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Originally Posted by darryl
@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:
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.
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For the most part, ebook prices tend to be a few dollars less than the paper price. If Sutherland had been with a regular publisher, the paper price would have been more in line with the market, i.e. around $8 or so. I really don't see where that is pricing to protect print sales. As I mentioned, prices for name indie writers, i.e. indie writers who have established themselves enough to have a following, is creeping up much closer to the main line publisher ebook prices. I just double checked several indie writers that I read (i.e. using Amazon as the publisher for both ebook and paper) and they are all right about the same price point for ebooks and paper, i.e. $6 for ebook, $15 for paper. That's a pretty strong indication of where the market is actually heading.
I will say that the churn out a new book every few months school of indies tends to use a different price point.
I think that traditional publishers try to attract any author who will sell books. That does include the more successful indies, but on the flip side, we also see name authors who use indie publishing for their more experimental works, or novelettes that in an earlier time would have been snarfed up by magazines. Both Correa and Butcher have gone that route.
Right now, it seems that we have paper, ebook and audiobook as the three major formats for new books. Scalzi's break down seems to indicate that he's selling a lot more audio books than the other two formats. Of course, he's also using top audio talent with his books.
Right now, I haven't really seen anything that makes me think that we are going to see a big increase in ebook market share in the near future. We are roughly 10 years in to ebooks going main stream with the kindle. Pretty much every new book comes out in ebook format, and it's been that way for a good 4 or 5 years at least. For the most part, the major shifts in the paper market seem to have settled down.