Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
Even so, the question remains: Will publishers have to alter their pricing plans to satisfy customers; or can they wait consumers out, until they give up arguing and fighting, and cave in to the publishers' wishes? Honestly, I think it could go either way.
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That implies there are only two groups' interests involved: publishers and book-reading customers. There are also authors, whose interest in customers is similar but not identical to publishers' interest; they, too, are looking for ways to connect with customers to make profit. But they're often concerned with more than raw income--they want some level of recognition (most authors wouldn't agree to take a large lump sum for a single book and burn it, never releasing the text to anyone), and they want their works to enter the collection of literature available. "Wants to be read" means a willingness to take a risk of less profits, or less immediate profits, in order to find readers. The fact that happy readers are usually future customers is a nice followup.
Publishers don't care about books being read; they care about books being
bought. And while I grant that some authors only care about getting paid, I suspect the vast majority want their works read--not enough to release them all for free, but enough to consider a non-paying reader something of value. That changes what strategies they prefer to use to get paying customers.
As authors realize that publishers only provide part of what they're seeking, they'll look for other options. Some find that self-publishing gets them more of what they want. Some find that smaller, less-restrictive publishers are better.
The agency-pricing, one-purchase-per-reader publishers are being squeezed from multiple directions--and one of those is from the people who make what they want to sell. The publishers have a lot of inertia, which is big value in the business world, but the internet is really, really good at jumping past corporate inertia.
When the NY Times starts allowing self-published books on its bestseller lists? The $14 new ebook will go into its death throes.