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Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Good luck to the publishers if they all follow suit.
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One publisher isn't following suit and that is BAEN.
A direct competitor to Tor, which is the whole cause of the catfight, apparently.
https://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2019/11/jB08x.html
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Anecdotally (apparently according to Sargent himself!), eight percent of science fiction and fantasy fans who couldn't get an e-book promptly from the library would instead go out and buy it. So it really is based on fantasy and science fiction!
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So, Tor's business is hurting enough that a (mythical?) eight percent of their sales is worth going to war with (by their own admission) one of their biggest customers? Really?
Wow.
And they do this just as BAEN finalized a years-long struggle to get their books into libraries? So libraries boycotting MacMillan can divert the money to BAEN?
And, since the beef is over SF&F, has anybody told Sargent that two thirds of SF&F ebook sales are going to Indies? Something no amount of library catfights is going to change. (Except, maybe, increase?)
And this isn't even Tor's fault: back in 2006, Tor actually put their ebooks on Webscriptions, alongside BAEN. Before Kindle. And their overlords from Germany made them pull them out within days. It took another six years for Tor to get permission to "experimentally" try doing DRM free.
If TOR's sales have dropped that much (which I don't doubt on price alone) that they need an 8% boost of their sales enough to start this fight they must be pretty close to the edge.
For that matter, SF&F is supposed to be a niche: does TOR matter that much to MacMillan's bottom line?
Edit: To be clear, if the made-up number were 8% of all sales it might be worth documenting but 8% of SF sales isn't worrh all this drama. It's a niche! And very fannish. Projecting that anecdotal number onto other markets ignores real world customer behavior.
The longer this goes on, the sillier it looks.
All this for peanuts...
Sheesh...