Quote:
Originally Posted by boxcorner
Whilst I as an individual may not matter to any of them, publishers cannot afford to ignore all their customers collectively.
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What we have are tiered levels of customers. We have the "willing to pay a premium for just released popular books" and the "never been willing to pay that price" crowd. There are more gradations, of course, but to illustrate a point, I'm sticking to just these two.
Publishers care about both markets. There have been three main levels they've catered too with Hard back, Trade Paperbacks, and Mass Paper backs in descending price. It's the way it's always been.
eBooks come along and now there is no physical differentiation in the product. Add in Amazon's plan to buy dominance in the industry by subsidizing new release ebooks.....and the cheap crowd became convinced they are owed new release fiction at paper back book prices.
But such folks NEVER mattered when it came to new release book pricing. Never did before, still don't now. What matters in new release pricing is what the top line market is willing to pay. For them, ebooks at $12.99 to $14.99 still represent cost savings, it's still a lot cheaper than new release hard backs.
For those who NEVER thought books were worth $20 or more....your opinions on new release ebooks simply won't matter to the publishers. Never did before, still don't now.
Lee