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Originally Posted by rhadin
Pricing has dropped but not realistically on agency-priced nonfiction.....
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It has for the non-fiction books I've purchased.
And a few others as well. Considering the following list, from the February 7th 2010 NY Times Non-Fiction Best Seller Hardcover list, all agency priced. Current prices:
Game Change: $10
Committed, A Love Story: $10
Stones into Schools: $10
Going Rogue: $10
Outliers: $13
Just Kids: $10
Checlist Manifesto: $10
Super Freakonomics: $15
What The Dog Saw: $15
Many of the titles on Amazon's current best seller non-fiction list are $13. $13 isn't as good as $8 or $10, no question, but it's hardly an indication that the industry is still desperately and vainly erecting sand berms against ebooks.
I'm confident that, by now, the top execs in the publishing biz fully realize that ebooks will have a major chunk of the market in just a few years. In fact that is precisely
why they jumped on agency pricing, and were willing to go to the mat with Amazon over it.
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Originally Posted by rhadin
One would think that with the release of the paperback that the publisher had already sucked out all of the gazillions in profit it was supposed to reap from the hardcover sales....
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Sure, if one believed that every single title goes into the black. However, as I would think you'd know by now, many titles don't turn a profit in the first place, and are subsidized by the few winners.
The result, by the way, is that publisher's net profit margins are not particularly outrageous -- anywhere from 5% - 10% -- hardly an example of extortionate margins. (See
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...rousel-up.html for an example.)
So in some cases, yes the paperback rakes in additional profits. In others, it's a last chance to go into the black.