[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

You're wrong for the reasons I gave in the post.

Reasons like this?

The library doesn’t give the publishers anything regardless of how much the book is borrowed for a single license

How about money? The library actually pays money, even when the book is underutilized. Up front. It is not necessary to pay even more money each time the library loans it out. The library already owns the license until it expires, if it expires. Again it is not lost sales. Would the publisher like to sell more direct licenses instead of selling the license to borrow? Absolutely. They are fighting for market share. They don't want to compete on price, so the only thing they have left is converting borrows into sales. Not lost sales, they are trying to create more sales. They could also try to sell more expensive licenses to libraries during the new release window.

And while I agree with the embargo, because I trust Macmillan has people with degrees in the subject matter, and way more access to sales information than you or I have, I do not agree that it's the only reason for the decline in sales.

I don't think even Macmillan themselves believe the problem to be single fold. They can only hope that they gain enough extra revenue to make up for additional lost readers. If it is not n the library any more (with as many copies) then the would be borrowers either buy, or go to a competitor for a different non embargoed book, or simply grow more patient.

I agree with you that some ebook only readers, especially those on this forum, insist that ebooks should be prices lower than the publishers seem to want. Personally I think these people are short sighted and are going to do much more harm to the reader side of the book industry than they intend. Notably because the slimmer and slimmer you cut the profit margins the less and less authors you're going to inspire. To say nothing of the cover artists, the editors, etc. I'll leave the quality of the ebooks aside, because one mans trash is another mans treasure, however as you decrease editors you're going to start having more continuity errors in series, and grammatical errors in books. That's not a judgement on the ability of authors, it's just how it is.

There is a valid price slot just below the publishers. It is not going away, and neither is it a race to the bottom. Are publisher going to compete in that price slot? Not with new releases. Maybe with their back catalogue. Their business model does not allow new releases to be that low. Maybe they adopt, maybe they don't have to.