Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
No - you can sell paperbacks at a profit because the hardback sales have already paid the up-front costs of producing the book. What people seem to want are eBooks released simultaneously with the hardback, but at paperback prices. That's a pricing model that just doesn't work.
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It seems to be working for Baen books, because that's their model. I can understand the publishers wanting to charge the same as hardback for their ebooks, when that's the only print edition available, but there's no justification for not dropping the ebook price to the paperback price when there's a paperback out. In my opinion, the real question for the publishers is whether selling ebooks at a lower price point cuts into the hardback sales, and if so, by how much. If it's negligible, then the publishers are really just doing this to "show Amazon who's boss".
I don't buy hardbacks, and I've got enough of a backlog that I can usually wait until the paperback is out (or go to the library). But it really steams me when there's an old book, with an ebook release from 5 years ago that is still at hardback prices, and the paperback was released and is already out of print. The only way I'll buy that is if I can get it from an ebook store when it's on sale so my effective price is down around the $5-7 range (i.e., paperback price).