I totally agree with you that people are just now learning about marketing and selling ebooks and that there is a lot to be learned. The economics of the situation is totally different than paper books. IMPO, ebooks is really going to help the mid list authors (i.e. authors with a big back catalog and name recognition, but no best sellers) and genre authors. They should have a nice steady income.
The biggest question mark, in my mind, is how new authors are going to connect with potential readers and who is going to develop the craft of potential authors. Baen use to like to pair new authors with established authors to develop the name recognition and let the established author show the new author "how it's done". My guess is that we will see a proliferation of small scale publishers who only put out two or three new books a month.
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Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks
Yes, agreed. The confusion comes in because publishers seem to throw out the idea of "not earning out" as losing money and that is not always the case. They seem to do this most often as a ploy to gain sympathy or cut advances. Not saying it is a bad idea to do that sort of thing, but it leaves an incorrect assumption out there for people not more familiar with the industry.
In some genres selling only 3k books is not unusual. One of the reasons the larger publishers now have "ebook only" imprints is because there is a market for books that sell a small number, but because they sell a small number, it is not worth: 1. paying the same advances as for a book expecting larger sales and 2. going to print 3. spending money on marketing in the same manner.
I think everyone is still learning about marketing and selling ebooks. They don't go "out of print" so I'm not sure it's been determined how long a company (or individual) will spend money marketing/selling a particular ebook or series. The "lifespan" of a book is different now than it was 10 years ago.
To some degree the ebook reader is a different reader than a print reader as well. And the market is still evolving so there is much to learn.
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