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Originally Posted by darryl
In your third paragraph what you seem to be saying is that without the subsidies from books that do sell the books that can't break even wouldn't be published. If this is in fact what you are saying, so what.
There is no genius in the system at all. I and others have no wish to subsidize your reading habits.
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I don't think that fiction readers subsidize nonfiction readers. Lots of nonfiction sells well, especially in paper editions. Hachette (almost all fiction) didn't buy Perseus (heavily nonfiction) in order to lose money.
It may be that, on average, bestsellers subsidize midlist. But publishers do not know which titles are going to be the hits and which are going to be midlist. True, some famous names (James Patterson, Hillary Clinton) are surefire bestseller authors. But those authors demand such a high advance that the publisher may lose money on their bestseller. And if a publisher only publishes books by proven bestselling authors, it will eventually die. They do need to takes chances to survive.
Now, I would say that there are some subsidy situations. People who want to own books subsidize people who want to read and return (or resell). Also, people who want to read books shortly after publication subsidize those content to wait a few years. People who buy the hardback, or eBook, the week it comes out are subsidizing the man or woman borrowing a worn paperback in an African village reading room. Is this so horrible?
You might say that you are willing to pay $9.99, during the first month after an eBook release, to subsidize the reading room, but not $14.99. Fine. This will be reflected in Hachette sales data and they will price in the way their numbers people find maximizes revenue. But I can't buy the idea that Hachette is run by idiots who don't know what price to charge.