Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
So eBook pricing is set to what the masses will pay. Yet we are told eBook sales are falling, year after year. Why is that?
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I've been told many things that aren't true. As far as I know, no one has that actual information. Amazon can say if they are selling less ebooks on the Amazon store, each individual publisher can say if they are selling less ebooks, each individual author can say if he is selling less ebooks. I've only seen one author give a detailed, real number comparison in a year to year basis. I've seen a lot of estimates, but we know that those estimates can be way, way off. For that matter, other estimates that I've read say that ebook sales continue to grow and that ebook sales if anything are being under counted since platforms such as Kindle Unlimited are not being included.
Here is the figures that Scalzi gave for the same time from for Redshirts and Locked-in
2013 2015
ebook - 35,667 24,000
audiobook - 17,008 41,000
paper book - 26,604 22,500
total 79,279 87,500
Obviously, one can't make an sweeping statements based on that one set of numbers.
What's interesting there is that the audiobook sales, a much more expensive format, are more than doubled. In this case, it appears the audiobooks took sales from both ebooks and paper books. Yet, overall sales are up.
Perhaps, if ebook sales really are down it's not price so much as new formats are more appealing, backlist sales are slowing down, few people actually market ebooks and we haven't had many huge blockbusters in books in recent years, no Harry Potter or Hunger Games. There are a lot of possibilities other than price point.