[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Regular prices would drop since early buyers would assume that the value of a new ebook is only as much as a second hand paperback.

You are assuming that everything else would stay the same, but that they would just create some additional sales and (given the fact that production cost for each additional ebook is near zero) additional profits. However, this would only make sense many years after the original run. You cannot allow such super low prices to affect overall pricing.

Those prices are already affecting sales, because a lot of ebook buyers are looking at the Agency 6, and saying, hmm, $13 for a single ebook, or $13 for four non-DRM'd Smashwords ebooks... even if three of them turn out to be a waste of time, I haven't lost any money. If two of them are good, I'm ahead; if I've gotten lucky and all four are good, I'm way ahead.

I am flat-out not a customer for Stephen King's new hardcovers. No decision the publisher makes is going to prevent my King hardcover purchases, which were, and will remain, $0. (I have limited space for books, and I prefer paperbacks for reading.) I *might* buy Stephen King ebooks... if they were offered without DRM, at a price comparable to what I can find them for in paper. Which is about half what's listed on the cover.

They have to do some research to figure out if low prices would gain enough buyers like me, to cover for the ones who would pay $13 but would just as quickly pay $3. Will they gain four new readers per current full-price buyer?

I don't know. For authors like King, maybe not; his books may have almost maxed out their market. But for lesser-known authors like Konrath--there's a reason his own books are selling so much better than the ones his publisher has the rights to. It's not that people are deciding, "hmf, I want HIM to get the money directly" when they go to make purchases; most Amazon buyers don't check those details. They see books by Konrath, whose books are high on the charts; they see one for $3 and one for $8.

I've seen no indication that publishers are even doing the market research to decide whether that trade-off in pricing could be effective. They seem to be thinking, "a book is WORTH $9, so we'll charge that much for it." Which is ridiculous.

At the moment, no novel is worth $9 to me. Some are worth $5. They seem to think that's an insulting offer. Do they want their books respected, or do they want them sold?