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Originally Posted by BWinmill
How true. Even though inflation has always been a factor, one has to wonder how long it can keep up when people's incomes are nearly stagnant.
One of the reasons why Baen has always stuck in the back of my mind are the lower prices, classic titles, and DRM free status. It sounds like the first advantage is being diminished, the second sounds a bit uncertain, which leaves the third.
While the move will probably be in the best interests of the publisher and the author, simply because the books will have a higher profile among people who were not aware of Baen's offerings, I'm left wondering how much it will affect their relations with existing customers?
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A problem to be sure. But apparently they didn't have ENOUGH existing customers to continue the way things were going. Visibility is very tough in the book market and if the eyeballs have moved to Amazon, what can you do? They have good word-of-mouth advertising, but I admit there are times when I put off buying a book just because it meant a few extra steps (doesn't mean I don't go ahead and buy it, but it isn't one-click. That's entirely lazy of me and knowing what I know now, I wish I had bought more quickly rather than put it off although I doubt my measly few purchases a year were going to keep anyone afloat.)
I think the economy has really hurt book buying all over (no matter the vendor) in the past couple of years so eyeballs become even more important. My income has gone down this year and that means less book buying from all sources. Lower prices help me buy books, but I simply can't buy as many as I used to just based on my own lower income. And I can't find a way to blame Baen for that...