Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
From a publisher's point of view, they know that book sales tend to be very front loaded, so they want to maximize books sales during that period. I also suspect, based on the fact that they used Tor as the experiment, the publisher isn't trying to protect the super best seller that everyone is talking about, but rather what I like to call the mid-tier author, the ones who have a nice steady record of solid selling books, i.e. 30K-50K with a few books that actually make the best seller list. They are the authors for whom a few thousand sales can make the difference between earning out and not earning out and they are the authors who represent the backbone of a publisher's business.
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That would also tie in with the one perpetual copy. Those are benefiting the library as well as the publisher equally. Also that is priced lower means that there is less risk two ways. First it is a one time once paid, done and forget deal. Second it doesn't matter if it is unknown if there might be demand, or it is known that the demand is so low that a regular expiring license is too expensive. The publisher's benefit there is the never stopping eyeballs. If it is in the library, it appears to be a better book than the one that didn't get choosen.