[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ottdmk

What's impossible to tell is: how many ebook sales are in addition to the number of physical books you would sell, and how many are in place of physical books? While I'm sure some ebook purchases happen where people pick up a book they might not have before due to the ease of purchase, or the ability to read a preview... for the most part people are getting a book they would have earlier bought in physical form.

Usually, yes. But *not* necessarily "a book they would have bought new, from a vendor who feeds into the royalty stream."

Remaindered hardcovers aren't better sales for the publisher than ebooks. Used paperbacks certainly aren't. Books borrowed from friends don't pay the author or publisher at all.

An ebook purchase is almost always a lost pbook *acquisition,* but not at all a lost pbook *sale,* from the publisher's perspective.

So the publishers are, quite legitimately, worried about ebook sales cannibalizing their other product lines.

This is because publishers have long been oblivious to the millions of voracious readers who rarely bought first-run pbooks, and almost never bought hardcovers, who *are* buying ebooks as fast as they're being released in genres they like. Amanda Hocking didn't lose a million pbook sales.

When you talk about the ebook costs being already covered by the print run... well, guess what? They're not about to substantially discount the ebook over the print run because ebook sales are rising and it looks strongly like physical book sales will fall at the same time.

Refusal to discount the ebooks plays into that. As long as they cost the same, or close to it, customers buy *one* version. Put the ebook at what much of the market thinks they're worth--at most, 20% less than a paperback--and they fly off the digital shelves, *and* pbooks sell as well. People buy the pbook to keep and loan out, and the ebook to read at leisure... and people who wouldn't have bought either at $12 (but might've borrowed it, or waited for used copies to hit the library sales bins) will buy the ebook at $5 or $6.

As for backlist books: that would be nice. I know from time to time publishers do discount the backlist. I remember seeing a nicely priced, $3.99 edition of book one of the Belgariad. Even that though was more a promotion, a loss-leader type of thing.

What "loss leader?" If they sell a few dozen copies, they've made their costs for the conversion; after that, it's all gravy. There's no loss; just less profit than they'd like.

Marginal costs for ebooks are, at most, pennies per book. Pbooks are never going to reach that point.

A simple fact of the publishing world is that publishers almost never lower the prices of their product. Retailers may lower the price on a temporary basis, but publishers for the most part do not.

Large publishers are discovering that whether or not they're willing to cater to the $6-and-under ebook market, indie publishers and authors are, and those sales are skyrocketing. And authors are wondering what a publisher has to offer, if they make $2 per book sold for a $3 self-pub or an $18 traditionally-published volume.

There are answers: editing, marketing, access to stores, awards recognition. But as far as day-to-day income goes, all that can be skipped--self-pub authors have a better chance of making a living at their craft than traditionally-published ones... and a much, much better chance than wannabe trad-published authors who don't yet have a contract.

In short: Publishers are now facing competition that didn't exist 15 years ago. That competition is largely comprised of *the people who create what they sell,* and they'll have to scrabble to find business models that work, when they no longer have the gatekeeper advantage.