amount.

Who is to say the cost of production isn't artificially high because of all those legacy costs? If the prices fall then the barrier for entry should be lower as well. Currently many of these publishers decide whom we get to read.

Still you can follow conversations on this very site which rail against the costs charged for music and movies and yet they have high costs of production as well.

Another article I read today talks about how traffic on the internet has been shaped by the users to where very few sites, just a few dozen, are responsible for half of the traffic.

I am in the camp of, the legacy systems are doing their damnedest to stay relevant in a world where they are not, it is as if the milk man refused to stop delivering milk and wanted to and succeeded in stopping stores from selling it.

> is to provide you and me with more to read at a better price than ever before

As a reader, do you want to optimise for price or for quality? The argument is that one will ultimately come at the expense of the other, because good books need good editors and good authors need sufficient money to allow them the time to write.

As a consumer, I care about price, quality and convenience. But I'm agnostic as to how the editorial and advance are delivered. It's not wholly unreasonable, for example, for some form of crowd funding model to turn up; you publish an outline to a site and folks bid on it. Similarly, an editor matching service doesn't seem that far fetched. Or to put it another way, we have perfectly serviceable replacement models for most of what a mass market publisher now does. That's not to say that publishers can't add value but, as with distribution and delivery, it's not too hard to foresee this turning into a niche product.

> you publish an outline to a site and folks bid on it

I'd be very skeptical about that...

> an editor matching service doesn't seem that far fetched

This seems a lot more reasonable. I agree with your overall point that publishers are unlikely to be the best way of doing things, and there's no need to preserve the status quo for its own sake. I'm just not sure Amazon is going about it the right way, and I think reducing the perceived value of books is a dangerous game. That all said, I don't want to be too down on Amazon. They've made reading more convenient for many through the Kindle and the Kindle Store, and that alone is worth a hell of a lot...

> I'd be very skeptical about that...

The gaming industry is in the middle of doing exactly this. What exactly are you skeptical about? Whether an attempt will be made, or whether an attempt will succeed?

> Whether an attempt will be made, or whether an attempt will succeed?

Neither. More about if it will compromise the artistry if plot is decided by a committee, which is effectively what will happen if the public gets to 'vote' for what they want to be made. Plot-by-comittee works for a lot of television and film so maybe it'll work for books too, but my gut reaction is that you'll get a much better product if the creator can act alone and not have to worry about getting defunded if they kill off a favourite character or some such thing...

None of these points are true in the gaming world so far. Projects are funded based on their ideas, but that does not necessarily entitle the public to a design by committee. Sure, people feel entitled to a voice, but ultimately it's the creators of the game that have the final say. I'm thinking major successes like Minecraft and Star Citizen. Minecraft was pretty much entirely driven by Notch, and Star Citizen is firmly in the hands of CIG.

Now, if they create something that people don't like, sure they will have a tough time getting funded again. But this is a point that is relevant to both the publisher and crowd sourcing model.

I think, if you stop to look past the extremely popular books and look at what people read in between great works of literature, the sorts of things they read err on the side of quantity, not quality. And I'll even go so far as to grant you a conceit that "popular = good", so you can take the entire Stephenie Meyer collection out of the equation as a mere drop in the bucket.

There is a huge market out there. Publishers don't prevent bad books from getting to it.

And they don't really pay authors to write books. More often, all different types of authors, good or bad, have to shoulder the risk of their first few manuscripts on themselves and hope a publisher picks them up. If their first published book does well, then the publisher pays to have more books written. It's a system that is useless to the most popular, breakout authors--they have essentially bootstrapped a book-writing company--and disadvantageous to the anyone who doesn't write a superawesomebestseller on their first try--as the publishers often design the contracts to leave no residuals for the writer.

Books can be--and often are--just as empty and vapid as reality TV. We just tend to put books and the people involved in their production a pedestal in our culture.

As a reader, I think Amazon helps me a lot on the quality information about books I might want to read, as it posts reader reviews and includes those beguiling "Readers who bought this also bought" links frequently to guide me to books I haven't heard about before. On the whole, as a reader who has been reading for half a century, I like the ecosystem for readers better since Amazon came along than I liked it before Amazon came along.

> [G]ood books need good editors and good authors need sufficient money to allow them the time to write.

The unstated assumption seems to be that publishers are either the best or only way to enable this.

But even if a publishing company selects an author they think is promising, and gives the author sufficient money and time and good editors, it still doesn't necessarily produce the kind of literature that I want to read.

I've thoroughly enjoyed Yglesias's writings on this topic, though I wonder why we have to make a binary choice. We're supposed to be in favor of Amazon, or in favor of Hachette/publishers. No grey areas. Pick a side.

How about neither? Or either/or, in different measures? Both sides have some good points and some questionable points. Both sides have clear agendas that are, more often than not, unexpressed in their public talking points.

I'm not trying to draw a false equivalence between the two. On the balance, I'm more inclined to support Amazon's arguments -- if largely because the publishers have been grabbing margin from their writers, and because their business practices haven't evolved with the times. That said, I don't savor the prospect of Amazon's total, end-to-end dominance of the book market. I'd like there to be Amazon and publishers in this world. Both sides can fulfill a vital function in bringing great books to the market, and making them available at reasonable prices. I'd just like the publishers of the future, whoever they might be, to modernize and adapt. I'd also like companies that have the ability to compete with Amazon as a bookseller (Apple, Google, etc.) to take another look at the book market. It's not the sexiest market in the world, from a total-revenue standpoint. But it's a decent-sized market, and it's a "gateway" market into other forms of media and entertainment. (I realize Apple has to tread carefully re: the book market these days).

If I had a book I would never consent to digitize it--ever. I know it will probally be scanned and uploaded, but until that time I would hold out. As to what books sell on Amazon and elsewhere; I am always shocked by what people will read. A wealthy person who has some notoriety (even for having just a big butt) can hire a ghost writer and with the right exposure(like being pimped on Imus, or the like) can sell a huge amount of books? I feel for the writter who is truly gifted, but isn't famous. I've noticed a huge void for good authors in the Technical fields. By good authors I mean good writers. Most of the computer books I have tried to read of the years are literally like reading a phone book. I don't expect Nabrokov, but if you can't write well--don't try to fake it. People will buy your book even if you have to use numbers, or steps like directions in consumer products. Keep the words down. Write like you are trying to convey information to an eighth grader. I have wondered why editors let these phone books fly off the presses with just a pretty cover. I have a feeling they don't have a clue to what you are writing about--ROR, Apache, Git, all programming languages, ip addresses, etc.? I'm a horrid writer so when I need to convey information I just use numbers to convey important information. If I have a paragraph of information I try to funnel the paragraph from the first sentance. I only mention this because I do buy technical books. Actually, that's all I will pay for.

> at a better price than ever before

I do not believe that to be true, not even remotely.

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