@pwalker. Some interesting points. The book price model continues to be reasonably effective and certainly not an irrational approach if your priority is to preserve your profitable print book market. Time will tell how long it remains a viable pricing strategy, as it is now facing competitive pressure from a number of sources. I don't think it is going to become unviable overnight, but I do think it is on a slow decline. Back in post #183 you wrote:
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I just bought book 5 of J.A. Sutherland's Alexis Carew series. Kindle price, either $5 or free if you have kindleunlimited. The paperback price is $18. Sutherland is an indie author and the paper version is via Amazon's Publishing Platform. I would predict that he's not going to sell many paper copies.
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I suspect that had the Big 5 been pricing those books the ebook price would have been set at the same price as the paperback, or only a few dollars cheaper. This represents a very good comparison of pricing an ebook to protect print sales and pricing an ebook to maximise ebook revenue. The use of the time tested Book Price Model means that the Big 5 simply do not try to compete with Indie ebook prices. This seems to apply not only to new releases but also to many backlist titles. So long as they are compensated for this in paper sales and by the high prices a significant minority of ebook readers are prepared to pay, this model continues to work. Supplemented with the occasional specials and on at least some books permanent price reductions, the model continues to work, little though I like to see it. Of course, the following factors can affect the longer term viability of this pricing model, and I expect most or even all of them will:
1. Increasing market share of ebooks;
2. Increasing popularity of subscription services;
3. Decreasing importance of bestsellers;
4. Existing blockbuster authors reaching the end of their careers;
5. The need to attract successful Indie authors to traditional publishing and to offer much improved contract terms.
I will not elaborate on the above in this post save for 5. I actually believe there is a real conflict of interest between a traditional publisher and an author where the traditional publisher wishes to price ebooks at a level that seeks to preserve print book sales. The author is receiving only a very small amount from each print book sale, if anything, and in many cases would likely be better off selling more ebooks, depending of course on their contracts.
I agree with your scepticism on all figures. Given the overriding secrecy which pervades the industry, there are few hard figures and pretty well everything is an estimate. It is good that authors like Scalzi are prepared to share their actual figures. I believe Author Earnings rely on such sharing form some authors to validate their assumptions, though of course they are still assumptions and the report a collection of estimates. There is no definitive data available.