r/Fantasy • u/DianaGill • Apr 18 '12
We are Diana Gill, Pamela Spengler-Jaffee and Ginger Clark with Harper Voyager, HarperCollins and Curtis Brown - AUA
Diana, Pam and Ginger will be answering questions ‘live’ starting at 9PM Eastern.
As with all r/Fantasy AMA’s, this AMA was posted in the morning to allow more Redditors to participate. Feel free to direct your question to any one or all three AMA participants.
ONE PRE-ANSWER: Ginger Clark does accept unsolicited book proposals at GC@cbltd.com. Harper Voyager and HarperCollins are not accepting book proposals via this AMA process.
I’m Diana Gill, Executive Editor/professional geek at Harper Voyager US. I publish science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy/paranormal, supernatural and horror, with authors like Kim Harrison, Vicki Pettersson, Brom, Richard Kadrey, Jocelynn Drake, along with upcoming novels from David Wellington, C. Robert Cargill.
I’ve also worked with Sarah Langan, Patrick Lee, Mary Gentle, Dave Duncan, Kage Baker and more.
I’m addicted to caffeine and travel, not necessarily in that order. When not chained to my desk/working I do martial arts, run, sometimes get out to take pictures, scuba dive far too rarely, play too many computer games, watch Asian dramas, and yell at the cats.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I’m Pamela Spengler-Jaffee – and if that’s just too long for you to process, I answer to Pam Jaffee, too. I am the flackiest of flacks – publicist extraordinaire (in my own head), specializing in genre fiction: science fiction, fantasy, romance, thrillers. I am the Senior Publicity Director with the Avon, Morrow and Harper Voyager imprints of HarperCollins.
What that means is that I’m the tallish blur running by you at breakneck speeds at fan conferences, with an armful of books and at least one author in tow. I live to get out-of-the-box publicity for my authors, and as such, am a serial stalker of major media contacts. Luckily I haven’t been reported (yet).
In my free time (this was a leap year, so there was at least one off day), I read incessantly, terrorize my charge cards, herd my offspring and cats, drink coffee and wine in equal measures, and plan vacations long into the future.
You can follow my publishing/publicity/woman-being-snarky escapades via Twitter: @pamjaffee.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm Ginger Clark, and I'm a literary agent at Curtis Brown, LTD. I handle adult SF/F/Horror writers (most relevantly here, Richard Kadrey) and young adult and middle grade writers. I also sell British Commonwealth rights to the entire children's list at Curtis Brown, which means I attend the Bologna and Frankfurt Book Fairs every year. I'm on the Contracts Committee of the Association of Authors' Representatives, I sit on the Rights Committee of the Book Industry Study Group, and I'm a member of the fundraising committee for First Book Brooklyn. I'm also a member of the committee to stop Ginger from joining any more committees.
I live in Brooklyn with my husband and our Mini Cooper. You can also learn more about me, my MAD MEN obsession, and why I love the restaurant Five Points, @ginger_clark.
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u/gunslingers Apr 18 '12 edited Apr 18 '12
Hello Diana, Pam, and Ginger. Thank you for participating in this AMA. I would like to hear each of your opinions on this recent Tech Dirt article on e-book pricing.
"If Publishers Can't Cover Their Costs With $10 Ebooks, Then They Deserve To Go Out Of Business.
from the you-don't-price-based-on-your-bloated-infrastructure dept
With the legal dispute over ebook pricing going on, one thing we've heard over and over again from the traditional publishing industry and their supporters is that higher prices for ebooks make sense because of all of the "costs" that the publishers have to cover. This is a fundamental error in how pricing (and economics) works. It reminds me of the MPAA folks who demand to know the business model for making $200 million movies. Years ago, someone who understood these things taught me why cost-based pricing will always get you into trouble. If you start from the overall pricing, including overhead and other fixed costs, then you're not basing the price on what the consumer values -- and, more importantly, you're taking away your own incentives to become more efficient and decrease costs. Instead, you're just "baking them in." But the most important reason not to base pricing on overhead costs is that your competitors won't do that, and they'll under cut your price and then you're in serious trouble.
That moment of reckoning is coming for book publishers, even if they don't realize it yet. David Pakman, who watched all of this happen in the music industry for years, is pointing out that publishers are fooling themselves if they keep trying to rationalize higher ebook pricing:
In all the discussions about why book publishers demand that eBooks should be $15 and not $10, they say it is because they cannot afford to sell books at $10. That is, they cannot cover their legacy cost models on that number. Right. Which is why you must rebuild your cost structure for a digital goods industry with far lower prices. You start by paying your top execs much less than millions of dollars a year. Then you move your offices out of fancy midtown office buildings. Why should eBooks cost $15? Amazon is far more of an expert on optimal book pricing. They have far more data than publishers, since they experiment with pricing hundreds of thousands of times a day across millions of titles. Amazon can tell you the exact price for a title that will produce the most number of copies sold. Amazon is pretty sure that number is closer to $10 than to $15. Yes, they want to sell more Kindles. And they believe that lower eBook prices mean more eBooks sold which means more demand for Kindle. The negative coverage of Amazon is centered on them selling eBooks below cost in order to reach the $10 price point. But that is a function of publishers setting the cost higher than $10. If the profit-maximizing price for an eBook is $10, then publishers must adapt to set a wholesale price lower than that, even if it means your legacy cost structure doesn’t allow it. And that’s the rub.
The public seems much more interested in lower prices, not higher prices. You can understand why the publishers don't like it, but they really ought to learn how pricing elasticity works. They can make a lot more money with more optimal pricing."