Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-20051201-82.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

by sunsai • 15 years ago

53 74 15 years ago

reviews.cnet.com

tialys3• 15 years ago

This is why I hate the 'star' review system. It very often leads to users trying to 'punish' the maker of the product, and creates an incorrect perception that the product itself is flawed. This might be a great book, but someone browsing through titles will only see that it has a 1-star rating and assume it sucks. I really think there'd be a lot of potential in some sort of hybrid review system that could weed out these sorts of garbage reviews.

nickolai• 15 years ago

Well they review it as 1-star saying in essence that it is poor in terms of value for money, while throwing some flak at the publisher for not selling it cheaper. Im not sure what you could hate there - or why you would want to remove it.

If someone found something is poor value for money I'd rather know it before I buy. That kind of reviews saved me from a few bad purchases already.

I do agree there must be some part of "activist reviews" there too, not that they are worth the trouble of weeding them out.

tialys3• 15 years ago

What happens when the price changes then? Suppose it's on sale in a month for $1.99 and still is loaded up with 1-star reviews that say "SO OVERPRICED!" -- not very useful then is it? Ideally, I'd love to see a completely independent review source that has common 'tags' that are easily understood. Rather than complain about the price, just check a box that says you don't believe it was a good value at the price, so when someone looks for reviews, they see "Customers don't think this product is a good value at $14.99" (Which is relevant, and useful even if the price changes).

alex_c2• 15 years ago

Pricing is an important factor in a purchase decision, so shouldn't it be a valid factor in a review?

A 1-star review saying it's completely overpriced, while not perfect, is still better than reviews I see in the app store like "Amazing app, love it! 1/5" or "Pretty cool app, but it crashes on load and I can't use it, 4/5" (and those are the intelligible ones).

tialys3• 15 years ago

I made a comment below about price changes and how it hurts the usefulness of such reviews, but I also wanted to add that what you mentioned is another example of where the system fails. A 1/5 or 4/5 review that contradicts itself with a single sentence 'this rocked/sucked' isn't useful. We should be forcing people to provide a real review, or not allowing them to do so at all.

larsberg• 15 years ago

I haven't gotten any direct numbers from them, but the authors of technical books that I've talked to have told me that your Amazon sales are proportional to the number of reviews, not the rating associated with the product. They claim that just getting more reviews is important and always worth comping review copies to people you know will write a review, even if they are not all 4/5-star reviews.

If I had to guess, most people only click on items with high numbers of reviews, read the "top 3 most useful," and then make their purchase decision from those, rather than the long tail of rants from either the easily-bribed or disillusioned masses. These voters may inadvertently be steering people to the Kindle version by inflating the number of reviews associated with it over the hardcover.

Tichy3• 15 years ago

Hm, sounds more likely to me that they got it backwards - if a book is "popular", not as in liked but as in featured in many pop contexts like TV and newspaper reviews, it will also receive more reviews, because more people will have bought it.

jonnathanson• 15 years ago

I don't have as deep of a problem with the way reviewers use the star system, but I do take issue with how limited and, consequently, limiting it can be as a review metric.

This is especially apparent in certain categories, like Blu-rays, where people will arbitrarily use the star ratings to review either the content of the movie, the tech specs of the film print, the transfer from original stock to Blu-ray, the number of extras available, and so forth. It's gotten to the point where a star-based review of a movie, at a glance, is essentially meaningless. (Conversely, at least Netflix removes some of this problem due to its contextual purity).

The same thing applies, albeit to a different and lesser degree, with books. People use star ratings as referendums on the publisher, the author, the price, the cover design, the time of day, the weather, how many people showed up to their party last weekend, etc. There is no consistency in measurement. That's the nature of UGC, I suppose, for better or for worse.

brendino• 15 years ago

Amazon would be much better-served with a review system that enables users to choose a 5-start rating, AND an overall thumbs up/down recommendation. Then, users will be able to see how good a book is based on how people rate it, and what percentage of readers recommends it. Unfortunately, this system would not solve the problem of eliminating garbage reviews.

locopati• 15 years ago

Don't kill the messenger?

joshfinnie2• 15 years ago

What I find funny is that this would have never happened if they charged the standard $9.99 e-book price (which in itself is absolutely too much for e-books).

The $5 difference is causing quite a stir which I am sure is not worth it in the long run.

ig14• 15 years ago

Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it.

Valuing a book by it's physical properties is a practice that's gone on for far too long. Lots of technical books are full of "padding" and duplication because no-one will buy a 50 page book which concisely provides the useful information for $10-$20. It waste a huge amount of time both of the author and the readers.

ori_b2• 15 years ago

I would gladly pay more for a thinner, more concise book.

Tichy3• 15 years ago

"Why is $10 too much for an ebook ? - surely it depends on the value of the content inside it."

I think if we are talking about entertainment books (novels and such), there simply is too much competition. At the end of the day, a lot of those entertainment books could be exchanged for another entertainment book. I suppose for similar reasons cinema tickets tend to not vary too much with the content of the movie?

falcolas• 15 years ago

To me, $10 for an ebook is too much because of the significant restrictions that come with it. For your average ebook, you can't resell it, you can't lend it, it can arbitrarily be taken from you; you don't "own" the book. $10 for a license to read a book seems far too high.

On the flip side, the convenience of ebooks helps to defray some of these obvious cons.

timwiseman• 15 years ago

One reason lots of technical books have duplication is because the author knows that a lot of people do not read them cover to cover. Instead they pick and choose the sections that seem relevant/interesting to them and having a recap of some of the key background material needed by that section right there is very useful.

joshfinnie2• 15 years ago

I guess what I meant to say is that $10 is too much for an ebook which is selling significantly cheaper in paperback or slightly more in hardcover. My favorite example of this is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: it is $18.99 to buy it for a nook, but $9.99 for the paperback (and as low as $1 used, but that's beyond the argument).

awj3• 15 years ago

> surely it depends on the value of the content inside it.

It doesn't when an ebook is priced higher than paper editions with the same content. I do agree on the padding, though.

tptacek16• 15 years ago

If $9.99 is too much for an ebook, then publishers will not survive selling ebooks at $9.99. If the market clears at $9.99, then $9.99 is by definition not too much for an ebook.

If you don't believe this, absent a conspiracy theory about publishing†, you don't believe in markets.

† For instance, that it's impossible to publish without a publisher, which seems objectively false in 2011.

jswinghammer2• 15 years ago

Too much is of course a subjective term. The problem with ebooks is that once the book is written they lack scarcity which makes them fairly different from most consumer products. A market clearing price is sort of weird in this instance since we know that the supply can expand to meet infinite consumer demand.

If the parent poster is correct then we'll see a price correction towards a lower price. We'll also see a more active black market appear as has happened in the world of music if the price doesn't drop.

The 9.99 price is likely low enough to discourage most market participants from piracy but if it goes much higher then who knows. To suggest that the state of the market as we see it now is the optimal one isn't correct since the free market should always be fluctuating as things change in the world.

That said if the price was really too high then no one would buy ebooks and everyone would have fixed that by now or decided to abandon the idea for the time being.

khafra• 15 years ago

How can you tell if the market clears, with ebooks?

thalur2• 15 years ago

I have no probelem with people leaving 1* reviews without reading the book, just like I have no problem with Amazon removing those reviews (and only those reviews). Yes they are annoying, but they are also one of the few visible ways to protest. While "not buying the book" will probably be effective in the long term, an indivudial non-purchase isn't going to be noticed by anyone.

A similar situation to this frequently arises when big games are released on Steam. Amazon then gets flooded by 1* reviews from people who can't get Steam to work properly on release day or something.

I also find the opposite very annoying: when fans rate something as 5* before it's even released.

detst• 15 years ago

> I also find the opposite very annoying: when fans rate something as 5* before it's even released.

I've received early copies of books with the hope that I would review it early.

But I don't often look at Amazon reviews so I don't know if this would fully account for what you're talking about.

thalur2• 15 years ago

I was thinking of reviews along the lines of "I'm sure this will be great. 5*" I'm not sure if I've seen any like that on Amazon though, now that I think about it.

tptacek16• 15 years ago

They are annoying because they are effectively vandalism.

People here aren't going to like to hear that, and I understand, but dumping stuff on other people's property to make a point isn't less destructive than dumping stuff for no reason at all; it's just destructiveness in the ostensible service of another cause.

neutronicus• 15 years ago

Perhaps they should be more honest that this is temporary, "early access" pricing. Perhaps they should say "The Fifth Witness: Electronic Early Access Edition, $15", and promise "The Fifth Witness: Electronic Mass Market Edition, $7". After all, early access is a reasonable thing to charge money for.

I also seem to recall reading elsewhere that authors get a much bigger cut of hardback sales than they do of mass market paperback sales. Perhaps this should be advertised more prominently?

originalgeek3• 15 years ago

I was thinking the same thing, but it should be more like "Buy now with instant delivery $more" and "Buy now, delivery in 12 months $less". Buyer buys and then ebook is automatically synced to their device at the scheduled time. It would certainly go a long way to silence their critics.

The only problem I see for publishers is they currently enjoy flexibility in their hardcover-to-paperback window. If a book is a blockbuster, I'm sure they extend the window. I suppose they could alter the delivery window on the cheap price, for customers that had not yet locked in the original delivery window and price.

As far as the author's cut, it is time for authors to negotiate different contracts. In 5 years, perhaps less, their hardback bonus is going to be meaningless.

Tichy3• 15 years ago

"And that means more bookstores will be closing."

At the worst case they'll just have to change. Maybe they'll become cafes where you can borrow a kindle at the counter for browsing the selection.

Or they'll become like lists on Facebook.

cletus• 15 years ago

Sadly, Apple is largely to blame for this mess. Well, if you ignore the publishers.

Ebooks started as a wholesale pricing model. The publishers would sell them to the likes of Amazon at some fixed price. Amazon would then set their own price. This is very similar to the brick-and-mortar pricing model. In some cases Amazon would sell those books at a loss in an effort to grow the Kindle platform.

Publishers didn't like this system because they saw cheap prices as devaluing their content. Publishers are also caught in a backwards mindset where they think if the physical book costs $25 then the ebook should cost $25 even though the latter has no printing or distribution costs.

What's more, even if those costs were the same, ebooks should still cost less because there is no resale market, a fact that digital content publishers seem to ignore.

But Apple's iBooks came along and not only gave the publishers what they want, they required it. And that is the agency model, which allows the publishers to set the price, a move I argue is anticompetitive.

This put Amazon under pressure and the publishers got their way so the pricing is now largely out of Amazon's hands (sadly).

Review bombing is an interesting tactic, one I actually support if done for the right reasons. It was done on the PC game Spore for its ridiculous DRM (initially a limit of 2 (?) activations before EA relented).

What publishers--and in fact all digital content producers--are doing with pricing and DRM is beyond a joke. Sadly the Obama administration (the DoJ in particular) is filling with ex-RIAA lawyers so you know which way the wind is blowing there.

At the same time we have the RIAA/MPAA behind closed doors (with the government as willing accomplices) trying to equate downloading a song with terrorism (eg ACTA) in terms of enforcement priorities.

tptacek16• 15 years ago

This economic analysis is interesting (seriously!). But it is also facile. Yes, ebooks are worth "less" because they can't be resold. but they may be worth more, and maybe significantly more, because they are much more convenient. Durability, resellability, and convenience are benefits. If you need the first two, you can buy paper. You are not entitled to dictate that convenience can't cost 2x (durability + resellability). That's the market's job.

And, like it or not, "bombing" review sites isn't a market action. The market works by price discovery, not application of force.

hotlikearobot2• 15 years ago

To be fair, "bombing" review sites is entirely a market action. The market works through information. The most common way that information is disseminated is through prices, but that doesn't mean it is the only way. Reviews, etc, allow one to more accurately decide how to value something.

alsocasey• 15 years ago

I find it equally facile to rely on the market to set the price when dealing with an industry that has a history of price fixing and collusion...

statictype• 15 years ago

Review bombing is the market's way of informing the publisher that their prices are too high.

If you want to say that a price a product is sold at is dictated soley by what the market can bear, then I don't see why it isn't acceptable to say that vandalising review sites is (one of )the market's way of responding to the pricing.

Edit : (When I say "I don't see why...", I'm geniunely curious )

originalgeek3• 15 years ago

I characterize the view that this is "largely Apple's fault" to be somewhat myopic. Apple responded to a condition in the market, namely, publishers were plenty upset that Amazon used their position as the only viable ebook venue at the time to handcuff publishers to a $9.99 price point.

kbutler• 15 years ago

Amazon had the market power to force a $9.99 price point in spite of publishers' preferences. Apple lacked that power and followed publishers' preferences. This entrance of Apple as a competitor reduced Amazon's market power, allowing the publishers to dictate pricing.

bhousel3• 15 years ago

Here's a good article from a few months ago about the economics of ebook pricing. It supports your comments about the publishers having too much control over the pricing.

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2011/01/16/why-do-ebooks-cos...

tptacek16• 15 years ago

For the publisher to have any effective control over the price of a book, they have to control the distribution channel for books. But they manifestly do not. If you want to sell a book for $0.99, you can do so today.

Three of the elephants in the room are:

* That the $9.99 price point comes in a package deal that includes promotional advantages authors want

* That the $9.99 price point is calculated by publishers to maximize return on the ebook product offering, not to maximize the number of people who buy the ebook (but this is obviously how market pricing is supposed to work)

* That the $9.99 price point comes with access to the publisher's brick and mortar distribution system, which is much more powerful than the indie distribution system (but is also dying).

riffraff• 15 years ago

> And that is the agency model, which allows the publishers to set the price, a move I argue is anticompetitive.

would you care to expand on this? I am not sure I understand what you mean by this, nor why.

bhousel3• 15 years ago

Shameless plug: I built a site to let people borrow and lend Kindle (and soon Nook) books. You can make wishlists of books you want to try out, and hopefully some kind person who owns that book will loan it to you.

http://booklends.com

Ebook pricing is unfortunate, and a lot of that has more to do with the publishers than with the authors or with Amazon/B&N.

The Fifth Witness, mentioned in the CNET article, currently has an average rating of 1.7 out of 5:

http://booklends.com/books/4d959054461b264b37025bd3

It is not lendable, unfortunately. Again, blame Little, Brown, & Co for that. I think it would be in their best interests to allow their books to be lent to others. While I have no data (yet) to back this up, I believe that people who borrow a book that they enjoy are likely to buy more books from the same author.

ig14• 15 years ago

Didn't Amazon shut down Lendle for offering such a service?

bhousel3• 15 years ago

It was shut down for a few days, but it's back up again.

dkl• 15 years ago

I recently emailed Amazon customer service and complained about this very thing. A couple of days ago I bought dead tree versions of books that were 20% more for the kindle. I will not buy a kindle version of a book that is more than the dead tree version. Period.

pasbesoin• 15 years ago

A review's a review. Including the product price as compared to perceived value.

It seems the sellers want to have their cake and eat it, too. You sell an e-Book for more than the hardcover -- be prepared for people to lower the value they assign to the product that you are selling at your price.

Otherwise, just relabel your review section to "Whore for us".

(A bit strong, admittedly, but this is starting to stink of hypocrisy. Pooor Amazon! /sarcasm)

EDIT:

At the same time, people should learn that the physical costs of a physical book are actually a fairly small component of it's overall cost. IIRC, often a dollar or two (US). Amazon et al. discounts on physical books often represent in good part the lack of retail overhead.

If you want bookstores, you need to patronize them. And decide that you find enough value to pay the additional expense that keeps them in business.

When a staff member helps you, directly or by stocking/shelving an item you otherwise would not have found, realize this and make a decision to "pay the freight".

naqabas• 15 years ago

I think really what consumers are angry about is that the kindle/nook used to advertise the fact that ebooks were cheaper than buying the physical book and initially they were. Wouldn't you be a little angry now if you had invested a lot of money into the kindle/nook and justified it by the cheaper price in books? You can't blame them for ranting a little.

Kindle and Nook readers bash high e-book pricing with angry one-star reviews

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