Quote:
Originally Posted by Crusader
In the second hand market perhaps. I doubt that it will happen for retail since publishers will likely do smaller print runs which will lead to an increase in the price per pbook.
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I'm not sure. On the one hand: smaller print runs = costs more per book to print. On the other: more selective marketing = fewer returns = more profit from the print run.
Removing the 30-70% return rate for pbacks would *drastically* change the market dynamics, and that's probably what publishers need to do--which means that someone needs to do a lot more market research and figure out what will actually sell, rather than "here's a large collection of this season's expected bestsellers."
While publishers will want to hand this job off to bookstores, claiming they can't possibly know local market dynamics, booksellers would push back by just *not ordering anything* they're not sure of selling--possibly switching to subscription-style pre-orders only for most of their sales. Publishers who want to stay in business would need to actually figure out who would want to buy each title they produce, and where those people shop for books, to know how many to print.
And they'd claim that smaller print runs means they have to raise the prices, even though having an 85% sellthrough rate would indicate otherwise.