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Worldwalker · 04-20-2011, 05:09 PM

I'm another one who isn't a lost hardcover sale. I've got no damn room for hardcovers, even if I could afford any reasonable percentage of the books I want to read at that price. My book budget (in both shelf space and cash) goes for the reference books that I need or want, often oversized and not suitable for my 505 even if they were available. What I read on the 505 is almost entirely fiction, a lot of fiction. Most of it fiction from decades (if not centuries) ago.

The way to get my new-book dollar is to price the kind of things I buy at yard sales and charity tables within my "impulse buy" range -- which, for a book, is $3 or so. More than that and I have to think about it, but for three bucks, I'll buy it and see if I like it -- and as Tim Myers can tell you, if I do like it I'll go buy another dozen books by the same author.

He's a perfect example: I'd never read any of his books until I talked to him on MobileRead. I tried the books. I liked them. I've bought close to 20 of them so far (the man is prolific!) and I'll get more after I'm caught up on reading these. Did he make as much profit from me as a publisher who sold me a full-price hardcover novel? We don't have to try to figure out book costs here, because it's very simple: existence always trumps non-existence, and there is no publisher who sold me a full-price hardcover novel, not in the past 5 years or so anyway. I don't have the space for them. And at the rate I read, I don't have the money for them either. Tim Myers could have made a penny from me and he'd still be ahead of the HC publishers because even before I got my ebook reader, I wasn't buying their books.

That's what the publishers aren't getting: they're "protecting" their HC sales by refusing to sell to the market that is out there waving money at them. They're too concerned about gross and not concerned enough about net, let alone volume.

They're leaving my money on the table. It's not that I don't buy books ... it's that I don't buy their books. If they want my money, they really need to do something about that.

04-20-2011, 05:09 PM	#7
Worldwalker Curmudgeon Posts: 3,085 Karma: 722357 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: PRS-505	I'm another one who isn't a lost hardcover sale. I've got no damn room for hardcovers, even if I could afford any reasonable percentage of the books I want to read at that price. My book budget (in both shelf space and cash) goes for the reference books that I need or want, often oversized and not suitable for my 505 even if they were available. What I read on the 505 is almost entirely fiction, a lot of fiction. Most of it fiction from decades (if not centuries) ago. The way to get my new-book dollar is to price the kind of things I buy at yard sales and charity tables within my "impulse buy" range -- which, for a book, is $3 or so. More than that and I have to think about it, but for three bucks, I'll buy it and see if I like it -- and as Tim Myers can tell you, if I do like it I'll go buy another dozen books by the same author. He's a perfect example: I'd never read any of his books until I talked to him on MobileRead. I tried the books. I liked them. I've bought close to 20 of them so far (the man is prolific!) and I'll get more after I'm caught up on reading these. Did he make as much profit from me as a publisher who sold me a full-price hardcover novel? We don't have to try to figure out book costs here, because it's very simple: existence always trumps non-existence, and there is no publisher who sold me a full-price hardcover novel, not in the past 5 years or so anyway. I don't have the space for them. And at the rate I read, I don't have the money for them either. Tim Myers could have made a penny from me and he'd still be ahead of the HC publishers because even before I got my ebook reader, I wasn't buying their books. That's what the publishers aren't getting: they're "protecting" their HC sales by refusing to sell to the market that is out there waving money at them. They're too concerned about gross and not concerned enough about net, let alone volume. They're leaving my money on the table. It's not that I don't buy books ... it's that I don't buy their books. If they want my money, they really need to do something about that.