[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The question is what those meetings and approval steps actually cost. The people involved will be at them in any case, and are on salary.

From what I read about those meetings and having been in many a meeting...they should probably all be canceled...

The folks most likely to succeed at something like this are those who have already built a market via traditional publishing.

Interest from agents/publishers on places like Kindleboards is a mixed blessing. It depends upon just which agents and publishers.

Yes, you're right about the ones who have a traditional background/experience. The interest isn't done via kindleboards, it's just authors reporting their 'deal." Two or three have gone with Amazon Encore and another one ... I think her husband signed with TOR if I remember correctly. Two or three others have signed with some fairly big named agents. If that is the dream, well, it probably won't hurt them to go down that path for a while.

Not just people cost, though I agree that's probably the biggest single component. There are other costs like rent on office space, electricity and phone service and the like that are part of the overhead of any business and get allocated as posrt of the cost of a product.

Yes, and to be competitive, it's got to be darned hard to make the numbers make sense when your building space is in NY.

I think she is right, for her audience. Your audience differs.

I disagree. I was a buyer of her "products." The only reason I didn't buy more was because they were too expensive. They were also extremely slow to get into ebook form those times a book was chosen to be put in ebook form. Had she been more competitive with pricing, I would have bought a couple more books. At 15 a pop, I got three via the library and still haven't bought one because I'm hoping it will go ebook and be cheaper via that route. Speaking as her audience, not as an author--the publisher put out mass market type mystery books in trade format. If she could have done it cheaper, she should have. I would have bought the books had they been priced better.

Management at publicly held companies are custodians of Other People's Money. They have a fiduciary responsibility to preserve and if possible grow their shareholder's value. So when they decide what to invest corporate funds in, the question is what the return will be. There are any number of cases of companies getting out of lines of business, because they were profitable, but not profitable enough, and management decided they could get better returns elsewhere.

As a relevant case, there were worries when Sony introduced the Sony Reader about their long-term commitment. Sony is a big consumer electronics manufacturer. They have to sell a lot of devices to make it worth doing. They had previously made and sold the popular Clie line of Palm OS PDAs. They got out of the market, because, while profitable, it wasn't profitable enough. The question was whether the market for a dedicated reader was big enough and would carry a high enough margin to justify Sony's investment, or whether they would pull the plug on the effort. Fortunately, the market does seem to be big enough, as Sony is still in it and introducing new models, but it was a source of concern.

A major trade house might decide to leave that market to folks structured to address it, and concentrate on stuff they can sell at a higher price with greater margins. They already do that in any case, declining to publish titles because they don't see a large enough market, and leaving such business to smaller specialty publishers structured to do it.


I think there is indeed a market there. And I think small publishers/self-publishers like yourself can address it. I don't think the big boys can

I think the big boys need to set up smaller shops to address it in some manner. I don't particularly *care* if they do. At the moment I am finding plenty of books to read. I know their goal is to make money, but they haven't done much to try to get rid of waste (like the discussion on returns.) Sure the booksellers are going to fight them on it. But it's been hurting the industry for a long time--ingrained policies usually do.

Your points are all valid--but the world is changing and I think those who are able to offer a good product at a lower price are going to do well. Large Publishers need to at least address that niche market rather than whine about it!