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Old 10-09-2008, 10:36 AM   #23
Xenophon
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Quite a while back, pwalker8 wrote:
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8 View Post
While I understand your point on #5, I suspect that the most likely outcome of that stance is that publishers and authors simply won't provide e-books since they don't generate enough sales. You do understand that Jim Baen started websubscriptions for marketing purposes rather than as a profit center? Perhaps this is a discussion that should go in a separate thread.
I am well aware that Jim started webscriptions for marketing purposes. I'm also well aware that it has since grown to be a profit center. The latest word I've seen is that Baen's e-Sales are (paraphrasing a message by Toni Weisskopf, top boss at Baen) "larger than all foreign sales combined (including Canada)." Other message traffic suggests that e-Sales are now in the vicinity of 20% of total sales, and that they're quite definitely profitable -- even after covering their pro-rated share of fixed costs.

So we really do have an existence proof that ebook sales can be profitable in the pricing range of $6/book and $15 for a 6-to-8 book bundle. And the authors get better-than-mmpb-or-trade-pb royalties, too. Apparently royalties per e-Sale aren't quite up to the harcover level, though.

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