I have no doubt that John Stapleton’s book represents an excellent work of research & authorship on the travesty that is the bloodsucking Family Law industry in Australia – including the parasitical ‘journalist’ operatives who have made it their life ambition to hate fathers and destroy men. However, there is an ‘elephant in the room’ about this book.
The price for the paperback edition of John’s book on Amazon is more than AUD$87, and the Kindle edition more than AUD$31. I don’t care how long the book is, but these prices are excessive in the extreme and they will probably ensure the book’s failure in the marketplace. This problem can be rectified - and needs to be.
The practice of grossly overpricing books is a not uncommon occurrence in the ‘academic’ publisher ‘non-fiction’ market. Most academic authors are completely naïve about the psychology of how and why decisions to buy books are made by potential customers, and after labouring mightily to produce a learned work, they fall into the trap of simply handing their life’s work over to a publisher who through incompetence proceeds to render the work unsellable by overpricing. The ‘academic’ book publication industry often sees its market as mainly public libraries – not the mass of the population – and so a book that should potentially gain a reasonably big market ends up selling only a few hundred copies.
Non-fiction books such as John Stapleton’s have the most chance of successfully achieving the sales necessary to reach economic takeoff speed by activating a ‘word-of-mouth’ referral process amongst a core of people who have bought an initial copy. The window of opportunity for kickstarting that process occurs during the book launch period – which is right now for Stapleton’s book. If the product is prohibitively priced - as is the current case - then insufficient initial sales will occur to create the critical mass necessary to trigger the word-of-mouth chain reaction. That initial window of opportunity will then slam shut - and usually will not reopen. Great disappointment follows. I have seen distressed academics who just cannot understand why the fruit of their precious labour is just not selling, and the answer lies with the marketing incompetence and lack of savvy of the publisher.
These days, many astute authors take direct control of the publishing process for their books by contracting out editing & other functions, and then self publish direct to Kindle. The result is often a river of gold direct to the author, completing bypassing the traditional publishing houses - and although they hate it - publishers then sometimes come cap-in-hand to the author to buy the rights to publish the hard copy.
The distribution costs for an electronic book such as Kindle are tiny – after all, the book buyer is only getting is a bunch of electrons. Nothing can justify a price of over $31 for the Kindle edition of John’s book. As I said, the prices set for the book may have doomed his otherwise worthy publication to marketplace failure, or at least very much lower sales than it deserves. I hope I have made my point.
John here. Yes you have made your point. The book is 603 pages long. The recommended retail is $AUS59.99 for paperback and $20 for Kindle. I have no control over Amazon pricing and have no idea why the pricing is so high. At one point it was $109!!! It is very frustrating. And what you have to say is a fair call. It is $53 at Angus & Robertson, which I recommend. I hesitate to make my phone number public but if you wish to contact me at john.stapleton@gmail.com I can organise you a copy direct from the printer, but that comes in at around $50 in any case so you might as well go A&R. If you wish to order a carton of 10 which some people are doing the price comes down to around $30 landed. Or if you email me I'll send you a PDF gratis. All the best. Thanks for your interest. Have a great day.
Thank you, John, for your response – and thank you for writing your book – the operations of the dysfunctional and singularly unjust Family Law court apparatus are a scandal that demand wide exposure. I will buy a hard copy from an Angus & Robertson bookstore.
I no doubt seem a little paranoid about this book price issue, but in the past my observations have been that some books (in the U.S.) on controversial topics that go against accepted ‘politically correct’ narratives are assigned prices on Amazon that are well beyond what would be reasonably regarded as ‘normal’ – taking into account the cost of production & distribution. The net effect of course is reduced sales, usually massively so. One is left suspecting that the anonymous persons who set book prices within retail organisations that do this may have an agenda. Some years ago, the author of ‘action’ fiction of the sort that would appeal to a male mass market complained to me about the difficulty of getting his novels published. He attributed this to the huge gender imbalance that exists within that industry. Therein may lie the answer to this pricing conundrum.
By the way, when I checked just now, there was no book cover image provided for your book on Angus & Robertson’s website – something the publisher needs to address. Once again, thank you for putting in the massive effort needed to bring your book to market.
I'm not sure if pricing designed to suppress sales is an issue here or not. But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. This government has shown itself more than willing to censor its own citizens. That's for sure. As the old saying goes, journalism is something someone doesn't want to see published. All the rest is propaganda. Today it's back up to $102!!! Which is ridiculous. While the American site is $US39.99, which is much more in line with the RRP. The cover image issue on A&R normally auto corrects after a few days. It is exactly the same on Booktopia. Similar pricing - $54. But I've found A&R quicker to deliver.
This needs to be on Audible.
I have no doubt that John Stapleton’s book represents an excellent work of research & authorship on the travesty that is the bloodsucking Family Law industry in Australia – including the parasitical ‘journalist’ operatives who have made it their life ambition to hate fathers and destroy men. However, there is an ‘elephant in the room’ about this book.
The price for the paperback edition of John’s book on Amazon is more than AUD$87, and the Kindle edition more than AUD$31. I don’t care how long the book is, but these prices are excessive in the extreme and they will probably ensure the book’s failure in the marketplace. This problem can be rectified - and needs to be.
The practice of grossly overpricing books is a not uncommon occurrence in the ‘academic’ publisher ‘non-fiction’ market. Most academic authors are completely naïve about the psychology of how and why decisions to buy books are made by potential customers, and after labouring mightily to produce a learned work, they fall into the trap of simply handing their life’s work over to a publisher who through incompetence proceeds to render the work unsellable by overpricing. The ‘academic’ book publication industry often sees its market as mainly public libraries – not the mass of the population – and so a book that should potentially gain a reasonably big market ends up selling only a few hundred copies.
Non-fiction books such as John Stapleton’s have the most chance of successfully achieving the sales necessary to reach economic takeoff speed by activating a ‘word-of-mouth’ referral process amongst a core of people who have bought an initial copy. The window of opportunity for kickstarting that process occurs during the book launch period – which is right now for Stapleton’s book. If the product is prohibitively priced - as is the current case - then insufficient initial sales will occur to create the critical mass necessary to trigger the word-of-mouth chain reaction. That initial window of opportunity will then slam shut - and usually will not reopen. Great disappointment follows. I have seen distressed academics who just cannot understand why the fruit of their precious labour is just not selling, and the answer lies with the marketing incompetence and lack of savvy of the publisher.
These days, many astute authors take direct control of the publishing process for their books by contracting out editing & other functions, and then self publish direct to Kindle. The result is often a river of gold direct to the author, completing bypassing the traditional publishing houses - and although they hate it - publishers then sometimes come cap-in-hand to the author to buy the rights to publish the hard copy.
The distribution costs for an electronic book such as Kindle are tiny – after all, the book buyer is only getting is a bunch of electrons. Nothing can justify a price of over $31 for the Kindle edition of John’s book. As I said, the prices set for the book may have doomed his otherwise worthy publication to marketplace failure, or at least very much lower sales than it deserves. I hope I have made my point.
John here. Yes you have made your point. The book is 603 pages long. The recommended retail is $AUS59.99 for paperback and $20 for Kindle. I have no control over Amazon pricing and have no idea why the pricing is so high. At one point it was $109!!! It is very frustrating. And what you have to say is a fair call. It is $53 at Angus & Robertson, which I recommend. I hesitate to make my phone number public but if you wish to contact me at john.stapleton@gmail.com I can organise you a copy direct from the printer, but that comes in at around $50 in any case so you might as well go A&R. If you wish to order a carton of 10 which some people are doing the price comes down to around $30 landed. Or if you email me I'll send you a PDF gratis. All the best. Thanks for your interest. Have a great day.
Thank you, John, for your response – and thank you for writing your book – the operations of the dysfunctional and singularly unjust Family Law court apparatus are a scandal that demand wide exposure. I will buy a hard copy from an Angus & Robertson bookstore.
I no doubt seem a little paranoid about this book price issue, but in the past my observations have been that some books (in the U.S.) on controversial topics that go against accepted ‘politically correct’ narratives are assigned prices on Amazon that are well beyond what would be reasonably regarded as ‘normal’ – taking into account the cost of production & distribution. The net effect of course is reduced sales, usually massively so. One is left suspecting that the anonymous persons who set book prices within retail organisations that do this may have an agenda. Some years ago, the author of ‘action’ fiction of the sort that would appeal to a male mass market complained to me about the difficulty of getting his novels published. He attributed this to the huge gender imbalance that exists within that industry. Therein may lie the answer to this pricing conundrum.
By the way, when I checked just now, there was no book cover image provided for your book on Angus & Robertson’s website – something the publisher needs to address. Once again, thank you for putting in the massive effort needed to bring your book to market.
I'm not sure if pricing designed to suppress sales is an issue here or not. But I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. This government has shown itself more than willing to censor its own citizens. That's for sure. As the old saying goes, journalism is something someone doesn't want to see published. All the rest is propaganda. Today it's back up to $102!!! Which is ridiculous. While the American site is $US39.99, which is much more in line with the RRP. The cover image issue on A&R normally auto corrects after a few days. It is exactly the same on Booktopia. Similar pricing - $54. But I've found A&R quicker to deliver.