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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I'm also willing to bet their hardcover sell through rate is where they make their biggest money. What happens if ebooks take over, and Baen no longer makes and sells paper books? Think they'll be able to retain that $6 ebook price and survive? I don't.
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No, they won't.
By that time, they'll have had more than 10 years, maybe 15 or 20 or more years, of profitable ebook sales, part of which was because they tied in well with hardcover sales, and they'll have 10-20+ years of happy customers willing to at least try whatever method they come up with to make book-production profitable as an e-only enterprise. |
Including higher prices on ebooks, since the acquisition/preparation costs won't be allocated across paper books as well, but will have to be borne entirely by the ebook?
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When paper publishing drops off drastically--which I believe is going to happen in the next decade or so--all of the publishers are going to have to make major changes in their business plans. Baen, at least, will have practice listening to their customers, and a measure of goodwill that could get them past the initial bumpy period. They may have more than that; every nuance of new possible tech is brought to their awareness, and they may may be developing sales plans that won't fly in today's marketplace, but might if pbooks didn't exist, or cost three times what they do now.
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I concur that change is coming. What I see happening is the mass market paperback being largely replaced by the ebook. Paper books won't go away entirely - there are too many kinds of books not well suited to reading electronically - but paper books will become more of a niche market.
The biggest losers will be bookstores, as MMPB editions are the bulk of what they sell. I see fewer and smaller outlets for those that survive, and likely a lot more specialty focus.
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Or they may just be planning to milk their current methods for as long as they possibly can, and not bother making plans for changes they can't predict. 10 years ago, they weren't designing for the Kindle; there's no point in them designing now for brainchips. Or, if that's too extreme, eyeglass-readers that scroll a single line of luminous text across the top of a pair of glasses.
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It's pointless to make plans for changes unless you know what the changes will be. You can speculate till the cows come home, but meanwhile, you have a business to run. The key will be flexibility, and the ability to adapt to change. That flexibility and adaptability are in short supply in publishing, but publishing is hardly the only business for which that's true.
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Dennis