Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
This has been done and redone. The price of books doesn't have much to do with costs: it has to do with time and demand ( like just about every other kind of content). When a book comes out and demand is highest, Publishers charge the highest price. Most of the money a book is ever going to make is in that first year. In the second year, the publisher drops the price and moves to a cheaper format to juice up demand . The book then moves on the back list, remainder sales, and used books-at which point the publisher is, if anything, losing money.
The ebook prices are pegged to those cycles. Printing costs have little, if anything , to do with the pricing cycle.
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That is certainly the publiserhs' view, and the basis of their entire business model. However, there is a disconnect between the publiserhs' view and the publics' view, and I'm not sure how aware of this the publishers are (the public, by and large, isn't).
Namely, the publics' perception[1] is that hard covers cost more to make than paperbacks, and that makes them worth more. Hard covers don't cost more because they're just released, they cost more because they're hard covers. So people are willing to pay more for hard covers. But an ebook that was release last week is identical to the same book released last year, or ten years ago. There's no perceived difference in value to the public, so the public is going to be very, very resistant to a difference in price, even though the publishers see the two as different products entirely.
[1]And this perception isn't very accurate - the printing costs for hard covers is higher than for paperbacks, but not 2-3 times higher.
The publishing industry is facing some major, major changes to how they operate, and so far, nobody has any idea how it's going to work out.