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Originally Posted by leebase
Sorry, I missed that earlier. Exactly. Publishers putting out a backlist book they make little to no money on are incurring the likelihood that they are taking sales away from current and profitable books.
That's the same reason publishers don't put out the MMPB version at the same time they release the hard back -- and why they didn't like Amazon selling new release ebooks at $9.99.
Who can blame them? Who in their position would do otherwise?
Lee
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I blame them because it isn't a "if I buy this I *won't* buy that" proposition. Books are not like cars; I can read more than one. Cars are expensive so I'm not going to buy more than I need. If publishers priced books in the impulse buy range--at least now and then, they might actually make more money.
A few authors have tried this with 99 cent price sales or even lowering from 6 dollars to 2.99. In the short term it *can* double, triple or quad sales--and this is from no-name indies. Publishers need to take advantage of marketing tools and this includes sales, promotions and the like. I think they should especially do this for backlist if they want to "recreate" interest in older series.
When I put out Under Witch Moon, because it was paranormal (a hot genre at the moment) and because my expenses were higher (paid for pro artwork and so on) I charged 4.99 out the gate. It sold decently--about 2 copies per day. But that wasn't my target, nor was it as high as I expected given what my other series sells (which is a cozy mystery series). So I lowered the price. Sure, it will now take more sales to make back my initial investment, but--since sales increased per day it hasn't been a bad strategy. And remember, I need to make enough on this book to pay for artwork for the next book in the series, the editing and so on--that's the way I choose to run my business. Make enough to pay it forward so that I don't end up assuming a book will sell and finding out it doesn't sell so there I am with high costs that will take me a loooong time to earn back.
Publishers aren't able to micro-manage each book like a single author can. However, the ones who are taking advantage of "sales" and pricing the first in a series lower than others and so on--CAN drum up interest. But by and large, they don't want to expend the energy from what I've seen. They believe their product is "worth" at "least" 9.99 (or whatever magic number they decide upon.) The problem is that the market decides what a product is "worth." So my prediction is that they are selling less than they expected of backlist copies. In most cases, stubbornly, they refuse to lower the price--and then don't put out more backlist books because:
1. It's somewhat expensive in hours and initial cost
2. They can say, "See backlist doesn't always sell so it's hard to get back the initial investment.
3. It will compete with their current authors/books/bestsellers and they have a higher initial investment with those authors--so they are anxious to make back their money there.
Bob Mayers just did a post over on another forum talking about how he wanted his backlist rights back so he could self-publish them. He expected a long drawn out argument to prove he had never sold the erights. (Bob is a fairly high midlist seller in a couple of genres.) Basically according to what he wrote, the publisher didn't argue at all. Now, granted, they probably didn't have a leg to stand on, but they could have made an OFFER to try and get some of the "real estate" out of the series he was talking about--it's stil in print. This was a series that sold EXTREMELY well (a million copies comes to mind, but don't quote me on that. I'd have to go verify the number. But even if it were 100,000, you'd think the publisher might want to negotiate for e-rights to get some of that.)
It's just not a market they are going after very hard.
Really, that's okay with me. It probably helps me as an independent. But it doesn't help me at all as a reader...