[snipenekkid]

Bear with me a bit on this one. But for every paperback or hardback sold the retail market gets ONE sale back. Then the book lives on, being resold perhaps 100s of times in it's lifetime. The publisher and new retailer receives none of this, nor should they.

OK, so now with situations with DRM and devices like the Kindle we really are not buying a book anymore. We purchase a license to read the book (just accept that for now, not debating the validity but rather that is the way the market wants us all to think.) OK, if ebooks were competitively priced from day one with the prices in used book stores, mostly just fiction titles because, really, that is what most of us read. But priced in line with that market I for one would probably never buy a used book again.

I know this sounds like another ebooks are too expensive thread, but really it is and then it really is not. Currently publishers get only a portion of that first sale. Well, by pricing in line with current used pricing models, or at least in the ballpark, odds are they will get a fair portion of the used book buyer market too if the titles are easy to buy, are priced along the same lines. I would probably not even mind DRM if all ebooks were in that $2-$5 range. Well, as long as I was not limited as to what specific reading device I had to use for the books.

Just using some WAG, I bet retail book sales would eventually at least 2x in the first few years and who knows after that as the used book stores are driven out of business by the lower cost, easier to buy, crisp & clean new ebooks sales.

I use Baen for most of my content as well as the free sites. I also support Indie & quasi-indie authors I have stumbled across here and other places...may of whom are regular posters here. I think they get the whole point and see the advantage of a lower unit price driving a higher sales volume.

Publishers have been gnashing their teeth over used book stores for ages and here they have a true shot at recovering sales lost to those stores and for some reason they are not willing to take that shot. Hey if you don't bet, you can't win, right? I just feel the publishers hold all the cards with the growth of ebooks, finally. And yes, there will always be dead tree books sold used or otherwise, it just seems the time is now to aggressively pursue the market.

Even if they let etailers of ebooks do the 4 for 3 thing like Amazon does on some titles, that is a big step in the correct direction. Fictionwise is close too with their 100% micropay rebates. BTW, hats off to FW for figuring a way around the price fixing by publishers using what amounts to a customer loyalty program to reduce the effective price of books in the same way people currently use a used book store when trading in books for credit.

I know this was not expressed as I see it in my head but I think the idea is there.