Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinecone
And what do the pbooks cost now? New for a current printing?
|
Publishers who believe that backlist ebooks are competing with new-printing pbooks are delusional. They're competing with penny-plus-shipping Amazon used books, with Bookmooch.com, and with local yard sales. Publishers never got royalties from those sales; it shouldn't surprise them or affect their bottom line when those would-be buyers turn to torrents and file-exchange sites for a copy that's within their price range. The publishers still have the same level of profit: zero.
They have an opportunity to get profit from those readers--by competing with used book prices, not new ones. Otherwise, they can continue to fail to get income from 3/4 of the readers of any particular book.