Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
You'd probably always buy the 2nd-hand eBook for £1 rather than the new one for £5, because they are exactly the same, and you get an instant download in both cases. Offering 2nd-hand eBooks would completely destroy the market for new books, in a way that selling 2nd-hand paper books does not.
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Publishers, and more importantly mid-list authors, are finding out that used pbook availability is severely damaging their ability to sell new books. They get a few days of sales when a book is released, followed by a steep decline as used copies hit Amazon--and are sold on the same page as new books. They're finding out how many of their readers don't actually care about new-hardcover-in-mint-condition, and just wanted access to the text.
This does not counter your point, which is pretty much correct. But it's not just perfect, non-degradable copies that compete with new ones at full price--and publishers know this, or they'd release the paperback at the same time they release the hardcover.
As both copies and used-book transfer get easier, publishers (including indie authors) will need to come up with new business models, because the main profitability of the current one is based on a scarcity that no longer works the way it used to. If getting a half-list-price copy is as easy as putting the title in a search engine, whether that copy is digital or print, selling full-price copies is going to be a lot more difficult.
Sure, some people want perfect-condition hardcovers as collectible items. But those people aren't nearly as numerous as publishers always assumed; people who just like to
read are a lot more common. When getting new reading material was most convenient as "full price hardcover new releases," they did that. Now that it's just as convenient to get a new-release hardcover a week later at half the price... they're switching. And the publishers make no royalties at all from those sales.