Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
The booksellers like Borders are really at the mercy of the publishers, not the other way around. The big pubs control what books the booksellers get, at what price, how much they will buy back, and for how much. If the bookstores gripe, they get fewer books to sell, or lesser-popularity books... that keeps them in line. And the fact that the big stores generally refuse to even consider books outside of their contracted publishers, even when they believe there is at least a local market for them, shows how much they are in the publishers' pockets (aka locked into their contracts)...
There is no doubt, the pubs are at the top of the pile, dictating what trickles down to everyone else.
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I have to disagree, Steve. I don't think the publishers are anywhere near to being this much in control. They might make special deals on bestsellers, but in general, I don't think the publishers dictate at all what the stores carry, or how much, or what the returns will be. They might like to, but I just don't see them having that kind of power.
There's an assumption floating around here that publishers are afraid of ebooks because of fear of piracy, and that maybe they even
want ebooks to fail. There's also an assumption that producing ebooks is an inconsequential cost to publishers. Neither assumption holds any water, in my opinion.
Sure, there might be some fear of the unknown. But mostly I suspect it's fear of investing a lot of money in something that won't pay returns. That's starting to change. But don't fool yourselves into thinking that it's a simple matter to gear up for selling ebooks. It requires setting up new production processes, working out sales and distribution, and in general a lot of things behind the scenes that may not be obvious to the reader. Many publishers are in a financial retrenchment mode already, and they're not going to throw a lot of money at a problem like this. So they're taking it slow.
We all wish they'd take it faster, sure. But keep in mind that the ereading audience is still a small percentage of the total reading public.
As for high pricing--I hate it, too. But I suspect it's mainly analogous to not wanting to bring out a mass market paperback until a hardcover edition has had its run, not some nefarious effort to hold back ebook sales.