Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Strnad
The bargain priced ebook may not bring much profit to the publisher, but it's certainly more than a used paper book provides, which is nothing.
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It's more complicated than that, though. There are a certain number of people who will buy a Christie e-book for $6.99. And a larger number of people who will buy the book at $2.99. But the additional number of people who would buy the book at $2.99 may not be enough to counteract the profit lost by the people who would have bought the book at $6.99.
I.e., let's assume that the profit on the $3 book (I'm rounding) is $1, which would make the profit on the $7 book be $5. If 10,000 would buy the book at $7, the total profit is $50,000. You would need to sell 50,000 copies at $3 to make the same profit as selling 10,000 at $7.
Of course you can change the numbers and get different results; the point is that while lowering prices will cause more sales than otherwise, it may not produce enough additional profit to be worthwhile - in this case, even though a lower price might triple sales or quadruple sales, you are still better off selling fewer at a higher price.
I think that publishers and everyone else are trying to find what the best combination of profit and sales are. But simply selling more isn't enough.
I believe that Christie is the best selling fiction author of all time, so it's also worth pointing out that her ability to sell at $7 is a lot higher than that of almost any other author.
Note: Christie died in the mid-70's, so her works would still be under copyright regardless of recent revisions to the copyright laws.