Quote:
Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks
Now you can buy hundreds of different titles for around $5 at WalMart and people buy them by the shopping cart full because they are cheap enough to be impulse purchases...everyone is happy with this arrangement.
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That's me at Smashwords. $2.99 novels are impulse purchases. What I wouldn't buy on dead trees for $7.99 (for reasons of both expense and space) I'll buy as an ebook without even thinking twice. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the royalty rate on MM paperbacks something like 10%? If so, since the Smashwords retailer's commission is something like 20%, Tim Myers made roughly twice as much off me the other night when I bought all of his Lighthouse mysteries at $1.99 each than he would have if I'd bought them all on dead trees. The only reason I don't have every ebook he's written (yet) is I'm intentionally rationing the pleasure of reading them, one series at a time. Having to go back to Smashwords and buy more keeps me from reading all the ebooks in one weekend-long orgy of reading -- and getting nothing else done at all!
I remember the days of $100 laserdiscs, and the tiny handful of wealthy enthusiasts who owned them and their $1000 players. The movie industry didn't make a whole lot of money from them. But now, when movies are impulse buys, well, I just had to buy a new DVD rack because they were starting to pile up on the floor. They're monetizing old TV shows that long ago dropped from even TV Land's rotation, too -- the equivalent of a publisher's backlist -- and if my spending on them is any example, making a nice chunk of change.
Ebooks as luxury items, sold for the price of hardcovers or more, will go the way of the laserdisc.
Ebooks as impulse items, sold for the price of used books or less, will match the success of the DVD.