Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
The lesson may be that when almost everyone is saying that the old business model is totally broken, and needs to be thrown onto a slow boat to you know where, sometimes all the old model needs is some tweaking, and a relentless focus on quality.
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To be clear: when I say the current business model is broken. I'm referring mainly to their habit of relying on the sales generated by a relatively small number of huge, blockbuster hardcover releases to subsidize everything else they do. If they find that a large percentage consumers are willing to pay the $13-16 agency price for ebooks, then they seriously need to consider whether they want to hang on to that "hardcovers are our bread & butter" mantra.
I know "it costs money to produce ebooks" too, but many of those costs are
shared with its hardcover counterpart's production costs. A hardcover + ebook doesn't cost twice as much to produce as a hardcover alone. They'd be wise to research ways to bring down the costs of producing ebooks even
more. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that a standard fiction ebook could basically be a byproduct of the "let's make a pbook" process. And then the money spent on research, marketing, PR, editing, proofing, etc... won't care if you buy the ebook or the pbook.
Just stop fighting so hard to only make money a certain way--the
old way. And stop trying to shove ebooks into pbook-shaped holes.