Quote:
Originally Posted by sirbruce
One problem with your analysis, Elfwreck, is you're missing the assumption -- not a necessarily true assumption, mind you, but one which must be made for business reasons -- that every ebook sale is one less pbook sale. So you can't just ignore the pbook overhead. If ebook sales were purely additive, then you could. There's no doubt that ebook does stimulate demand and that ebooks are bought by people who would never buy the pbook. But nevertheless, you can't just assume the cost of overhead doesn't exist; Angry Robot doesn't want ebooks to be an afterthought. *If* you were going to treat them as such, then it would mean higher pbook prices to cover the falling demand (since people start buying the cheaper ebooks rather than the pbooks), or fewer ebook titles (only those ebooks that had large enough pbook sales would be offered, since ebooks wouldn't be covering their share of overhead).
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True and Elfwreck also assumed that the pbooks should pay all the preproduction, advertising, and other costs associated with a new book. The eBooks should get a free ride. This also adds overhead to the pbooks with the reduced demand. eBooks must carry their fair share or the system doesn't work and the publisher goes under. You just can't say that copying an ebook has totally no overhead but I will be nice and pay you $1 for it.
Dale