[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

THe problem with your argument, EW, is that they would make sense if there was an ebook market seperate from a Pbook market. But there isn't really, there's just a book market.

There are multiple book markets, some of which are invisible to most publishers. They're assuming that any dollars that get spent on ebooks (1) are dollars removed from hardcovers, or possibly trade paperback sales, and (2) will drop if prices drop, because they assume that people buy a fixed *number* of books, rather than having a fairly fixed budget that can go toward any number of books, which might or might not go towards publishers.

I'm going to read dozens of books a year. Hundreds, in some years. I'm going to read that many whether I pay for them or not; if I can afford new books, I buy some of those; if money's tighter than that, I buy used (which gives publishers nothing); tighter than that, I borrow or get freebies.

I am invisible to most publishers. I'm not part of their demographic statistics; they don't consider me part of the book-buying public.

Books are my #1 entertainment expense. Baen gets a slice of it. Samhain Press gets a slice of it. Several individual authors at Smashwords get a slice of it. Steve Jackson Games gets a slice of it. Wildside Press gets a slice of it.

Harper-Collins gets none of it; they don't sell books in formats I'm interested in buying.

Publishers who convince themselves the "book market" is of a fixed size and shape are deluding themselves.

Publishers typically put out books in hardcover, paperback, and ebook models-and MUST spread the costs of production across all three models of reproduction.

Of course they must. But they need to consider how quickly they need to recover those costs, and whether selling more units at less profit is better for them.

For high-production-cost units, it's not. Overhead costs mean that they're better off selling fewer units at more profit. But overhead on ebooks is minuscule; they can afford to set costs low--and not only count on higher sales numbers to make up the difference, but use those sales as leverage for future sales. Publishers aren't doing themselves any favors by implying, "we only want customers above a certain income level."

Sure there's a sliver of the market that's ebooks only. But 80 per cent of all books put out this year will be print books.

I think that depends on your definition of "book." Amazon offers a lot of ebooks that have no print edition. Between Kindle books, PubIt, Lulu and Smashwords, I question whether new print books available outnumber new ebooks. (I'm not making any firm statement here; I'm curious. What's your source for the claim that 80% of new books will be print?)

The vast majority of all profits made in the book industry are on HARDCOVER sales.
You seem to live on a planet where ebooks are already the dominant form of reading and where the pricing model should be determined as if ebooks are the primary source of profit. That's not Earth Prime, where the rest of us live.

You seem to be saying that every ebook sold is a lost hardcover sale, instead of assuming that most ebook sales are coming from a demographic that wasn't going to buy hardcovers anyway. You're assuming that publishers are going to sell a fixed number of a given title, and those sales can be in any of four formats, and of course they'd prefer them to be hardcover.

I'll grant that publishers, being oblivious to the demographic I'm in, have no idea how to *market* ebooks to people who were never considering hardcovers. But that's not the same as agreeing that the market doesn't exist.

THe publishing industry must price books in the world we live in now, not the world as we want it to be. In five years time, i think your arguments may actually have merit.

In the world we live in now, I'm not buying Macmillan or Harper-Collins books.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone. I have no shortage of books to read. I think it'd be kinda nice for the publishers who provided the books I loved as a child to continue existing, but as they're no longer providing the books I want to read, I'm not supporting them.

Waldenbooks is long gone. Borders went under, and B&N's physical stores aren't doing well. Those three drove out most of the little book stores.

Who, exactly, do they think will be buying the hardcovers they expect to bring in profits? Are those people so numerous and so generous that they can afford to ignore a huge market of millions hungry for $5-and-under books, which is now a very profitable price range?