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Originally Posted by mrscoach
The two titles REPRESENT a trend. Just because they only used two titles doesn't negate the facts. There are other books that could have been used as well, but the list is too long and would make the article unbearable to slog through. No one wants to sift through a long list of books to read an article.
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You can point to many other books that are suddenly appearing with the hardcover priced
below the ebook on Amazon?
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What the Agency 5 are doing to ebooks is wrong, and should be pointed out as much as possible. Maybe shame will change their ways, but I think they have none.
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Let's understand what the publishers are up to here: this is not about greed, it's about
survival.
Publishing has been suffering since long before ebooks were a gleam in anyone's eye. There have simply been too many books chasing too few readers. Everybody knew it, but nobody wanted to be the first to address it. Back in the days before ebooks, there was a reason for that: addressing it meant publishing less books. In the genre I'm most conversant with - SF - you could have cases where an editor would say "I'm scheduled to release four books in month X, but I only have three thus far. What's the
least bad manuscript in the slush pile to fill out the schedule?" Publishing only three titles in month X wasn't an option, because the assumption was they'd lose the retail shelf space occupied by the fourth title, and
not get it back.
Those too many books were not merely competing for too few readers, they were competing for limited space on retailer's shelves. Some years back, before ebooks, I saw specs that there were 50,000 titles published in the US each year, and the average bookstore had space to shelve and display 5,000 - 8,000. Books that didn't fly off the shelves did not get reordered, and were returned to make room for new releases. Returns provided another source of problems, because publishing had historically used a 100% returns policy. Unsold books could be returned for full credit, so the retailer bore no risk if they guessed wrong on what might sell. Hardcover books were simply returned. Paperbacks weren't. The covers were stripped off and returned, but the bodies of the books became trash (and all to often wound up being sold without covers for a fraction of the normal price.) To make things more interesting, the distribution system was convoluted enough that it could be six months to a year before the publisher knew whether a book had sold.
So there would be periodic wrenching spasms as a publisher trimmed it's lines and published less books, and others followed suit. Authors found themselves without contracts, and people involved in producing the books found themselves without jobs.
Consolidation has been at work, as publishers bought smaller houses, and retailing has contracted as well, as major chains like Barnes and Noble drove smaller booksellers out of business, because they couldn't compete with B&N's pricing. And B&N and fellows were under pressure from warehouse stores like CostCo and Sam's Club, who had even greater economies of scale and pricing power. Amazon became the 800 lb gorilla in book retailing, putting pressure on everyone.
And the consolidation put another form or pressure on publishing, as publishers were acquired by media conglomerates who saw supposed advantages in having all forms of media under one roof. The conglomerates had revenue and profitability targets publishers
couldn't meet, and the efforts to do so provided additional issues for the industry.
The Agency Pricing model had a simple goal: protect the
hardcover best seller. Those are the industry crown jewels. They generate the highest revenue and carry the highest margins. For most publishers, best sellers make the difference between whether they make money or show a loss for the year.
Amazon was selling Kindle editions at their default $9.99 price
at the same time that they were selling the hardcover. Many readers just wanted to read the book
now, had the capability of reading the electronic version, and didn't care about the paper volume, so they bought the cheaper ebook. The publishers were seeing declining revenue.
The Agency Pricing model effectively says "If you want to sell the ebook at the
same time as the hardcover, you have to charge a higher price and remit a greater percentage to us, to make up for what we are losing by
not getting a hardcover sale. If you want to sell the ebook cheaper, you must wait for several months to give the hardcover time to sell before competing with it." Mass market paperbacks don't get released until a year after the hardcover for a reason, and the same reason applies to ebooks.
Ebooks have simply added a whole new level of uncertainty to the equation. The dust has yet to settle, as everyone in the industry gropes for a successful strategy including ebooks that will let them
remain in business.
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Dennis