The agency model for e-books is out of the gates and off and running as of yesterday. As many expected, there have been some bumps in the road. Some publishers are still working with Amazon. This is all to be expected given how quickly deals had to be put together.

My main concern is communication with customers. This morning I checked the Amazon Kindle blog and noticed a number of customers complaining about the price changes. Some felt that publishers were price-gouging, getting more because they could, etc. To quote one customer “I’m really tired of these publishers jerking me around. Ebooks are almost pure profit since they don’t have to pay anyone to print or ship…”

Very few customers posting recognized or understood that authors need to be paid fairly for their work. The focus was heavily on publishers and lawyers writing up contracts as well as the low costs of producing an e-book versus printing. The truth is that without authors sitting in a chair, fingers to keyboard for months or even years, pouring their heart and imagination out onto their hard drives, there would be no e-books (or any other form of books). The truth is that like other products (cars, jewelry, clothing) some products may have a higher intrinsic value than others.

I believe most people are willing to pay fairly for what they buy when they understand the value of what they’re buying. Few expect to buy a shiny new BMW car for the same price as a Kia.

Of course, why should readers realize or understand the monumental effort that goes into writing a book unless authors, publishers, agents and others in the community engage them in conversation? We are not explaining our side of the story. We’re letting Amazon and others put their side of the story out leaving readers feeling confused.

Yes, e-books are cheaper to produce. But they are part of the set of products an authors produces. In fact, an ever greater part. The pay (or salary, if you will) that an author receives in exchange for sitting at their computer for months and years is based on what all these products (e-books, hardcover, paperback, etc) earn. Artificially lowering the price of e-books to “one low price fits all” means that no matter how hard an author works, no matter how good they are in crafting a story, they’ll earn the same base amount.

Naturally, Amazon and other companies that make the hardware needed to read e-books want low priced content. They want to sell their hardware (e-book readers) for as much as they can. In order to do that, they need to offer customers a carrot. The carrot is low cost content. Their pitch to customers is, “yes, you’ll pay hundreds of dollars for this reader but after that you’ll hardly pay anything at all for using the device.” Fair valued-content brings up the total cost proposition of owning the e-reader. Some customers may then want to pay less for the reader.

E-readers and e-books need each other. Like any relationship, there are ups and downs as well as power-struggles. I believe the agency model is basically fair to both sides. Readers also win because they will keep getting fantastic stories to read in any format they like (print books or e-books).

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