Quote:
Originally Posted by anamardoll
Pricing is tricky. But I think there's a difference between a price literally not providing gross profit and a price that just isn't as high a gross profit as Knopf would like. Pricing all ebooks at $9.99 regardless of circumstances because $9.99 is what an ebook is "worth" is -- imho -- a terrible business strategy.
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Agreed, however pricing all ebooks at $1.99 is a worse business strategy, I agree that backlist books should be cheaper but looking at it from the publishers perspective if someone buys a book from them at $1.99 instead of a book at $9.99 thats cutting into their own profits rather badly.
Also - bear in mind that I am not talking about any specific title here - I am talking about a general policy. So, for the publisher, to cannibalise it's own sales with cheaper backlist books is a bit detrimental to them.
I understand that some (possibly many) will buy a different book from a cheaper source. But if all the publishers start with a race to the lowest price to try to catch all sales they will very quickly be out of business.
There are many backlist books I haven't read and though I would be happy if the prices dropped to £2 per eBook for the backlist I would no longer buy any new(ish) releases if that happened (bearing in mind that I don't buy at hardback prices to start with). You could probably get away with this on pop culture books as they would no longer be as relevant when they hit backlist status but with SF, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy etc you would be hard pressed to explain why anyone should pay more for newer (paperback price) titles than for backlist (I doubt many people will think an urban fantasy book is incredibly dated because no one uses a smartphone for example).
For the purpose of my argument here I'm classing anything more than about 4 years old as backlist.
You might be able to make a case that books more than 25 years old (number randomly pulled out of my hat) should be cheaper, although if the publisher thinks there are not enough people to buy at paperback equivalent prices I doubt they will go the the trouble of digitising the book.