Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
I dunno about that. Things don't always behave in an arithmetical fashion. There's probably a sweet spot for profit consisting of (1) a certain number of ebooks sold at a certain price, that produces more profit than (2) more ebooks sold at a lower price, or (3) fewer ebooks sold at a higher price. Heck, there might also be a sweet spot at which a higher price sells MORE ebooks - people sometimes attach value to things that cost more. And it's probably different for different books.
In short, we seem to be in a pricing shakedown period, where publishers are trying out different strategies. The problem for publishers is to try to find the right mix of several things: book format, timing of issuance, relative pricing, and who knows what other things, all sufficient to maximize the return on investment.
I do know that a year ago, we all seemed to be talking about idiot publishers who would not issue ebooks at all, thus losing sales. Now more and more of them are not that kind of idiots. So now we are talking about idiot publishers who are not pricing ebooks correctly. A year from now, who knows?
|
Retailers were alot more attentive to the price/sales issue than publishers seem to be. The agency five treat the ebook price like the Ronco Rotisserie: they set it and forget it. A typical retailer, under the old model, would discount a book to gain more sales and maximize profits as a result. Publishers, acting like a monopolies, charge the highest sustainable price for their product. (They do have a monopoly on any given non-public-domain book.)