Quote:
Originally Posted by orcinus
A single book does not a publisher make 
Baen is small, agile and progressive. And a fairly atypical publisher at that  |
Even for Baen the e-book revenue is quite small, bigger than at others sure, but I doubt that it gets to 10% even for their top seller authors. Mr. Flint posted a breakdown of his earnings, with actual number of books sold, hc, pb, and sell-through for several of his 163* books through 12/31/06 (for example:
* 1633
* HC net sales: 17,800
* Paperback net sales: 62,000
* Sell-through (HC): 71%
* Sell-through (ppbk): 62%
* Total royalties earned: $108,800),
and then breaking down his earnings, e-books/foreign rights/misc together came to less than 10%, with hc at about 60% and pb at 30%
For Baen e-books are a wonderful way to get publicity, keep series going, make a little money, and develop interesting initiatives that may pay off big in the future (JBUniverse, e-reprints of various series like Liaden, Godstalker, Lt. Grimes, Codominium).
They are really showing how to do e-books, but and this is a big but, they still make the vast majority of their money from print.
The bottom line for e-books right now is twofold:
- minuscule market so no price discovery, publishers offering a product that people do not want, but not really caring since external pressures are not high
- no digital content business model which produces revenue comparable to physical content yet proven, so only external pressure will force publishers' hand