MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Study says ". a certain level of piracy or its threat might actually be beneficial ."

pwalker8 · 01-30-2019, 07:42 AM

And yet, if you believe one of the few authors who is willing to talk about his sales figures(John Scalzi), he sold more ebooks than hardback books and almost twice as many audiobooks which cost even more. The only real sales figures we have to go by are very much counter to your base assumption.

I think part of what you are missing is that ebooks are actually multiple markets, rather than one large market. Indie books tend to appeal to a specific sub-group of ebook buyers, while name publishers appeals to a different sub-group with a certain amount of cross over. In practical terms you are looking at the price of a 20 inch TV and concluding that the price of a 50 inch TV must be artificially inflated. It isn't, it's just a different market.

The indie market seems to be a lot more price focused than the name author market. Frankly, this isn't anything new. We saw the same dynamics 40 years ago when the reader markets were divided into hardbacks, trade, paperbacks, used, swap and library with a certain amount of cross over. I can remember those who wouldn't buy hardback books railing about inflated prices on hardback books.

01-30-2019, 07:42 AM	#8
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	And yet, if you believe one of the few authors who is willing to talk about his sales figures(John Scalzi), he sold more ebooks than hardback books and almost twice as many audiobooks which cost even more. The only real sales figures we have to go by are very much counter to your base assumption. I think part of what you are missing is that ebooks are actually multiple markets, rather than one large market. Indie books tend to appeal to a specific sub-group of ebook buyers, while name publishers appeals to a different sub-group with a certain amount of cross over. In practical terms you are looking at the price of a 20 inch TV and concluding that the price of a 50 inch TV must be artificially inflated. It isn't, it's just a different market. The indie market seems to be a lot more price focused than the name author market. Frankly, this isn't anything new. We saw the same dynamics 40 years ago when the reader markets were divided into hardbacks, trade, paperbacks, used, swap and library with a certain amount of cross over. I can remember those who wouldn't buy hardback books railing about inflated prices on hardback books.