Penguin S&S Random House?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I mean, isn't there a higher per-book price for POD copies rather than traditionally printed books made in large batches...

Not that it makes a difference.
Things have changed and today's POD is a lot cheaper than just a few years ago.

Try some numbers here to see how it plays out:

https://myaccount.ingramspark.com/Po...6-40cfdfdc5a80

Yes, the per book price on POD is higher but there is no warehousing cost with POD. And shipment is faster and cheaper from the Ingram plants to the retailer than from China, where most print runs come from.

The flexibility of POD (and, yes, the ability to retain copyright forever) outweighs the differential. Today publishers still do the first print run in batch because they bake in the delay and the price *is* lower, but after the launch window, it's virtually all POD. In fact, publishers are doing smaller first runs counting on POD to backfill any shortages. It means less returns and less books getting pulped.

It took tradpubs a while but they finally figured out POD.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Yes, this can be true NOW. But plenty of rights assigned years ago and it was take the publisher terms or have nothing.

That isn't necessarily true in the US.
Section 203 applies to all copyrights post-1978, regardless of what the contract says.
(See above.)

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...9&postcount=25

[Quoth]

And the USA is maybe 13% of the world's population and yet tries to foist DMCA and USA DRM on everyone and made obscene extension of Copyright to life +75 part of trade deals.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

I mean, isn't there a higher per-book price for POD copies rather than traditionally printed books made in large batches, albeit with virtually no risk you'll end up sitting on a bunch of unsold inventory, perhaps even having to dispose of said unsold inventory.

Maybe $5 / €4.50 vs 50c for me. But typical non-discount retail here is €12 to €20.
I can sell at €12 and make more profit on POD than ebooks.

Anyway, if it's out of print, and wanted, people do pay a premium, see prices of S/H popular titles out of print.

Then if the demand rises they can do a 1000 to 10,000 conventional print run. Same files if the same size page & font.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It took tradpubs a while but they finally figured out POD.

Really?
Why are so many books I want published in the last 10 years or even 5 years out of print?
Why is EVERYTHING that a Publisher has rights to and has the files, not on POD?
I was able to buy the sequel but not the original.
In one case the first 5 titles in print but the last of the series was out of print.
Also when buying a series, you get three different sizes of paperback, wiithout choice, depending when in the publishing cycle.

I think the big publishers need to get their act together or they will be wiped out by Amazon.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Really?
Why are so many books I want published in the last 10 years or even 5 years out of print?
Why is EVERYTHING that a Publisher has rights to and has the files, not on POD?
I was able to buy the sequel but not the original.
In one case the first 5 titles in print but the last of the series was out of print.
Also when buying a series, you get three different sizes of paperback, wiithout choice, depending when in the publishing cycle.

I think the big publishers need to get their act together or they will be wiped out by Amazon.

I think there are two glaring errors here. One is generalizing from your individual wants to the universal and the second is viewing opposition to profit-based decisions as some sort of moral crusade. Neither resonates with me. If I can’t get a book, I read something else. If I really, really wanted a book, I’d make the best of the options in terms of scouting out a legitimate used copy. Back in the day, I kept lists and I’d haunt secondhand and antiquarian shops and fairs. Much easier today, if not as much fun. As for the rest, it earns a huge shrug from me. Yeah, you want what you want. But the rhetoric is over the top.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Quoth

And the USA is maybe 13% of the world's population and yet tries to foist DMCA and USA DRM on everyone and made obscene extension of Copyright to life +75 part of trade deals.

life +70.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think there are two glaring errors here. One is generalizing from your individual wants to the universal and the second is viewing opposition to profit-based decisions as some sort of moral crusade. Neither resonates with me. If I can’t get a book, I read something else. If I really, really wanted a book, I’d make the best of the options in terms of scouting out a legitimate used copy. Back in the day, I kept lists and I’d haunt secondhand and antiquarian shops and fairs. Much easier today, if not as much fun. As for the rest, it earns a huge shrug from me. Yeah, you want what you want. But the rhetoric is over the top.

I did the same thing. When I was traveling I was able to hit a lot of used bookstores. This gave me a better chance to find the books I wanted. Then the internet came along.
Apache

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Apache

I did the same thing. When I was traveling I was able to hit a lot of used bookstores. This gave me a better chance to find the books I wanted. Then the internet came along.
Apache

And oh, the rush! when you finally found a book you’d been searching for for eons. I wouldn’t go back, but there are things I miss about the real book/pre-internet days.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by issybird

And oh, the rush! when you finally found a book you’d been searching for for eons. I wouldn’t go back, but there are things I miss about the real book/pre-internet days.

Been there, done that.
ABEbooks was a godsend.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Why is EVERYTHING that a Publisher has rights to and has the files, not on POD?

.

Because they say so.
It's their prerogative as gatekeepers.

Just because they *can* keep everything they control in print, doesn't mean they *want* to. Their primary revenue streams still come from new releases. POD lets them supplement that with long tail sales of past successful books but not every book is a success in their view. And they are supposed to keep track of every book's sales to pay out the royalties. That has a cost. When a company like the randy Penguin puts out 17,000 different titles in a year (20,000+ when the merger is rubberstamped) the fate of any single book is of little concern beyond launch window sales and the added valuation it adds.
Not every kind of book actually sells enough past their launch to be worth tracking. It tends to vary by genre first and then by author and title. SF is notorious for the enduring sales of the deep backlist, books from the 40's and 50's routinely outsell some new releases. Other genres don't, beyond a handful of exemplars.

Stephen King books, yeah; those get POD'ed.
Joe Whosethat? No necessarily.
Many don't even get ebook editions.
But when it comes to putting a monetary value to a publisher's assets, even books that aren't exploited count. In bulk, if nothing else.
That is why copyrights have been extended repeatedly.

Plus, not every publisher everywhere has adopted the newer techs.

There's still publishers in english language markets (Australia, NZ, and yes, Ireland) who bemoan the rise of ebooks and the global english market because it lets their readers get books from the US, UK, and Canada. And it never crosses their minds that global english lets *them* sell globally.

(Try this: before Amazon introduced a Japanese version of Kindle, one of the top selling ebooks was a very basic user guide that got something like 90% of its sales from Japan where it went viral among people importing Kindles to have access to original english editions of books, particularly business non-fiction.)

It takes all kinds and not everybody everwhere behaves as expected.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Because they say so.
It's their prerogative as gatekeepers.

Just because they *can* keep everything they control in print, doesn't mean they *want* to. Their primary revenue streams still come from new releases.

And unless they get smart Amazon will eat their market.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

At what point do antitrust regulators start to object to consolidation like this?

(I'd argue the rise in non-big5 publishers that ebooks help enable might actually be beneficial to this merger's chances)

You had an excellent first question on this. It took a while, but it turns out that someone was paying attention:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...9cd_story.html

This was an interesting line in the article:

The argument isn’t that publishers would then charge consumers more for books, rather that they’d pay authors less for the rights to their work. That’s an unusual line of attack for an antitrust case. But it’s a valid one: It drives at the price people should get for their labor.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by issybird

And oh, the rush! when you finally found a book you’d been searching for for eons. I wouldn’t go back, but there are things I miss about the real book/pre-internet days.

It's still a rush as far as I'm concerned. It's just that now I run searches on eBay or Bookfinder or Etsy looking for specific rare titles. Some of what I'm looking for just is barely findable, if findable at all. And finding and affording are often two completely different items for books like that!

But the rush when you do find a copy of something you've been searching for for years is still good! Especially if the price is right!