Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
As I recall from the time, the issue was that the publishers thought that Amazon was setting a price point ($10 for brand new NYT best sellers) in the mind of the consumers that the publishers didn't like. I don't think that publishers really cared all that much what format people bought books at, as long as it was at the "proper" price point.
The basic price model for publishers for a long time has been hardback, followed by paper about a year later. The hard back was roughly 3 times what the paper cost. Amazon was basically breaking that price model by setting the price point of ebooks at initial release as slightly less than double the paper back price point.
Just looking at some of the pricing threads here show a certain level of accuracy to their concerns. Even ignoring the "I just want everything to be free" crowd, few here seem to think that an ebook should have the same price point as a hard back. A majority seem to think that it should be less than a paper back, even if it's released at the same time as the hard back.
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Shouldn't the lack of production overhead (Presses, printing, binding and binding equipment, ect.) be reflected in the price of ebooks? If you want to say the are only a small part of the book cost, fine, but then they're fighting their own propaganda, that claims that hardcovers are expensive because they cost so much to produce. The editing costs (making the book better by changing aspects of the writing, correcting things like grammar and spelling) are one shot, no matter what (or how many) formats the book is produced in.
Whether you release the e-book day and date with the hardcover is strictly the publisher's choice. (However, as Hollywood has found out, you get the most bang for your promotional buck if you release all formats while the publicity is still in the minds of most of you customers.)