Quote:
Originally Posted by catsittingstill
But instead of $8 they're charging me $12 and even $15. And the price they said was going to drive them out of business? Was $10.
Which is why I don't believe the "$10 books will drive us out of business" argument, and why nobody else with any sense should either.
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I agree.
I'm not buying the argument, "but Baen knows their customers, has a smaller operation in a less-expensive location, and outsources a lot of their labor." What, big companies are so inefficient and clueless that we should pay an extra 50-150% for their products? That's not the way economy of scale was explained to me in school; big companies produced *cheaper* products because they could combine production costs.
I know not all of Baen's methods will work for other publishing companies, especially those that only produce ebooks--but those companies should all be looking at Baen and Harlequin (which is also *raking* in money, at $5/ebook... for books with DRM, without an active backlist) and saying "how much of their model can we copy?"
As much as I despise DRM, I have to acknowledge it's not the sticking point. The crucial point seems to be "costs less than lunch at McDonald's," at which point, the book can become an impulse purchase. (Also, "company provides customer service of a type that gets people to return to the site." Baen is friendly and in-crowd geeky; Harlequin has subscriptions and free books posted a chapter at a time.)