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Old 04-14-2012, 06:42 PM   #360
Elfwreck
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools View Post
(Shrug) If you read the comments, you'll find that indie authors , who are in the fioeld an d whose business it is to know these things, agree with Mr. Shatzkin that ebooks by name brand authors will push out indies if the prices are sharply reduced. I have to think that they know their business better than an interested bystander.
I am not an "interested bystander;" I am a customer, a person who buys their products. (I am also an industry professional, but at such a fledgling level I can't bring any industry experience to the discussion. I can, however, say that I am bringing my opinions as a customer and reader to the industry, and investing my own money with the intent of making more of it.)

If the $1-$5 indie authors can only make money if BPH books are priced at $10-15, they're not going to be missed if BPH books drop in price. Why should any of us care if low-quality works vanish when high-quality works are available at the same price? If they are not low-quality works, the only reason they wouldn't be able to compete is if the public is a mindless mass that's incapable of recognizing quality and just buys the books with the best logo. In which case, why would those of us who love books & literature, care about the future of the industry? If it doesn't support quality art, why should we care if it collapses?

But that's all fairly irrelevant points, because the result of the DOJ lawsuit is *not* going to be, "Macmillan and Penguin are required to sell their backlist ebooks at less than $5 per sale."

Some of us believe that BPHs are not going to lower ebooks below $6 unless absolutely bizarre legal pressure forces them to, which we don't expect. Some of us also believe that BPHs wouldn't be able to compete with a lot of indies even at the $3-6 price range, because they don't know how to sell to that market at all. (They seem to be confused that digital shelf-space doesn't give the premium slots to BPH books, that random indie authors who are well-liked can get just as good placements.)

If BPHs want to compete with indie authors and tiny publishers, the solution is for them to use their extensive resources to produce better books. Fix the OCR errors in the backlist releases. Polish the formatting of the new releases. Make sure the maps and other artwork are included. Find the *good* authors and make them *better.* Don't stop editing three books into a popular series. Do better fact-checking on the nonfic. And so on.

They certainly *could* drive a lot of the small publishers & authors out of business... if they worked on releasing better books, rather than developing more invasive ad campaigns.
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