Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The more voracious the reader, the more likely they are to treat books as commodities, the more likely that they want to be reading *something* rather than "this particular thing." The "Big 6" publishers seem to miss that point entirely. Of course, they also seem to think that "voracious reader" means "15 books/year," so their conclusions are understandably skewed.
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I hadn't thought of the subject in these terms, but now that you state it, it is clear to me that this is right on target.
I tend to think of
fiction books as commodities and I read 1 to 3 novels a week (on average).
Nonfiction, for me, fills a different role and I do not think of nonfiction books in the same terms as fiction.
In the case of fiction, I do have authors I prefer, but if they are not available, someone else will do just as well. I do not think -- or read or buy -- in terms of "either its Stephen King or no one" in the horror genre.
In viewing the overall theme of this thread -- scarcity vs. abundance -- the idea that abundance affects price (lowering it) can only be true, I think, if one accepts that the item in abundance is a commodity (or substitutable); otherwise it would fall in the scarcity column and not be subject to price whims.
In this argument, I firmly come down on the commodity side of the equation (and, yes, I realize we are not/I am not using commodity in the true economic sense of the term) as regards ebooks. If an author A ebook isn't available, I'll find an ebook by some other author and be just as satisfied. So for me, price is an important, albeit not dominating, consideration.
A good example occurred just yesterday. I started a book by Megg Jensen,
Anathema, that I "bought" sometime in recent months for free. I bought it because it looked interesting and it was free; I probably would have passed over it at $2.99. I found the book so good that I immediately returned to Smashwords and bought the other two books in the trilogy,
Oubliette and
Severed, for $3.99 and $4.49, respectively.
My point is this: The first book,
Anathema, was a commodity, so price mattered. The other two books were no longer commodities but fit in the scarce column, even though technically not scarce, because I had a reason for wanting them and not substitutes. Price mattered significantly less, although there was a threshold over which I would not go to buy the books.
eBooks are a mix in the equation and can change their status based on whether they are causal or must-have reads.