Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
You can discuss the perceived value all day long -- what does it matter if nobody wants to sell it at your price? They just can't make it work. Even at a price of $ 0.99 they won't sell 10 times as many copies as they do at $9.99.
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Are you certain of that? Any studies to back that statement up? I'm honestly not trying to argue with you about it, just interested in the facts since I don't have any particular insight into the publishing industry's finances, beyond the fact that they seem to be hurting because of their current approach.
I can give you an equivalent though. The cost of video games has continually risen as the production values increased. We're reaching all time high price points (above $60 per game), yet people are becoming millionaires from $0.99 games. Yes, I'm quite aware that the video game industry's target audience dwarves the book industry's audience by a substantial margin, but there's also more games being made than books. Massive amounts more games. Supply and demand should equalize the comparison nicely.
The way I see it is that video game developers, and not just indies but full blown studios as well, have embraced the concept of slimming down their operating expenses. The same is true for musical artists. Book publishers seem entirely unwilling to do the same, thus their overhead remains the same and they pretty much have to charge the same price.
A book these days can be created with three basic elements. The author, the editor and the distribution channel (be it kindle or whatever else). Those are the required elements. On top of that you might want to add an artist for the cover and a marketing campaign, but going back to the $0.99 game scenario you can be entirely certain that 90% of the games released have little to no marketing done in advance. Yet they do just fine. I'm not sure what the publishers actually bring to the table anymore that justifies raising the price that much.
PS: That last sentence wasn't meant as a flame, I genuinely just don't know what they offer that could be so valuable. Anyone care to enlighten me with some concrete examples?