Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi
The publishers seem to think Less money for both the publisher and author is a good trade off in exchange for a forlorn hope of driving customers back to paper books and generally hurting Amazon (their largest source of income). If I was one of those publisher's authors I wouldn't be too happy with them. Hurting both the authors that make your business possible and your biggest source of sales Amazon seems poor policy.
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The funny thing about that delusion is that Amazon's response has been to give them what they "want" by helping them sell more pbooks. Of course, they are doing it by discounting pbooks below competitor prices, thereby increasing publisher dependence on Amazon and squeezing B&N on the non-Nook side. (To say nothing of Indies caught in the crossfire.)
Also, shifting BPH sales from ebook to print takes money away from Apple, Google, and Kobo, none of which sell pbooks.
And making BPH titles more expensive makes non-BPH titles from smaller tradpubs, Indies, and APub more visible and more attractive.
Just like the first round of Agency did nothing to hurt Amazon but killed or crippled a lot of their competitors and drove others out of the business, this new round is just tilting the pbook side to Amazon's strength.
All they are doing is selling less high margin product valued by heavy buyers and more low margin product valued by occasional shoppers. In other words: they're killing their midlisters to prop up their one percenters.
Real smart.
Edit: Point to consider, half of BPH sales go to the randy penguin, which only moved back to Agency this last week. Also, currency exchange is making euro denominated reporting look better than it is.
The real impact will be felt next year.