Quote:
Originally Posted by ZodWallop
Sounds to me like we agree that indie books are (in general) cheaper than traditional books. That ebooks published by traditional publishers cost more because the price is set to match their paperbooks.
So it seems like it would be obvious to say:
Yes, they probably could, if the publisher's goal was to sell as many ebooks as they could, rather than constricting ebooks sales to protect paper books.
I just haven't seen that. There might be rare examples, but it doesn't appear to be the norm.
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Mostly in agreement, but I'm saying that indies tend to come close to traditional publisher's ebooks that are priced for books that are out in paper. In general, that's a dollar or so lower than the paperback.
The publishers goal is not to sell as many books as possible and never will be, it's to make as much money as possible, just like any other business. Econ 101. Find the price point that maximizes your profits. If you set it too low, then you might sell more books, but you won't make as much money. Set it too high and you won't sell enough books.
Let me give an example, these are real prices rounded to the nearest dollar, actual sales figures are made up. A name author releases a book as a hardback at $21, after a year it is released in paper at $14. 20K people buy it as a hardback bringing in $420,000. 70K people buy it at paperback price bringing in $980,000. They could have released it at the paper price and sold 90K, but then they leave $140,000 on the table that they could have made. Of course, that money gets divided between the book seller and the publisher. The author gets his or her share from the publisher's share.
Interestingly, for this author, the hardback kindle price is $15, $6 less than the hard back book price and the paperback kindle price is $9, $5 less than the paperback book price. Looking at the backlist for this author, a book published in 2006 has a paperback price ranging from $12 to $20 on Amazon depending on the seller and a kindle price of $8. So, there is enough demand for her backlisted books to keep the price up. Backlist books from other authors by the same publisher are quite a bit less, so rather obviously, the publsher is pricing based on demand, at least with backlist books. Publishers aren't nearly as idiotic as some here assume they are. If you pay attention, you see that they can experiment quite a bit with prices.