Quote:
Originally Posted by dickloraine
Hardbacks are profitable, if the audience who buy at the high price is large enough. I guess the main factor for buying hardcover is that the book is new. Of course there are the people who buy hardcover because they strongly prefer it. But I guess most buy it, because they want to read the book now.
At least in germany, there are many books never sold as hardcovers. I think the pool of people who would buy them is just to small to make it profitable. Many genres are like this, only the highest profile authors sometimes get a hardcover (like Pratchett).
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Back during the 70's, few sf&f books came out in purely as hard back. Then they started coming out as trade paperbacks (I believe that Brooks' The Sword of Shannara were among the first, certain the first that I remember). It became a lot more common as time goes by. Plenty of lesser known authors still initially come out as paperback.