|
There's another way of looking at this. Right now, a lot of publishers are still reeling from the effects of the economic crash in both Europe and the States. They're tightening their belts when they can. They also depend hugely on major bookstores, both online (BN, Amazon) and brick (BN again, Borders, etc) to shift major quantities of books. A S. King book is a big seller; it's going to shift units, as well as bring people into their stores. The way the brick and mortar retailers see it, ebook sales will cannibalize their sales of physical books, and that might make them want to put pressure on King's publishers to focus on the physical book, especially on the run-up to Christmas. These are complex economic relationships.
Mind you, I personally think they're a bit mental to restrict the ebook sales, since even though it's a rapidly growing market it still represents only a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole, and surely isn't likely to cannibalise that many sales, if any. But if you look at it in terms of physical sales and the economic relations between the retailers and the publishers in a time when the economy is flatlining, you can get an inkling of the thinking behind it.
|