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Originally Posted by starrigger
The failure of publishers to lower ebook prices when books hit paperback is, I think, not so much due to greedy design as to clerical inattention. When my own novel Sunborn came out as a Tor ebook, around the same time that the agency model kicked in, the ebook was at a higher price than the recently published paperback. I brought this to their attention, and they promptly lowered the ebook price to match the paperback. This sort of thing happens in publishing all the time.
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Yep.
A lot of the "They had to know" comments about publishers on this thread prompt a "What do you mean by 'they'?" response from me. Most publishers are units of
big companies, and employ thousands of people. Assuming that all employees are of the same mind and on the same page is just silly. Often the left hand really
doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and sometimes that bites them on the butt.
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I dislike the agency model, not because of higher prices--in general, the prices seem about the same to me--but because it prohibits discounting and kills competition among bookstores (other than choice of platform). It's killing Fictionwise, whose great sales were once a main reason to shop there; now those sales are limited to non-agency publishers (which, to be fair, still includes a lot of great books).
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I don't like the agency model, either, but I recognize what prompted it.
And Fictionwise is part of B&N these days, so I don't see them emitting death rattles just yet.
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Dennis