Quote:
Originally Posted by whitearrow
The problem is that big publishers haven't historically considered their customers to be readers, but the retailers they dealt with on a day to day basis. It's retailers they've marketed to in order to get prime store space, and retailers they've tried to impress with their newest offering. Even getting publishers to think readers are actually important to their business is an entirely new mindset for them.
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I'm somewhat sympathetic to them... for years, they were not a direct-to-consumers industry. They sold to distributors who sold to retailers, so even their interest in retailers was second-hand.
It's like if consumers suddenly wanted to talk to the manufacturers of coffee cups, demanding more variety in the artwork and better grammar in the cute phrases, and also coffee cups need to fit in our new dishwashers, of which there are eight different styles and we demand each style cup be made to fit each of their cupholders. (Anybody know who owns copyright on the artwork on coffee mugs from the 50's? Is "World's Greatest [family member]" a trademarked phrase?) (Rhetorical. Entirely rhetorical.)
I'm not, of course, sympathetic enough to think they shouldn't have to make these changes. Sorry; the market has changed. Everyone and his cousin now has a cupmaking machine, and if you want to sell mugs at $8-$15 each, instead of the $2 each that my neighbor charges, you'll need to convince me yours is actually more valuable to me.
Or, well, they can continue to try to convince distributors and retailers that their mugs are better and deserve ALL THE SHELF SPACE... but retailers, who *do* deal with individual customers, have reasons to disagree. Especially when the shelf space is digital.
I do understand that it's a *massive* business shift, for companies with a great deal of inertia. However, it's not like this exploded out of the blue... ebooks have been around for decades, and commercially available for over 10 years. The BPHs have certainly had time to notice, "hey, there's this new marketing option suitable for our content that we're not really set up to deal with; how should we fix that?"
Instead, they've decided to go with, "this new marketing option could damage our meat-and-potatoes, the hardcover book sales. Let's keep it as limited as possible."
Which, ah, worked somewhat for several years... but it turns out there are plenty of people *not* making millions on hardcovers, who are willing to explore the new marketplace.