Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
There is more to the decision than just library pricing. Squeezing libraries into not stocking their ebooks won't suddenly make people spend money they don't have or have better uses for.
You can't eat your cake and have it too; you either go high price/low volume or low price/high volume.
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That's the rub, yes? There is a relationship between price and consumption. So many seem to think these publishers have no clue about this reality.
Given the success of ebooks at the "new book" price of $14.99....hasn't brought about the collapse of the Big 5 that some folks here thought would happen.
I too used to be a non-book buyer, but very much a book consumer. As a kid, all the books I read came from the library or used books. Occassionally I would be able to buy a paperback....never ever did I buy a "new book" priced hard back.
But just because I didn't....there were many millions of such books sold. All the while, even back then, folks had options to read much cheaper options than the new release price.
Amazon wanted to set the new book price at $9.99. Well, of COURSE that was a popular idea for most anyone except the publishers. After the shakeout...the publishers have set the new book price at $14.99 for the ebook version and $17.99 (or thereabouts) for the hard back. It's still cheaper than the original "new book window" price. This notion that nobody is going to pay $14.99 when they used to pay $20-$25 is silly.
As it relates to libraries...the new difficulty for the publishers is that it's now "frictionless" to borrow an ebook. So frictionless that people who BEFORE would buy a book now borrow it from the library. This is in addition to all the library using folks who were never paying the new book price.
Just as the publishers weren't going to let Amazon devalue the new book price, they aren't going to allow libraries to set the value to zero.
Libraries will adjust.