Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
They used $15 as a bogey. It was a viability study.
Given the time period, $15 wasn't unreasonable (the price of a typical hardcover).
I recently ran a KU WAG myself and as near as I can tell, 5 books at $10 is probably the breakeven point for anybody who knows their taste and can read an hour a day every day (30 hours a month). Any less and you're better off watching for sales and freebies and still get your reading in for less than $10.
As for more tradpubs getting into KU, I think the time for that is past.
The per-page payout model is anathema to tradpub.
(Too much of their income comes from books that people never finish.)
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Agree about the 5 for $10. I am pretty good if I get 4 in. But since I have a discounted 2 year sub now, its only like $6, makes me happy.
There are some trads in KU, not the big 5 no, but Kensington has titles in it, Open Road Media does, Sourcebooks has some and some of those are usually quite expensive like Georgette Heyer. There are some smaller publisher I have seen like Crimson romance and a few others I can't recall now.
I was shocked when I saw S&S come to Scribd a while back and happy when they got HQN books. They could put a lot of their back list titles in they aren't selling anyway much of. But yeah, I am not holding my breath any of the big 5 partnering with Amazon. But I guess stranger things have happened. They could do a trial run with a small number of back list and see how it goes.
I read 100's of books a year, average at 15 a month, more in a good month, little less in a bad month. But I still don't expect a subscription to fill all those slots. If I read 4-5 KU titles, I read 5 more from the library with the big publishers and then 5 purchased books. Its a combination for me.
I do agree with how publishers kind of messed this up. If they had a chance to get in years ago on such a service.
Now instead of getting paid for the pages I read if they had gone into KU, I get the books from the library. If they aren't at the library they go on a wishlist for either steep discount or just falling into the bottom of my deep TBR pit.