Quote:
Originally Posted by BeccaPrice
digitizing backlist books simply puts those books into competition with current books, which lowers the chance of getting lots of purchases of the new books. I think the BPHs are into selling us what's new this week/month, and not trying to make sure that all their collections are available in digital.
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The flip side of that is that it's pretty hard to sale volume 5 of a series when a new reader can't get volumes 1 - 4. There have been quite a few books over the years where I saw a new book in a series, wanted to get the first book but couldn't, so I passed on them all.
One issue is that publishers are still in the 2 month mind set. They are thinking of shelf space and the fact that most books will produce the vast majority of sales in the first couple of months after they are released. With ebooks, you aren't actually competing for shelf space, so having the back list available doesn't compete with new books all that much.