Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
A subscription is a good way to supplement sales, but not to replace them altogether.
|
For titles that are moving to their satisfaction, no.
For slow movers, yes.
Most of their slow movers would actually make decent money if priced lower (as demonstrated by authors who managed to get reverted while reverting was still possible) but since the BPHs don't want to "devalue" books by selling them at market prices it makes more sense to move them to subscriptions, which are loans, not sales. With the added bonus that by book-keeping the subscription reads under their deep discount clauses they get to pay lower royalties.
That way they take advantage of the higher volume of books moved at the lower subscription "price" but shift most of the per unit revenue loss to the authors.
It makes perfect sense given their contracts and concerns: they need more ebook backlist revenue and exploiting those copyrights via ebook subscriptions minimizes frontlist pbook cannibalization. (If it leads to lower ebook sales, so much the better.) And keeping the subscription titles app-locked is a nice "anti-piracy" bonus.
The letter is MacMillan's way of telling their authors to prepare for lower ebook revenues.
Anyway, getting back to my original point, those backlist rights are very valuable to the bigger publishers which is why they are looking to buy out any smaller or equal publisher they can grab. Backlist isn't an impediment to a takeover, it is a motivation for consolidation.