Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
One point that hasn't really been brought up here (well, maybe it was, but I missed it) is that all these changes are going to likely result in lower priced books in the long term.
|
Short-term, too:
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013...est-level-yet/
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=210460
I was particularly impressed by the pricing on Tobacco Road: $1.99.
A sign of things to come.
A properly-priced backlist is a license to print money as the books are, as you said, pre-vetted and many are broadly known by their reputation. Perfect impulse buy fodder.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
More sites will come along that help sort genre, quality and so on. More books that were already vetted up to a certain level of quality will come online. There will be newcomers who never published who will find a niche. But, by and large, the publisher HAS to be cut out because the prices of books are going to get pushed down and stay there for the most part. That means the pricing can't pay for a large corporation and all the expenses that go with it. Some of the middlemen have to be cut out.
|
Price bands.
We're already starting to see the emergence of different pricing zones for different products depending on the audience. The days of a midlist author's sales getting crippled by too-high pricing are limited.
New content from established "names" might command $10 or higher (as well as scholarly non-fiction) but there is going to be a lot of backlist action in the $0.99-$2.99 range and a nice entry-level band at $2.99-4.99, depending on genre, with established mid-listers stabilizing in the $4.99-6.99 range. The signs are out there and it makes sense for both authors and readers; a bit more for a known commodity and a bit less for an older work or an unknown quantity. (We'll probably even see a bit of windowing, ala BAEN.)
But as you say, with even the higher band running up to $6.99 or so there isn't enough money to be able to cover a typical BPH overhead at the lower volumes that look to be the norm for the next few years. Something *has* to give. Things will eventually stabilize and the level where they're headed doesn't allow room for the old cost structures. I doubt any amount of sub-contracting and author squeezing will let the BPHs stay in the market for mid-listers.
This, in turn, means that for more and more authors, trad-pub won't even be an option even if they pine for a traditional contract. (Which is where the predatory Author Solutions and its brethren will be trolling.)
A thorough understanding of the pitfalls of publishing is going to be a pre-requisite for newcomers isn't it? I fear we'll be hearing some painful horror stories shortly.